Video: How To Improvise Better Guitar Licks & Solos By Training Your Ear


Want the power to express the thoughts and emotions in your head musically using your guitar skills?

Good news:

This doesn't take forever to do - you just need to work on your "ear" as a guitar player.

The better you are able to hear notes in your head and re-create them on guitar instantly using your fingers, the more smooth and expressive your guitar solos and licks become.

Watch this video to learn how to improvise amazing things on guitar by developing a better musical ear:

Click on the video to begin watching it.


Training your ear helps make your guitar solos sound creative and emotionally expressive.

Here are some other ways to improve your guitar playing and play the way you want to:


How To Improve Your Guitar Playing Faster By Correcting Your Weaknesses

Want to make tons of progress on guitar fast?

Identify the weak areas in your guitar playing. Here is an exercise to help you get started finding and correcting them:

Step 1: Choose a guitar lick you want to improve.

Step 2: Perform the following techniques/actions while playing the lick you chose:

Picking every note with a lot of power – This forces you to articulate every note. By doing this, your hands must stay in perfect sync with each other, otherwise you will miss notes or play them unclearly.

When you are struggling to do this, you know that you need to improve synchronization between both hands. To get an even clearer picture of where your skills are at, practice your lick with no distortion.

Double pick every note – Double picking means picking each note of the lick two times. When you do this, your picking hand moves two times as fast as your fretting hand.

This makes it more difficult to keep your hands in sync – helping you to see where your skill level is at in this area.

*Play the guitar lick ten times continuously while using distortion settings – Playing with distortion settings quickly reveals any mistakes that are occurring due to inefficient string muting.

When you repeat your lick ten times, you are able to see if work is needed to improve your consistency of playing (by tracking how many mistakes you make). Improving consistency is crucial for helping you play better while performing live or when you need to record a track in the studio.

*Use directional picking technique rather than strict alternate picking – Directional picking refers to: whenever you change from one string to the next, your pick attack continues moving in the direction of the string you are changing to.

When you have a hard time using directional picking without making mistakes, this demonstrates a lack of efficiency in your picking attack. Correcting this makes it easier to play fast and clean.

When you’ve completed each part of this exercise and identified your weakest areas, create a guitar practice schedule to help you improve these areas.

This keeps your weaknesses from slowing down your overall guitar playing progress.

Want to get amazing results from every guitar practice session?


How To Start Improving A Lot More With Guitar Practice

It’s frustrating when you practice guitar several times a week but never seem to get better.

The following are three reasons why this is happening:


Reason #1: Thinking That Practice Needs To Be Boring

Too many guitar players think that practice must be boring in order to be effective. Reality is, guitar practice needs to be fun to be effective. This is because you should be feeling more and more motivated as you get closer to your musical goals.

When you don't, this is an indicator that something is wrong – either you are practicing ineffectively or are practicing the wrong things. Make sure everything you are practicing is leading you towards becoming the player you want to be.

Then make sure to apply the things you are learning in a musical way so your skills aren’t only good when used in the form of exercises.


Reason #2: Only Practicing Freely Without A Schedule

False Myth: guitar practice schedules limit your ability to play creatively. Believing this is a huge mistake that causes you to miss out on making tons of progress!

Practicing guitar with a regular routine actually helps you become more creative. In reality, creativity is a musical skill to be improve just like any other skill… and using a specific schedule helps you improve this skill over time.

When you don't use a schedule, you only make progress sporadically. Practicing with a regular routine makes it much less difficult to determine a goal and achieve that goal in the least amount of time as possible. You become the guitarist you always wanted to be in less time.


Reason #3: Practicing Too Many Hours At A Time

It’s not true that practicing as many hours as possible is the best way to become a great guitarist.

It’s about practicing in a way that gets the best results – regardless of how much time you spend doing it. It becomes harder to focus when you practice 3 or 4 hours at once every day.

Rather than doing this, split your practice time into smaller intervals during the day so you are able to stay focused and get the most results from every session.


4 Ways To Practice Away From Your Guitar & Still Become A Great Player

Awesome news:

There exist many methods to help you improve your guitar skills when you don't have your guitar close by. The following are four methods to help you improve your playing fast


1. Improve Your Fretboard Visualization

Do you sometimes struggle to find your way on the fretboard while soloing?

Improving fretboard visualization solves this problem, and you can do it anywhere.

Practice improving your fretboard visualization by quizzing yourself on note names and writing out scale patterns/chord patterns on fretboard diagrams. Look for creative ways to practice this by combining different adjacent scale patterns together, such as: Ionian and Dorian.

Learn to visualize yourself moving between each pattern interchangeably.


2. Study About Music Theory

Music theory is a tool for helping you express yourself clearly through music. These are some ways to practice music theory when you don't have your guitar with you:

*Study intervals and use them to build scales and construct chords

*Memorize the key signatures for every key including number of sharps/flats and the specific notes that are sharp/flat

*Research how your favorite bands use different music theory ideas to make their music


3. Develop Your Aural Skills

Aural skills refers to being able to identify notes in your head before you even hear them. This helps you play guitar more creatively while improvising so you express yourself emotionally without needing to consciously think about which note comes next.

Here is a great way to practice improving your aural skills: sing scales, arpeggios or melodies. This skill can be practiced anywhere, from your shower to your car to your room.

Another cool way to practice aural skills is to sing notes that harmonize with your favorite song’s melodies or by singing your own phrases to fill in silence during a song.


4. Learn About Healthy Guitar Practice Habits

You save a lot of time and frustration when you learn how to practice guitar in a way that reduces the tension and stress you put on your body from repetitive movement.

A lot of guitarists overlook this and end up practicing in a way that leads to injury and/or makes it difficult to practice for long periods of time.

 

 


Now you know how to improvise better guitar solos and licks. Now it's time to improve the other areas of your guitar playing. How? By taking online lessons for guitarists.