Soloing

Just curious what everyone does for soloing. Do you write them out or improvise them? Follow the chords or stick to a scale? Do you have a melody or motive in mind or do you just let your fingers do their thing? Why do you do what you do?

I tend to improvise out of the scale until I find a cool motive to develop.

I write them...

I Arpegiate some chords, and play in the scale of the other chords. I throw in some passing notes sometimes. But I don't really go with chord progressions since my music lacks them... :P

I don't really keep with the mode that goes with chords, I just play in key of it, I'll move from major to minor scales and melodic minor scales and other stuff.

I improvise most of my solos but once in a while a good solo unravels in my mind. It depends a lot on the progression and subject of the song.

I either borrow bits from other songs that I love, or the solo just comes out of nowhere. "The Box" trick is pretty useful, too.

I can't improvise at all thats why I need to start going to lessons and learning alot of theory cause rihgt now i can sit down and learn just about nay song I've tried but I wan't to be able to right things, but back to the point if I could I would improv t unless somethign really great came to me I'd probly end up writing alot of stuff once I was able to improvise for a fuck

The thing with writing solos is that if you don't FEEL it, then it really means nothing. You can piece together riffs and such to make a solo, man.

Also, if you something that comes to you in your head, just route out the first note, and then work your way from there. I come up with decent solos, and I know jack about theory. Everything just came to me.

yeah alot of my friends tell me to use the force

Haha, that's funny.

yeah they do it cause I'm a Star Wars nerd

Gotta love the box. Theory helps a bit, but beyond knowing scales and modes and such, you're on your own. May the force be with you. ;)

I look up scales here. First I go to the chords to scale, so I know what scale I can use, then I click a scale at random and see how it sounds.

If not, then if I am just jamming I usually am just playing around bending and stuff.

I really suck at writing solos. I'd like some tips on it if anyone can give me some help?

The best solos I write are the ones that I speed pick and tap. Not the bluesy or normal technique ones.

Chords to scale doesn't work for me since a lot of the music I play and write goes outside of those boundaries. I use the dorian mode a lot even though I'm never playing chords from it, because it can give your music a very cool latin sound, but it kind of depends what is going on underneath.

The best tip I can give you is focus on phrasing and motives. I'm a big believer that your solo should have an idea that needs to be developed and reinforced. This is what I'm practicing right now, and I don't think it's limited to just jazz and blues. But do whatever works for you, that's what soloing is about!

What's "the box"?

the box is the 2nd pentatonic shape =p

i think lol

ive never really written a solo, ive made some runs though.. i used diatonic shapes, basicly i did something that was too hard for me to play, then i practiced now its easy

I think there are five boxes (4 frets) in Pentatonics. One can connect the boxes with "outside" notes or Major intervals(whole step) depending on the sound one wants to accomplish. Guitarslinger talked about this once. As soon as I record a guitar track on Audacity I will post a "box" solo.

I like to improvise. It brings creativity to your solos. and if nothing comes to mind at a certain moment I do a trill until I think of something. and they usually come out quite nice. I like to stay in my pentatonic scales also.

often my improvising is just chromatics =p

i just take notes from a scale (usually similar to the key of the song) and just add some repeats, turnarounds, and the odd hammer-on.