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By Mitch Polzak
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Just like a good recipe, great solos only require a few, well-chosen ingredients: melody, chord shapes, a scale, and rhythm. With audio examples
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| JOE HAYES, of indie rock band the Don’t’s (www.myspace.com/thedonts), started playing leads by learning to play chords up the neck. “Then, I would strip down the chord to one or two (notes), building simple licks,” he says. Photo by Anne Hamersky.
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Practice Plan
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The examples in this lesson are meant to be just that: examples. To really get the most out of this approach, try to come up your own variations on each line. They don’t have to sound great; you just want to get your brain thinking in terms of the four ingredients. Then apply these same ideas to other songs you know or want to learn.
PLAY IT: “Summertime Blues” (page 46) “Surfin’ USA” (page 52). All songs are transcribed in the Summer 2007 issue of Play Guitar!
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Tune Up
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Today marks the end of peanut butter and jelly playing and the beginning of well-seasoned soloing. Like dishes in good authentic down-home cooking, each solo you play should stand on its own and be as unique as the song you are playing, but it must also fit the mood and the story of a song.
But you have to assemble your ingredients before you start cooking, right? Good news, friends, we only have to remember four things before we start building a solo: melody, chord shapes, scales, and rhythm. Please reread that last bit and say it out loud. In fact, write it on a piece of paper and put it where you practice. With those simple ingredients, you’ll be able to create unique, tasteful solos without a recipe book.
Master the Melody
Say you have a great piece of freshly caught Alaskan salmon. If you overseason it when you cook it, you could ruin the flavor of the fish. The same holds true when soloing. The melody is the meat of the song; it gives the song its identity, and often, the best solo is just the melody, even if it is played simply. A bunch of hot licks thrown together just doesn’t have the same substance.
So let’s start with “When the Saints Go Marching In,” in the key of A major. Strum an A chord on your guitar and hum or sing the melody. Got it? Now play WHEN THE SAINTS MELODY, below. This is the simplest version of the melody, and like that fresh salmon, it’s pretty tasty as is.
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When the Saints Melody
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Printable Version
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