Lastly we have the finished solo. You will notice that I have added connecting notes where the licks end. When adding connecting notes, try to keep to the chord that you are playing over. Or, add a motif inspired by another part of the solo or a lick in the solo. You can see this in measure 7. It follows the triplets played in measure 6 and compliments the A7 chord with the notes being from the A major triad. You will notice that I finished the solo before the last measure of the twelve bar blues. This allows the player to return to playing rhythm for the upcoming verse. Enjoy and let me know what you think. Remember, this blog series is not about giving you an amazing solo to learn. It is about giving you the ideas to create solos from licks that you may know. Next we will deal with transposing licks that you find so you can use them in your solo creations. To download a pdf of the file click here.
After you have learned the licks, you must place them into the progression. You will notice that I kept the basic order of the licks in my placement. I have placed Lick #4 before Lick #3. Also, you will notice that I have put Lick #2 that ends on F-sharp just before the chord D7 because I am planning to lead into that chord with a tone that is in the chord. Lick #3 is where the E7 chord will begin because it begins with an E tone. To download a pdf of the file click here.
After learning the licks you are going to integrate into your solo. It is time to decide on the chord changes for the solo. In our example we will be using a 12 bar blues in A major. This is an easy chord progression to get the hang of the ideas and concepts for developing a solo. The progression never changes and repeats infinitely. Therefore, you can record the progression to practice and refine your solo over top of it. That being said, you can use any progression you like. But, if you decide on another progression you will have to transpose the licks into another key. We will deal with this in later blog entries.
For now, you just need to memorize the blues chords in A major. You should also recognize the notes that make up each chord. These will be your target notes for your solo. They are listed below:
A7: A C# E G
D7: D F# A C
E7: E G# B D
As you play through the progression, it is a good idea to use a swing or shuffle rhythm here. This rhythm is synonymous with the blues and jazz. To download a pdf of the file click here.
Inca Dances by Gabriela Lena Frank has been nominated for a Latin Grammy. You can hear the premier recording on Sounds of the Americas featuring guitarist Manuel Barrueco and string quartet Cuarteto Latinoamericano.
Here is a quote from the composer about “Inca Dances:”
The two movements of this work each draw inspiration from the practice of remembering past kings (reyes) through song and dance during the time of the ancient Inca Empire. The first movement, Lamento del Panaca, is scored for solo guitar. Loosely drawing on Andean folkloric motifs, it is a melancholy yet emotional appeal from the deceased Inca king’s panaca, a sort of death cult brought into existence upon his demise. Headed by the deceased king’s second son, the panaca was a complicated clan group that acted as the king’s voice of continued political and cultural authority.
The second movement, Danza del Mallqui-Rey, draws inspiration from the purucaya, a spirited event where the splendor of the dead Inca king and the long tale of his deeds were brilliantly recounted. During this ceremony, the actual mummy of the king (mallqui) was brought out for proud viewing, and it was imagined that he participated in his own ritualized remembrance. As a result, this movement for the entire ensemble also loosely draws on Andean folkloric musical motifs and is a rhythmic, even aggressive, dance.”
~Gabriela Lena Frank
Inca Dances was commissioned by the Baltimore Classical Guitar Society, with grants from the National Endowment for the Arts and the Peabody Conservatory of Music.
Last time we presented a series of five licks for use in developing a guitar solo. The next step is to move each of the licks to multiple positions on the guitar neck. This will enable you to play each one in a different location to find the spot that sounds best in your solo. It will also help you to understand the layout of the guitar and the note relationships.
Below is Lick #1 in five different positions on the guitar. One of them, the last, moves the lick up an octave but keeps the interval relationships. To download a pdf of the file click here.
Today we begin with the licks that we will be using for the guitar solo. I created these licks with simplicity in mind. There on no slides or bends in these due to the wide variety of players that I teach. The goal of this series is to give an understanding of the basic skills to develop solos over a basic chord progression. Therefore, I have created licks that do not require a large amount of technical prowess.
All of the licks are in the key of A major. They also all use the A major pentatonic scale in different positions. Your goal in this lesson is to learn each lick in its respective position. Future lessons will deal with moving them around the guitar neck. Again, these are meant to be easy in order to facilitate an understanding of the principles that will follow. Learning the lick will be the easy part of any solo. Click here for a pdf file of the licks presented.
Hope everyone had a nice Labor Day and is ready to dig back into guitar playing. The next few posts will deal with learning how to develop your guitar soloing. There is a logical approach to this concept just like any other concept on the guitar. We will be walking through your first solo with some licks I’ve created to illustrate soloing over a 12 bar blues progression. We all want to know how to improvise, but improvising requires a lot of preparation. One of those elements is developing solos that are prepared. You can also look at it as if you were preparing to use a solo for a recording. No studio musician wants to walk into a session without some idea of where to take the guitar part if asked to do a solo. The more solos you prepare the more you begin to see how to execute them “on the fly” for good sounding improv. Here are the steps we will be working through:
Learn specific licks in a single key (changing key if neccessary).
Move the licks to multiple positions on the guitar (dropping the octave if neccessary).
For those of you that are faithful readers of Around the Neck, you’ll have to wait a couple of days for a new post. We are out of town and not doing labor on this Labor Day. Put your guitar down, go outside (if it’s nice) and spend some good quality time with some family and friends. Even after that affirmation, if you still want to be on the computer, then look up where we get Labor Day from in the first place. It’s an interesting little bit of history and you can thank your geographically close friends, the Canadians, for it.
One of the most effective ways of learning the neck of the guitar is by practicing arpeggios and licks associated with them. You will find a great book by Ted Greene titled Jazz Guitar Single Note Soloing which covers what the title emplies, single note soloing. However, I have found that the key to good single note soloing is the mastery of the fingerboard. This is the concept behind Ted Greene’s method. If you master the fingerboard, and know it backwards and forwards, then you will master the single note soloing as well.
How does he get you to master it? Through playing arpeggios and scales up and down the neck in different positions. Here is an excerpt of three of the runs he begins with in second position. He is using the C Form (C.A.G.E.D. system) or a 5/4 (5th string beginning on the 4th finger for you Berklee grads) scale to outline this arpeggio over a D major 7th chord.
As I was researching for The Rosette Room this week, I found this great vidoe of a performance of Roland Dyens’ Tango en Skai by Kaori Muraji. I hope you enjoy it. The wonderful artist is so free in her movement that there is no consideration during the performance of technique. It is so habituated in her that no hesitation exists in her execution.
