How to Play Guitar Solos

Every guitar player at some point wants to copy and learn to play their favorite guitar solos. There are many routes to learn a guitar solo, but if you truly want to be a guitar player and learn how to play guitar properly I feel the best way to go about this is to try and learn the guitar solo by ear. If you fail miserably you might want to look at some tabs of the solo or even by the actual sheet music but learning to play guitar solos by ear is the best way to bring your playing to a new level.

How To Play Guitar Solos Step 1 --

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Find the key that the song is in. This is the most important part. Once you know what key the song is in we then know that the guitar solo will use a limited amount of notes, usually no more than 7 across various octaves. Generally speaking the entire guitar solo will be either in a seven note minor scale or a seven note major scale.

How To Play Guitar Solos Step 2 --

Mentally break the entire guitar solo into small manageable pieces. The worst way to learn a guitar solo is to try and start from the beginning of the guitar solo and just learn it from one end to the other. It is much easy to break the entire solo into smaller phrases, as many as you need to, and then learn each part of the solo individually, before putting them all together.

How To Play Guitar Solos Step 3 --

Start with the easy sounding sections first. I'm sure this really needs no explanation, but if you can learn a small easy part of the solo first you can more easily determine the scale the solo is in thus making the entire solo easier to figure out. Try to learn a small part of the guitar solo where the guitarist is not doing a lot of fancy bends or hammer-ons.

How To Play Guitar Solos Step 4 --

Start with pentatonic scales. Most guitar solos are based around a five note scale; either a major pentatonic or a minor pentatonic. A major pentatonic, (generally used in country music) starts on the root note and includes the 2nd,3rd, 5th,and 6th notes in the scale. In the key of C that would be C D E G A. The minor pentatonic scale starts on the root and includes a flatted 3rd, 4th,5th and flatted 7th notes. In the key of C that would be C Eb F G Bb. This scale is used more in rock guitar solos. By initially limiting yourself to finding which one of these pentatonic scales is in use you can get the overall scale much easier. Once you've determined the 5 main notes being used you've usually only got 2 more to figure out.

How To Play Guitar Solos Step 5 --

This probably the most important step of all. Listen, listen, listen. When you think that you've learned part of the solo. Stop playing and just listen to the recording again. Then play back what you think is right. Then listen to the recording again. Nothing frustrates people more than listening to a guitar player play a well known solo almost right. I've watched many guitar players try to learn a solo by playing along with it and they're not really hearing what is on the recording. This one mistake will almost ensure that you will not learn the guitar solo correctly. Stop playing and just listen. Then try it again.

How to Play Guitar Solos

Well I hope these five tips will help you in your quest to learn how to play guitar solos. Keep on practicing.

Scott Olewiler is veteran guitarist and bassist who has played all styles of music in all types of bands all across the Eastern United States. Be sure and visit his web site for some great free guitar lessons and you too can learn How To Play Guitar.