TRICKS FOR GUITAR SOLOING
This is my fave track from my fave band and has my best solo to date. Check it out at 2 mins 40 secs (roughly halfway thru)
Why's it my best solo? I saw this young upstart guitarist in 1970 something play this live. It was awe inspiring. That was Larry Carlton of course and he went on to play with Steely Dan (and just about everyone else).
My solo is as close as it gets to Larry's vibe. By doing a Q&A with the backing riff frees you from following continuous chords with compatible scales. It's mostly a pentatonic blues scale, B♭ or a G melodic minor slipping into/out of the major scale.
Being free to just throw down motifs is why I can get such light and shade into it. You know, standing back then digging in. Always effective.
Next trick that a lot of players are blissfully unaware of is to play the silences between the notes. A deluge of fast notes over the whole of a solo gets, well, boring. If you time it right you can add some tension for the listener aching for you to play the next lick.
Less is more. This allows those little nuances; vibratos, slides, slurs, harmonics, slaps, snaps etc. I go through just about every one in my repertoire. I may not be the best technician by my style, like Larry's, is pretty expressive.
