Sometimes learning solos of your favourite songs may be troublesome. Your technique may be lacking in skills, the solo may be too fast for your fingers to follow, you may find particular parts of the solo are hard to play. Often it helps just to play over the solo with whatever you can play, as long as it makes some sense with the chords. Playing over the exhisting solo will help you with the feel of the solo and song, even when the notes you are playing are not correct. It may also be motivating to play along with something you want to play.

When you work on your own guitarplaying, discipline may be an issue, you may also be impatient and struggle to see where you are going with the solo. Any good teacher can guide you with the process of learning (and playing) the solo.
It helps to keep an open mind to your own learning and guitar playing. If you really want something you will be able to play whatever it is you want to play, but it may take you time and you may also need to learn some other aspects of guitarplaying you may have overlooked before.

Keep at it and have fun.
Eddie

Know the feeling when it comes to playing solos? Switch from sound being used for chords to sound which does have a bit more volume for your single string notes. Easy, change channel on amp! Okay, but usually this channel does have a different overal tonality, it is not just louder but also different in sound (and feel). All depends on your amp eh?
Let us say you use a one channel amp with a gain control to overdrive the amp. You can set your amp up for an overal, solid rhythm sound with just a slight bit of distortion on the edges of your note. When you kick in the EQ pedal it will give you a slight boost to create even more hair on the notes. Hopefully this slight boost will be enough to make your single notes come through in the mix of guitar, bass and drums.

What about using a dist. pedal to boost the sound? Yes, that is good as well, but usually the tonality of your sound will change. The EQ pedal trick will keep more of your original tone intact. You can set up the EQ pedal to boost the bass-or treble registre, all depending on your own taste. Usually a bit of treble will do to get a slight boost on your overal sound.

Before you think of EQ pedals or Dist. pedal or whatever, it may be also possible to change pick-up setting on your guitar to get a slight boost. Often this may be the best option, since it does not require any extras in between your guitar and amp. On most guitars, the bridge pick-up will get you a trebly sound which may be enough to get a bit of boost onto your sound. Try experimenting with your pick-up setting before you decide on using any extras. Have a look at how you set-up your amp, get the amp to work clean on neck pick-up while the bridge pick-up should give you a slight boost. In case your bridge pick-up is noticeably quieter, raise the bridge pick-up to increase its output level. Overal, your pick-ups should be balanced: You should hear a difference in sound when you switch from one setting to the next one, but one should not be quieter than the other one. You can quickly check the balance of your pick-up by playing any open chord (A will do for now) let chord ring while you change setting of your pick-up selector and listen to what it does to your sound.  

The boost approach I described above may be more for guitarplayers who want a subtle boost in their sound rather than a radical change in tone for their solos. Whatever you go for all depends on the music you play, your taste and experience.

Hope to catch you soon again,
Eddie

Before the Police made some headlines with “Roxanne” they had some songs which they had publiced themselves. If you are familiar with some of the studiorecordings they made you may not be completely surprised by the sound of some of these songs, some of them are quite good but they never really made it on any of the regular studio albums.

Here is the first one: “Fallout”. It is a song which could have easily made it on the first album, including the short guitarsolo Andy plays.

The next one: “Nothing Achieving”. Listen to the sound of the song, very much the sound of early British Punk with the focus on midrange and glassy tones (achieved by Electro Harmonix  Memory Music Man Delay??)

Next one: “Dead End Jobs”, similar kind of approach as “Sally/Would You Be My Girl” including the talking bit from Andy, just a bit more fun and over the top. Solos like this would apprear later on on  the album “Zenyatta” with the use of guitarsynth.

Here is “Landlord”. Vocals sound a bit like “Next to You”, even the guitarparts and solo are not completely unfamiliar.

Okay, I will add some more later on.
Have fun and hope to catch you soon again,
Eddie

Creating solos out of nowhere can be for the beginner a challenge. Often people wonder what kind of notes fit over a given chordsequence.
Scales may work well to get the material for your given notes, an easier way may be to work with chordtones since you already play the chords. Rootnotes of the given chordsequence will give you a sense of the order of the harmony. You may dress up the rootnotes with other notes which are close to the rootnote. Get used to playing musical phrases for your solos which contain the rootnotes, this approach will make you aware which chord is being played at which time in the sequence.

Being aware of where you are in the sequence is a must at all times, often people overlook this skill. Not knowing where you are in the sequence (read song) is like playing solos on the guitar without hearing the chords you play over. Is this possible? Yes, but you are likely to stumble over yourself, similar as walking on a staircase in the dark in an unknown building, you may make it to the top but you may also tumble down with all the given consequences.

Next to playing rootnotes you may like to have some targetnotes: Notes which may be outside the chordtones but they may lead you to a certain melody which works. Experiment with some chordtones and notes outside the chords to see which tones you like to use as targetnotes. You may even use tones which lead into certain chords, again, these notes may be “outside” the key of the song, but they may work and stand out as such.

Learning to play solos is a skill which needs to be developed. In the beginning you may find you just play notes, and yes, the notes you play may make sense but you will still need to learn how to make  musical phrases which sound good over the given chordsequence. It is perfectly normal that it does take some time, just stick with it and enjoy what kind of sounds you are making and keep playing and experimenting.

Enjoy,
Eddie

Getting wah sounds from a Wah pedal is great, but what about getting them from your guitar without having to use any extras? You can use your tonecontrol to illustrate your chords with some wah sounds. To get this idea to work best, close your tonecontrol —-make sure you select the right pick-up and right tone-control knob— and open it while the chord is ringing. This approach will also work with bends, open the tonecontrol while the bend is still ringing out, the bend will start to sound brighter as the tone control opens up.
The downfall with any of this is that you need a finger to control the tonecontrol whereas a dedicated Wah-pedal will keep your hands free for playing. The sound from a dedicated Wah  pedal is, of course, also a bit different.

The next Wah sound you can achieve from your Strat using the tonecontrols is as follows: Have the middle pick-up tone control wide open while keeping the neck-pickup tone control closed, now use your pick-up selector switch to flick from one setting to the other. The result will be a dark sound from the pick-up which tone control is closed to a brighter sound from the pick-up which tone control is wide open. This approach works well for sinlge string phrases and short chord bursts. Again as mentioned before, the downfall is that you need a finger to switch the pick-up selector.
If you practise some of these ideas it does mean you always will have Wah sounds ready from your guitar, even without having a Wah pedal connected to your signal chain, cool!!

Have fun and hope to see you soon again,
Eddie

In the course of next week I will create a few articles around the Boss HR-2 Harmonizer, which is a pedal which lets you play chords as well while being in harmonized mode.
Futhermore there will be an article about the Fender London Reverb, which is probably one of the most versatile amps Fender has ever created in their history.

Catch you later,
Eddie

Anyone who has ever used a Shubb capo will have had a good experience with them: They are very convenient are easy to use, they are fairly small, they do not detune your strings and fit most areas on the fretboard.
Among the wide range of capos Shubb offers there will be one which fits your neck profile.
Personally I find the C2, which is designed for nylon string guitars, will fit most acoustic and electrics, although Capo is not designed for these kind of fretboardprofiles.

It is possible to use several Shubb Capos at the same time to create unique tunings or effects from your strings. I will create a blog around this topic including some playing examples to get you going with this idea.

Hope to catch you soon again,
Eddie

Learning guitarsolos by ear can be a lot of fun, can also be hard as you may not be able to play all the notes of the given solo. Some of the notes may be played too quickly for you to hear them properly, some parts of the solo may be beyond your technical abilities at the moment.
In cases like the above you can take the part of the solo you can hear, often these will be the melodic parts, the parts of the solo which may sound the best. You can take those parts and play them on their own. If the solo is fairly long and contains other melodic parts you like, it may be possible to mix those, various melodic parts, into one solo of your own. Keep playing the solo to get the feel. Playing along with orginal song where the solo comes from will help as well, to get the feel of the solo going. Over time you may be able to hear (and play) the rest of the solo, just keep at it.

Working out songs by ear will not only give you new songs and solos it is also practical eartraining, something which is essential for any serious musician and guitar player.

Have Fun,
Eddie

Playing and singing covers can be a lot of fun, but at the same time it can be a bit tricky as well.
When you start out playing covers you may use tabs and chords you have found somewhere on the net. Hopefully you can find the chords which are in the same key as the orginal key.

Once you do have the chords for the correct key you may want to start singing along with these chords. Hang on, can you actually sing in that key or…………..
A lot of beginners may try to get along in the key of the orginal song, even though the orginal key may be too low or far too high. The trick is to understand that you can actually sing (and play) that song in any key. It is far better to find the key which works for your voice, as your voice will sound more natural. You will end up with a song which you will sing better and the overal song will sound more convincing as well.
Over time you may want to change the key and at some point you may be able to sing the song in the orginal key.

Like with guitarplaying, mimicking someone else’s singingvoice requires skill. Look at the phrasing of the melody and the accents and try to get a feel for them as you sing the song on your own. You could first copy the orginal by singing along with a recording. Once you feel you know how to sing the song try to move away from the original and play the song on your own while you sing along with your own playing. Once you start playing the song on your own (without support of the original backing) it will probably feel a bit strange. Perfectly normal, as you need to get used to your feel of playing and singing the song on your own, make sure you get the vocal phrasing right and keep going. Over time it will start to sound (and feel) much better.

Enjoy,
Eddie