Soloing

Soloing is one of the hardest things to do in music – and it is one the best ways to separate the good from the great. To solo in a song you need to know a few things: what key the song is in, a scale that works with that key, how to emphasize the right notes, and a decent sense of “what comes next”.

You should know what key a song is in before you start playing, so if you are not sure, ask. Most of the time if you are playing a song in the key of C, you use a C scale to play a solo. If you are playing a chord that has notes outside of the C Major scale like A7 (A7 has a C# in it) you need to play an A scale instead of a C scale, then you change back when you stop playing A7.

This is an advanced lesson so you should know your C Major scale. If you don’t, go learn it right now.

There are many different scales that you can use for soloing. Major scales sound good over Major chords (go figure). The Major Pentatonic sounds best over Major and Major 6 chords. The Minor Pentatonic sounds good over Major, Minor, Minor 7, Minor 9, Minor 11, Minor 6, Minor 6/9, Minor 13, and Dominant Seventh chords. The Minor Pentatonic is great for soloing in the twelve bar blues. There are many others that you can learn. If you would like to learn them I would suggest getting a chord and scale table that shows how to write scales and what genre and chords they work well with (this is a fairly standard music store item). I have put the notes of some of the scales up on a scales page.

To make a scale work for soloing you need to emphasize some of the notes. The main note you should emphasize (start and stop on) is the root note, C if you are playing in the key of C, G if you are playing in the key of G, etc. In his lessons, Herb Ohta Jr. suggests starting and stopping riffs on the notes of the chord that is being played (if you are soloing over a C chord, start and stop on the notes: C-E-G). This is important to making your solos sound smooth, so practice starting on the chord notes, and stopping on the chord notes.

The sense of “what comes next” is something that you develop as you log more and more hours of practicing your solos. It’s not just playing a note and hoping that it sounds good, but hearing somewhere off in your head or heart what should be played next - “hey, this would be cool!” Listen to Carlos Santana; the guy is the most phenomenal soloist you will ever hear.

Practice is the only way to learn this, so jam with your buddies or along with a recorded song as often as you can. This will teach you what sounds good and what doesn’t.

This article is far from complete. Soloing is such an “experience” type of thing that it is almost impossible to teach. I’m sure as I improve and learn the whys and hows of soloing I can add to this, but for now here are some more pages that have to do with soloing:

• Techniques 
• Tone
• Finger Picking
• Intervals
• Playing Clean - If no one can hear the notes you play, they don’t really count
• Fingerings
• Muting

This is just one take on soloing, so use what you can and build on it.

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