Play Your Own Advanced Guitar Licks With These Guitar Phrasing Tips

As a guitarist learning to improvise your own blues guitar solos, you’ll usually start out learning scales or guitar licks. It’s normal to start with playing just scale fragments, but most guitarists have a hard time breaking out of sounding like they are playing a scale exercise or are rambling off a bunch of guitar licks. The first step to take in developing more advanced guitar licks is to learn about the topic of ‘guitar phrasing’.

Tell A Story With Your Guitar

Phrasing refers to the manner in which we play something. Some guitarists play endless solos without transferring something significantly, others play solos which are very evocative and in which every phrase they play is a part of the ‘big picture’. To tell a story with your guitar is something you need to learn. The following exercises will help you on the way to write/improvise better solos.

A good guitar solo is usually full of catchy melodies. However, if you start playing guitar yourself, there is a big chance that you will pay little to no attention to the way in which you play these phrases. Regard every lick you play as a separate phrase, which is part of the whole story you want to tell with your solo. It is important to make up your mind about the story you want to tell, and the feelings you want to transfer by playing your solo.

Sing Along To Your Guitar Licks

In blues the phrases in solos will mostly be very short. Think about the way a saxophonist plays his solos. That is why we will act as if we are playing a wind instrument instead of a guitar. Sing or hum the melodies which you are creating while you are improvising. If you notice that you have trouble breathing, then that’s a sign to shorten your phrases.

Differentiating Rhythmic Patterns

One of the most important things to create interest in your solos is the playing with differentiating rhythmic patterns. The most important division of all which we can make is the one between rhythms which can be divided by two and rhythms which can be divided by three. In this exercise we will learn to alternate the two. Improvise a solo where you alternate the rhythm which you use in your licks with quavers (2 notes per beat) and triplets (3 notes per beat).

Build Tension in Your Guitar Solos

It takes quite some skill to be able to build up tension in solos, to grasp the attention and interest of your listeners. There are many aspects which we can use to build up tension in solos, among which are the exact pitch of the notes which we play. The climax of a solo will almost always be at the point where you reach the highest note.

Even before you start playing the solo, you will try to distinguish at which point in the solo you want to hit the climax. Will the climax be halfway through the solo? At 60% of the solo or more towards the end at 90%? Once you have decided you will try to hit it by playing the highest note at that point.

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