Prevent Meaningless Solos With This Highly Effective Blues Guitar Phrasing Exercise
How To Improve Lead Guitar Playing In No-Time
By Antony Reynaert
Being able to tell a story with your guitar is one of the most important things to master in blues music as it is the core of what blues music is all about. However, not many guitarists succeed in this and will never sound interesting to an audience because of this lack of skill. The good news is, this skill can easily be trained with the right guidance and the right exercises such as explained in this article and video.
As guitarists we invest tons of time into practicing scales, modes, chords, arpeggios, etc. but forget that it’s all about making real music. You can play whatever you want on guitar, but if you don’t know how to make it appealing to listen to you will stay stuck in your musical development. After watching this guitar video lesson and reading the article below you will have the tools to massively improve your blues guitar phrasing overnight so next time you can blow everyone away with your emotional blues solos.
How To Avoid Nerve Wrecking Blues Solos Every Listener Wants To Run Away From
The first thing you have to know about blues music is that it’s all about building up tension and releasing this tension again. Most beginner and intermediate soloists create these nerve wrecking runs of meaningless notes without forming a conclusion. The most important tip to make your guitar phrasing sound interesting is by putting in rests so you can release the tensions you’ve build up.
Creating rests in your blues guitar solos can simply be accomplished by doing ‘nothing’. Can’t be easier than doing nothing right? The rules are simple, play blues licks you’re used to but stop at random places in the lick. You basically pause the lick. After you put in the rest, simply continue the lick you’ve paused. Making yourself stop in the middle of whatever you’re playing is key in creating this bluesy feel which every blues guitar student is searching for. It creates so much more elegance and bluesy feelings by adding these gaps within licks.
Let’s give an example of how you can apply this simple but highly effective method:
Make sure to check out the video above for more examples of this method on how to shut down your own licks to release tension and create rests.
This Is The Main Element That Is Lacking In Mediocre Guitar Solos
One of the biggest guitar myths on the planet is that technical skills are the reason why the best blues guitarists stand out from the rest. This is a huge misconception and the reason why so much guitarists stick with the same mediocre sounding guitar solos over and over. How to improve your lead guitar playing is just a matter of practicing ‘how to play’ rather than ‘what to play’. It’s this recognizable and personal sound from the master blues guitarists that makes them stand out, not only their technical skills.
The most important factor here to develop that personal style, is to improve your phrasing. Creating interesting, captivating guitar solos is all about creating contrast and there are many ways in which you can create that contrast.
The Final Step In Bringing Everything To Life So You Can Make A Strong Impression With Your Lead Guitar Parts
Every time we speak in real life, it’s always connected to certain emotions: happiness, anger, fear, disappointment, relieve, etc. In order to get real emotional impact with a guitar on an audience, you need to be able to translate feelings into notes. Otherwise nobody will feel a connection to what you’re playing and you will be depicted as a boring guitarist no matter what level of playing you’re at. You can play as fast as you want, but ‘no emotion’ means ‘no success’. That’s why I wrote a free step by step guide packed with exercises so you can gain the skill of putting tons of emotion into your blues guitar playing.
Discover my Essential Blues Soloing Lessons to finally take your blues soloing skills to the next level.