How Do You Guys Keep All Your Solos From Sounding The Same?

BadCat · #1 05-26-2010, 02:06 PM

it's killing me, pentatonic nightmares.

a little bit of volume pedal goes a long way towards stirring things up, I find.

russ6100 · #2 05-26-2010, 02:13 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by BadCat

it's killing me, pentatonic nightmares.

a little bit of volume pedal goes a long way towards stirring things up, I find.

I do a quick wardrobe change and maybe adjust my guitar to hang a little lower...

bkd_guitarist · #3 05-26-2010, 02:16 PM

They're not supposed to sound the same? Awwww, damn....

markbosko · #4 05-26-2010, 02:22 PM

Listen to other guitar players and expand your knowledge of what you can play over chords besides pentatonic scales.

Better yet, listen to great solos by muscians other than guitar players - sax, trumpet, piano, whatever.

Rock - http://digitaldreamdoor.nutsie.com/p...newguitar.html

Jazz - http://digitaldreamdoor.nutsie.com/p...azzguitar.html

Country - http://digitaldreamdoor.nutsie.com/p...tryguitar.html

Echoes · #5 05-26-2010, 02:22 PM

when things go stale I kick in the wah wah pedal

Redhouse-Blues · #6 05-26-2010, 03:28 PM

I have been there and I'm working my way out of that jail. I'm doing it by taking lessons, learning more scales and cool ways to break them apart. Arpeggios and vocal and melody lines. Really comes down to learning to have more things to play, expanding the "bag of tricks" as some say. Dynamics is huge, as well as saying less is more and letting the solo build and not blowing your load to fast.

just_one_more · #7 05-26-2010, 04:35 PM

I think at some point (and probably multiple times) everybody fights this battle. All I can tell you is what has worked for me.
I started taking lessons from a player that was not a rock player to get a different perspective.
I set up constraints ahead of time when practising solos to force myself out of my normal boxes like not playing on consecutive strings on bars 2 and 4, stay below the 5th fret for the first half, play only certain intervals, usually not including the root, learn the vocal lines on guitars for the song, and then build off them, force a rest, no bending, play with fingers, do double stops and so on. Hope this helps.

rob2001 · #8 05-26-2010, 04:45 PM

A quick answer is that there are loads of techniques, things other than note choice to explore.

frankencat · #9 05-26-2010, 04:46 PM

Play different notes.

WarrenZ · #10 05-26-2010, 04:48 PM

A common trick is to throw some Major Pentatonic into your Minor Pentatonic runs. This puts different notes under your fingers and forces you to listen to what your playing or it will sound pretty awful. The same fingerings just won't work so you'll have to get out of your rut.

ABKB · #11 05-26-2010, 05:03 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by frankencat

Play different notes.

A very simple, but true answer. When in a rut I get into a thing where I will switch modes, this forces me to change things up. Shoot, there's 1000 different things you can do really.