Exciting Solos
What makes a solo exciting? Speed, sure. But even brilliant soloists rarely play at top speed all the time. How else is a solo made exciting and pleasant to listen to?
A big part of the answer to that question lies in "building" your solo. To explain, we can look at dramatic structure! You never thought this kind of thing would be on a site about guitar soloing, did you?
Dramatic Structure
This is just a fancy term for diagramming the action in a story, movie, novel, song, or play. Here's the basic idea (first made up by a guy named Freytag):
That's a very basic diagram, but think about how all music, movies, and stories follow this pattern. It makes for an exciting story. Writing any other way would lead to a very boring dramatic work. For instance, what kind of action movie would have everything blow up in the beginning and then spend the rest of the time developing the characters?
Here's a diagram of a typical song showing the "action". This can be volume levels (many songs start soft or acoustic and then kick in with the distortion later on, for instance). Or, it can build in other ways that we'll talk about in a minute.
There are lots of variations in this form depending on what style or band you're listening to, but good songs typically have rising action, falling action, a climax - just like any other dramatic work.
So What?
Now that you can see how songs build, it's time to bring it back to what we care about most - soloing! As it turns out, the best solos build just like a song or movie. A solo is like its own little dramatic work. So think of the ways you can build a solo so it looks just like the song form above.
How to Build Your Solo
- Speed - SAVE those fast, flashy riffs for near the end of your solo. Pretend like you're not capable of playing fast at the start, and then watch as the jaws drop in amazement later on as you "meedley meedley meedley" at the end.
- Dynamics - Build your solos from soft to loud, just like a song does. Solos take on a whole new level of coolness when you start whisper quiet and then play as loudly as you can at the end.
- Pitch - Start in a low register, end by bending the 24th fret of your guitar four frets up and snapping it (or something like that). This is an awesome way to build solos.
Here's an amazing example of building a solo:
Limelight - Rush
What a beautiful solo. Notice how it's not really even that fast, but it *sounds* fast near the end? It's because he started so slow and then sped up later on! He also started in a low register and ended really high while fading out. When that last note hits, I feel like screaming "YEAH!"
Here's a famous solo from the 80's by guitarist Steve Lukather. Again notice the way he builds with pitch, speed, and dynamics.
Let's Get Physical - Olivia Newton John
There are so many solos that do this. Once you start hearing it, it becomes obvious. Try listening to solos and diagramming their dynamic structures in your head based on speed, dynamics, and pitch. Then build your own solos based on the same things!