Soloing

Hey does any one have any soloing tips...I can play fast clean and express emotion through music...any specifics I should work on, thing i should make sure i do, common mistakes i should avoid???

Well, emotion is important, when you solo one thing that is also important is phrasing try to play like a singer would sing with pauses in between like a singer or horn player would to take a breath, also pause for effect. Remember it is not only what you play but what you don't play that is important. Also sometimes hanging one one note for a time works if you do it right, one note held for 2 bars in the right way can say more then 100 notes in the same amount of time. Mix your phrsaes up with some chords to get the right effect sometimes and also use double stops and triads when it feels right.

One thing a lot of younger players seem to get wrong is speed, they seem to thing that playing fast is playing good, WRONG!!!! Even though playing at one million notes a second can be impressive, (usually only to other guitar players), it says very little, and brings forth almost NO emotion. Remember that music is a powerful form of comunication. I have found when playing for other people that they want hear something nice. At a BBQ my sister asked me to play my guitar so I started to play all these real fast tricky runs and solo kind of things, (this is a while back when I was younger and I thought that by playing as many notes as possible as quick as possible I would impress every one there, WRONG). Well after a few minutes and a million fast notes I stopped and she said "well OK now play a song". No one there was impressed with how fast I could play they just wanted to hear some music, something nice something they could sing to. Speed is cool but i have found that it is cool when limited.

I hope this helps

Yea it just kind of affirms what I've been doing thanks...i was kind of looking for more technical help...i just can't get that liquid sound you know.. yes i can tap solo but i don't like to it's kind of worn out....

Well I'm not sure what you are looking for but sooner or later you will find your sound and style. I've been playing over 40 years and I am still working on mine. I play with a praise and worship team, we play every week and every one seems to like my style but as I see it there is always room to improve.

I'm not sure what you mean by liquid sound. if you mean tone, you have to just find what you like cause tone is subjective, what works for you might sound terrible to me and visa versa. I tend to favor a clean tone with some chorus or wah wah sometimes. If your looking for smooth flowing notes, that comes with practice, there is no short cut. If you looking for a smooth flowing solo that compliments the song, that dependes on the tyle of music, but one thing that will almost always work is to play around the melody, on some songs that is just what I do. I play just the melody with only a few embelishments and people just eat it up and I get many compliments.

I don't like or play any kind of metal or hard rock so I can't help you there, if thats what your looking for. Iron Butterfly and Cream is about as hard as I get, and I do play alot of Blues and British Invasion type of stuff, well alot of "60s anyway. Johnny Rivers any one? :-) I also play some old standards form the 1920's to the 1940's. So as you see I can't help with alot of the newer music, I can't even tell you what "Indie" is all about, and I probably spelled it wrong anyway.

Sorry if I didn't help much.

If by liquid you mean everything flowing together maybe a little more reverb wuld help.

Try to master a scale like pentatonics and practice chromatics. Again, pentatonics is one of those scales that could sound really fast with only a little bit of notes(5 or so). How fast can you play? Some people can pick really fast but their fretting fingers are too slow. Fast to me would be like SRV on Scuttle Buttin or Marty Friedman on Tornado of Souls. Also anything with Jeff Loomis.

I can pretty dang fast...I just can't loose the edge off speed...like "the light that blinds" by Shadows Fall the second part of the intro, the sweeping part, sounds so flowing and fluid it all just melt together...is that how sweeping sounds when you do it right?

EDIT:
I have mastered (more less) the following scales/modes

Phrygian, Locrian

Diatonic Lead patterns (1/2 Whole, Whole Half, Whole Whole)

Pentatonic Minor

Technique as in, I played a A# eighth note, a B# Quarter note, and a grace C# eighth note... How do I continue?
It seems most of "What's coming next" requires you to "listen" to where the music is going, once you have certain techniques down in your unconscious (after practicing them enough, of course) it usually begins to flow smoother and smoother, but it can be this somewhat "other" element that you look for when playing. Also, play what you want, if you're playing something that you dislike quite a lot and you can't connect to it, neither will the audience, most of the time. So play something else!

Hope this has helped a little.

Try the box technique (look it up), can't go wrong with it.

Also, remember to follow the chords.