The Guitar

I need help writing a guitar solo. Atleast some what?

My band and I came up with a great song and I have great riffs and fills for it. Now when it comes to the solo I have really good ideas and licks for it BUT it doesnt sound good or melodeic to the song. If anybody can give me tips on where to play my licks on the fretboard and etc, I’ll be so glad . Thanks. P.S.—–My guitar tuning is in standard tuning except for the 6th string which i have tuned to a low D so I can play powerchords easier. The main riff is just played on the 2 thickest strings, using only open strings, 5th fret and 7th fret powerchords

So if those are the rhythm chords, then you are playing open D5 and fretted G5 and A5 chords (5th and 7th frets, respectively).

These are the I – IV – V chords, so essentially you’re playing in the key of D major (2 sharps, if that means anything to you).

Unless you modulate to a different tonal center for the solo part, I would say the easiest place to start would be the D major pentatonic ( D E F# A B ). You can google for tab on what the different positions are. The full major scale can be used as well.

So much really depends on what the feeling is and what the chords are underneath, but the pentatonic scale can be used pretty safely, or at least as a starting place to go from. The first idea that I thought of would be to play the blues scale, which is a minor pentatonic scale with a flatted fifth added… in this case it would be the Bm blues scale, since Bm is the relative minor scale to D. Again, google is your friend.

There are a lot of cool things you can do as far as altering scales and using modes and exotic scales and whatnot… I’ve been expirimenting with playing non-diatonic minor scales (ie harmonic minor) over related major chord progressions.

But, all in good time, right? Good luck!

Saul

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