How To Create Solos With Four Notes

Learning about music theory, how scales relate to chords, and figuring out the key of songs can be very frustrating to beginner guitar players that just want to PLAY something. So today we are going to forget about all of that and learn how to create some solos just using a few notes on the fretboard.

 

Let’s think of this four notes:

 
E—---------------
B----------------
G--------8-10----
D--8-10----------
A----------------
E----------------

    
and let’s add the octaves of those notes as well:

 
E—-------------------11-13------
B--------------11-13------------
G--------8-10-------------------
D--8-10-------------------------
A-------------------------------
E-------------------------------

Now if this is extremely new to you, play those notes up and down, mix their order, add some guitar techniques (hammer-ons, pull-offs, bends, slides…) and then try to incorporate whatever you came up with on top of our jam track  - which is available at the end of the video.

 

To get you guys started here is two licks:

 
E—---------------------------------------
B----------------------------------------
G------8------8----------10b--10---------
D—/10-----10-----10---8------------------
A----------------------------------------
E----------------------------------------
 
E—-13b-11-------
B---------13----
G---------------
D—--------------
A---------------
E---------------
 

To add some variation to this! You can bring those ideas three frets back to use the same shapes with different notes:

 
E—------------------8-10--------
B-------------8-10--------------
G-------5-7---------------------
D--5-7--------------------------
A-------------------------------
E-------------------------------

In general when using the first position we will get a more bluesy, rock, sad-is sound and the second position (three frets back) will provide us with a more country, southern rock happy-is sound.

 

The examples above are in C Major! If you are playing on top of different chords just move the shapes!

Rod Ferreira has been a guitar teacher for over ten years. Rod specializes in acousitc, electric, blues, and rock guitar. Sign up for a one-on-one lesson today!
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