I don't normally go in for quick fixes. But sometimes they work, and these are little things you regularly hear professional guitarists doing that make their solos sound more refined.
They won't make you sound like a pro on their own. You still need the foundations under your belt. But if you're a beginner or somewhere in the intermediate range, you can try most of these straight away. You might already do some of them, or none of them.
1. Slide into scale notes from outside the scale ▶ 0:48
Take whatever scale you're playing and use the notes outside it to slide into notes that are in it. The easiest way is to slide in from one fret below.
Take a minor pentatonic shape at the 5th fret and descend through it. Instead of just playing each note, slide into some of them from the fret below: 4th to 5th fret on the 5th-fret notes, and the same for the 7th and 8th-fret notes on the other side of the shape. It's immediately a little more interesting.
It works on a really small box too, like the 5th and 7th frets on the D and G strings. A couple of tiny slides there and it already sounds more polished. You don't need to know exactly what's going on to start with. Just experiment and try it over a backing track.
To go one step further, bend out of the outside note instead. In the same little box on the D and G strings, play the 5th and 7th frets, then use the 6th fret, the note in between, and bend it up to the 7th.
You barely hear the 6th fret. It's just hinted at as the bend goes up. Marty Friedman loves this, and it's a really cool sound.
2. Add noises and textures between licks ▶ 2:19
There are loads of sounds you can make between phrases that show a level of expression on the instrument. There's an element of confidence needed, and you might have to fake it till you make it a bit.
- A slide down the neck between two phrases. The classic one.
- Hitting an open string, which sounds great in E minor.
- Little pick scratches.
- Hitting a high note and sliding out of it, a bit B.B. King.
- Sliding off the end of a phrase, down or up.
None of these are notes as such, but they add something enjoyable to the sound.
3. Stack techniques on top of each other ▶ 3:19
By compound techniques, I mean piling one technique on top of another. Instead of picking the 5th, 7th, 9th and 10th frets on the G string, pick the first one, hammer on, slide, then bend.
e|------------------| B|------------------| G|--5h7/9b10--------| D|------------------| A|------------------| E|------------------|
Because you're not picking as much, you hear less of the pick attack and more of the pure note. You can get quite long phrases this way. You can even slide while you're mid-bend, for example bending 9 up to 10 and then sliding back and forth between them.
So try to pair techniques. Don't just do a hammer-on and then pick a note, or a slide and then pick a note. Get a long, flowing sequence going. It's easiest on one string.
4. Use larger interval jumps ▶ 4:14
Most people learn their scales in order, so their phrases just walk up and down the scale. That's fine, but it's not very exciting.
Take a part of the A minor scale and set yourself a simple rule: don't play any two notes that are next to each other in the scale. It makes some quite interesting sounds straight away.
Don't do it all the time, though. Too much and it sounds disconnected, and it's quite hard to do cleanly because you're jumping across strings a lot. There's a reason people play phrases that move by small steps: they're easy to follow. So start with a phrase full of bigger jumps, then follow it with something simpler. Start a bit more complicated, finish a bit simpler.
5. Write melodies that move across the strings ▶ 5:30
This is related, but I think it's a different idea. I want to hear a melody start in one place, change at some point, and finish somewhere else.
The jumps in tip four are quite separate from each other. This is more about one continuous melody with a fairly significant change in the middle, starting in one area of the neck and ending in another without the two parts being directly linked.
Bonus: be playful ▶ 6:15
The ultimate sign of confidence is being able to play around with ideas. A few to try:
- A faltering bend. Bend up, then let the pitch fall away while adding vibrato as it drops. It's a weird sound, but if you make it sound deliberate, it's cool and a bit funny.
- Trills on the end of a phrase. I'm not very good at them, to be honest, but they're fun if you practise them.
- Quoting a famous melody. Drop in a bit of something like "Bohemian Rhapsody". The listener gets that "oh, I know that" moment, and it shows you're enjoying yourself.
Listen to the pros and notice where they throw these little quirks in.
Being a pro and sounding like one ▶ 7:22
To the listener, being a professional guitarist and sounding like one are the same thing. If they're just listening, they don't know if you're a pro or not.
You do still want to understand what you're doing and build a proper understanding of the fretboard, theory and technique. But there's nothing wrong with picking up a few ideas that take you a step further. And you can dig deeper: when you slide in from one fret below, what note are you actually sliding from? There's quite often a theory answer behind that.
Pick one of these, put on a backing track and use it in every phrase until it feels natural. Then add the next one. The more you lean into them and play them with confidence, the more professional you'll sound.
