Going solo!
No, I’m not leaving Transentience :) This post was triggered by Lori’s “Crafting melodic guitar solos 101” post. In there, she describes how she works on her solo’s.
I’m definitely not blessed with even half the technique and skill Lori has, so my own solo writing is a lot more limited. I don’t actually like to play a lot of solo’s and I’m not into shredding for the shredding. Whenever I write a solo, I feel the need to write a “song within a song”, something that is able to tell something that is related to the song. That is why my solo’s more often resemble a line a violin might play in an orchestra rather than trying to cram as much notes into the solo as possible.
I will not necessarily stay withing the confines that are laid down by the vocal melodies. Often, I will lay down a completely new melody and work around that. For people who’ve heard the solo’s on “For Hope is Still There” and “Little Girl” (to be featured on our upcoming EP), that’s the kind of lines I love to write.
Often, when planning a solo, I’ll listen to the song and play the solo in my head. Even more often, the solo will pop into my head spontaneously. From there on, it’s actually recreating the song in my head on guitar. Since I have limited musical hearing, that sometimes poses a problem since I’ll have to search around on the neck to find the right note. I sometimes also have notes in my head that I can’t play, simply because they’re too far apart or I’ll be having a particular arpeggio in my head and I’m really no good with arpeggio’s.
Which is why I also sometimes wish I had a prodigy solo player that would play whatever it was I told him to play. But we all know prodigies don’t work that way :)
