It can be pretty overwhelming when the spotlight lands on you. Faced with the opportunity to play anything, how do you decide where to start? There are many options, but many great guitar solos work by starting small and building to a climax.
If you’re feeling unsure, aiming to build intensity throughout your solo gives you a good chance of creating something satisfying. You could start soft and finish loud, start low and finish high, or start slow and finish fast. Paul Kossoff’s All Right Now break is so popular because it does all three. It’s not an unbreakable rule, though – some solos start with an intense burst of shred to get your attention – but it’s a reliable strategy.
Example 1. Whammy bar dive
Poison’s CC DeVille once admitted he did this to buy time to decide what to play next! Along with its cousin the pick scrape, the divebomb guarantees a dramatic entrance. Starting low on the neck gives you space to build to a screaming finale.
Example 2. Doublestop lick
Doublestop licks are almost always exciting entrances, and this one is so versatile that you’ll find variations on it in everything from Metallica’s Enter Sandman to Purple Rain (in a major key) by Prince.
Example 3. Screaming bends
You’ll never go wrong bending up to the root note, as we’ve done here – although bending up to the 5th is another classic. The wide vibrato adds excitement, and keeping the notes slow and long leaves space to build speed later.
Example 4. Call and response
These are ‘question and answer’ phrases. The first moves upwards, copying the rising inflection people use when asking questions. The second lands down on the root note to sound resolved. The first few notes are the same, helping the phrases sound thematically linked.
Example 5. Quote a melody!
If there isn’t an obvious melody in the song you can use, steal one from somewhere else! Here we’ve used Greensleeves as an example of how you can transition from the melody into more conventional guitar licks.
