Introduction
Welcome!
In creating this course, I have expanded the best material from my YouTube channel into a full, sequenced slide guitar soloing framework. Every lesson has been refined, broken down, and supported with backing tracks, printables, and practice advice.
The material is presented in a variety of tunings – mainly Open E, with a bit of Open C and some standard tuning. The concepts themselves being applicable to any tuning (or instrument!) – it’s not intended for playing in a specific tuning. For many of the lessons I’ve included written in materials in Open E and standard tuning.
The principle of this course is to present underlying concepts and ideas that go much deeper than typical lick-based soloing lessons. I want to help you to understand on a deeper level and then be able to apply these concepts to create better solos.
A side-benefit of this course is that many of the concepts will benefit your writing too, if you compose your own music :-)
What is soloing?!
I like to see soloing as being like spontaneous composition.
You’re using all your musical skills and instincts to create new music in the spur of the moment.
Many people also think of soloing as “improvising”.
Obviously, this takes a lot of experience (and more than one lifetime!), but an understanding of the concepts we are going to explore will save you a lot of time, and save you from developing bad habits along the way!
Course outline
The course is divided into Chapters, and within these are the related Lessons.
Each Chapter starts with an Introduction, and this page also contains resources for all the videos within it - including PDFs, backing tracks (if appropriate) etc.
We will explore three principal elements of music and soloing - melody, rhythm and harmony. We will look at each of these in some detail from different perspectives. In amongst all of this, I will discuss many other nuances, and tips that I’ve learnt and discovered along the way.
We start with the Blues, looking at scales in depth, and then some specific concepts to make your blues playing better.
Then we look at some fundamental Rhythmic Concepts – the beautiful thing about these is that they will improve your playing across the board.
Next up is Harmony – how we can play through chord changes and get the most out of them.
There’s a chapter dedicated to major scale soloing – after pentatonics, the most important other scale to learn to improvise with. We dive into this deep, really learning to hear how to use the scale.
And our final chapter deals with ways you can develop a Motif – this is the secret to getting the most out of any licks that you learn or develop on the fly when soloing.
A special Bonus section dives into the murky waters of developing a unique musical voice, and deals with specific exercises to help you discover yours. There are also videos on the importance of Melody, and how to use phrasing to make any lick sound better.