This whole section is being extensively expanded into a large report entitled '65 ways to spice up your guitar solos. To be completed spring 2005, with sound clips and diagrams to follow later in the year.

Over time, a variety of lessons and features will appear here providing an alternative look at electric guitaring. They will be variously aimed at laymen, beginners or any guitarists wishing to advance their playing.

For the moment, select a lesson from the list on the left.

Intro

There are plenty of electric guitarists out there who are technically excellent, and yet are surprisingly uninteresting and lifeless to listen to. It is vital to be able to express yourself on your instrument in a personal and unique way, as this not only will make others really notice and appreciate your playing, but it also adds a lot of pleasure and satisfaction to yourself while you play. One note played beautifully can say far more than a squillion notes churned out mechanically. In my view, a true master of our beloved instrument is one who not only makes fast technical passages sound effortless, but also plays simple phrases in such a way that you really struggle to reproduce it because of the perfectly controlled touch.

Scales, techniques and speed are totally essential to cool guitar, and there are a million books and articles to help us in these areas, but too often the subtleties and nuances that can be squeezed out of the guitar are neglected in teaching programmes, so here I want to outline a selection of these that can truly enhance your personal style if implemented tastefully. Some of these ideas may be very familiar, some you may have ignored so far, some may be fresh.

Palm muting

How:
- rest the palm of your right hand very lightly on the strings you are playing as close to the bridge as possible.

Effect:
- dampens the notes being played so they sound quieter and shorter, almost muffled.

Use:
- excellent technique for giving definition and aggressive restraint to fast, heavy, single-note riffs on the bottom 3 strings
- in lead guitar parts during a calm section of a song, or underneath vocals
- in the build-up of a solo, e.g. ascending a scale from low-down up to the climax of a solo, decreasing the amount of palm muting the higher you get

Practice:
- try playing your scales slowly, sometimes with all notes palm-muted, sometimes by just palm-muting every other note (this will develop quick execution of the technique mid-flow, as well as co-ordination)

Muted strings

How:
- lift your L/H finger(s) from the strings until they are lightly resting on the string, then strike with pick as normal

Effect:
- percussive sound, tone of which varies significantly according to where on the fretboard you are

Use:
- throwaway extra ‘notes’ within a solo to add interest and break the melody up
- play quick syncopated rhythms on a single string for a fresh funky sound

Practice:
- get used to playing nothing but muted notes all over the fretboard, then experiment with throwing bits in the middle of your normal playing.

Pick noises

How:
- bounce or scrape the edge of your pick on various strings at various places and at various speeds

Effect:
- blippy and percussive noises

Use:
- particularly useful at the start or end of a solo or of an entire piece to express anticipation/build-up or fading away/crashing to a halt

Practice:
- try to get as many strange and different sounds as possible with the pick

Dynamics (soft and loud)

How:
- strike the string with varying amounts of speed or vigour

Effect:
- automatically sounds expressive when applied, from gentle/thoughtful/dreamy to strained/ecstatic/angry

Use:
- use dynamic variation in your solos to reflect the feel and movement that the solo is expressing
- bite hard with the pick for extra aggression

Practice:
- play your scales or solos with exaggerated dynamics while practicing- this increases your ability to control the extremes, so you can use it more effortlessly and tastefully when playing properly
- put your emotions and energy into your right hand when practising, so that it starts to respond naturally

Pinched harmonics

How:
- as you play a note, catch the string sharply but lightly with the flesh on the end of your thumb

Effect:
- exciting squeals!

Use:
- throw them in at points during riffs or solos where you want to emphasise that beat, or the climactic point of the phrase
- try to use sparingly, they can sound silly or cliched if used all the time!

Practice:
- try playing just pinched harmonics on a single note (5th fret on the G string is a good starter) until it really starts to soar; try picking at different points between the fretboard and the bridge as you can get several different notes out, and some places respond much more easily than others

Staccato

How:
- almost as soon as you play a note, simultaneously raise the L/H finger so that is just resting on the string and place your R/H palm briefly on the strings near the bridge

Effect:
- note is cut off abruptly, making it brief and spiky

Use:
- doing this with various odd notes within a solo helps to add an unpredictable element, breaking it up in a jittery or pausing way
- a staccato section sounds quite stroboscopic, and strongly emphasises the fluidity of other passages

Practice:
- try practicing your scales pure staccato

L/H fret noise

How:
- wipe your L/H fingers up and/or down the fretboard

Effect:
- a thin, abrasive percussive sound

Use:
- most effective use is in the bar(s) immediately before a solo, as it alerts the listener to imminent action on the fretboard, in concept like a motorbike revving up before taking off

Practice:
- well, wipe your L/H fingers up and/or down the fretboard, all is pretty obvious and easy here!

Sliding into and out of notes

How:
- slide your L/H finger up or down to or from the note in question

Effect:
- prevents a stark beginning or end, makes the start or end of the note sound organic and more natural

Use:
- slide into the start note of a phrase or solo
- slide away from the end note of a phrase or solo

Practice:
- decide on a target note on the fretboard (e.g. 15th fret on B string) and keep sliding into it from the other end of the fretboard until you can hit it accurately every time
- play a note anywhere on the fretboard and keep sliding away from it until you are satisfied that it sounds smooth, especially with no glitches or surplus noise at the end of your finger’s travels

Vibrato

How:
- classical: oscillate your finger back and forth along the string direction; this is musically accurate vibrato as it alternately flattens and sharpens the note around it’s centre
- rock: pivot your finger at the point where it touches the edge of the fretboard so that the string moves alternately up and down (perpendicular to the string direction), either side of the string’s resting-point; this only ever sharpens the note, and so is harder to control musically so that the whole note doesn’t sound constantly sharp; however, with greater freedom of movement, this type of vibrato is far more flexible and expressive than the classical style
- circular: combines classical and rock vibratos for the best in musical precision, control and variation; very difficult to master (technique devised and utilised by Steve Vai)

Effect:
- the ultimate expressive tool, it gives notes real life and movement where they can sound dead and rigid if left alone

Use:
- can be used everywhere, but particularly useful (often vital, even if only used with extreme subtlety) on long sustained notes
- different sizes and speeds of vibrato work differently in different contexts

Practice:
- play a single note (5th fret on G string is a good one) for 10 minutes (nothing but that one note!) and simply practice vibratoing it; you will get bored, so experiment with different rates and depths of oscillation; above all, become precise with what you do- make sure you can keep the rate steady so it’s not all over the place, make sure that it sounds constantly in tune by always having the string exactly at its resting-point between every cycle

Conclusion

As with all guitar techniques, start slow and master everything precisely at a slow speed, else short-cuts and sloppiness will inevitably creep into your playing, and this will only have to be undone later. I know the urge to show-off and to shred manically is very great, and it’s good to be always pushing your limits, but don’t let that be at the expense of learning good habits and good technique. You will be far more impressive in the long run if you take care to nurture your technique properly now. The key word is CONTROL.

The techniques looked at here are all indispensable tools in the lead guitarist’s arsenal, but one word of caution: TASTE. Think about what you want to use and where. Don’t overdo your pet sound in every solo or it will lose its punch and freshness. Be imaginative with combining different ideas and sounds. This applies to all areas of technique: mix up fast and slow, loud and quiet, legato and alternate picking, different scales and so on. Of course, most guitarists have their trademark sounds and style, and that is right, but try to avoid sounding exactly the same in all you do.

I firmly believe that the most important single technique that I have described here is vibrato as it can be remarkably expressive, but it can easily sound very painful if it is done badly. It is so very often a badly-taught and scrappily-executed technique, and I think it is one of the key elements that distinguishes a mediocre player from a master. Rarely will two guitarists’ vibratos be exactly the same, so it is a key component of sounding individual in what you play.

Some of these comments may seem hard to implement right now while you’re learning, but the important thing is to have them in the back of your mind, and so as the years progress you will become your own player. Ultimately, the biggest lesson from all this is the importance of developing your own style, of expressing yourself uniquely on the guitar; this takes years to perfect (I’m certainly very far off from where I want to be), but in my opinion it’s vitally important to start the process as early as possible even if you don‘t see the fruits for several years.

Note: many of the techniques we have looked at are most noticeable and work best in the presence of high gain settings.

Other related techniques which have not been explained here: violining (volume-pot swells), palm harmonics, muted rakes, feedback control and the many, many whammy-bar options (scoops, dives, divebombs, gurgles, wide vibrato, blubbering, laughter, extreme mayhem).