I suck at guitar solo's

BakesaleE

Wether I'm learning "No One Knows" by Queens of the Stone Age or The Sweater Song (not a weezer fan anymore; they make me sick), I can play everything but the solo almost perfect. What the #### is wrong with me? What can I do to make it make sense?

When learning the rest of the song, it follows patterns and stuff. When it get's down to the solo, if I'm determined enough it usually comes down to memorization because it doesn't make any sense in tab form.

Can someone help me? Give me some excercises or a link that explains keys or something?

I left guitar lessons after give or take 1 year in 1996. From there I was able to play pretty much anything except guitar solos. I can play along with a bootleg Nirvana CD for the entire show and sound 100% exactly like it. Yes I can play Nirvana solos. However, I don't understand guitar soloing. Help a nig!

mumblyjoe

Start off with simples lead riffs based off arpeggios. This will get your right hand coordination up and going. Then basically expand from that. Most solos are really just based off a chord or a pentatonic scale of that chord, so just you just play random notes off that chord or scale.

BobArsecake

You need to just learn your scales, there are some patterns on;

http://www.kingofchords.com under "contact" I think, for some reason, unless he's updated it.

Just keep practising the scales with the correct finger patterns and your co-ordination and techinque will improve, but it'll take time, just need to keep practising. No-One Knows is in Cm, and he just uses the Cm penatatonic for the solo if I remember correctly, might use some notes from the harmonic minor too, if that helps. Soloing is about randomising scale patterns though, so if you know your scales and keys, it's just about that.

StevieK

Even without scales you can just use your ears. It's similar to picking out chord progressions (which you seem to be good at already), just hear the individual notes and how far apart they are from each other. Knowing intervals would help, but if you just listen and fiddle 'til you find the right note it's almost just as easy.