When constructing my guitar solos, I try to maintain a broad view of the melody as a whole and how it progresses and unfolds. I prefer a solo...
When constructing my guitar solos, I try to maintain a broad view of the melody as a whole and how it progresses and unfolds. I prefer a solo to have peaks and valleys, establishing “tension and release” and an overall statement that’s musically sound.
A “composition within a composition” is the approach I like to take. As an example of this, I’d like to present my solo in “Pernicious,” from The Order of Things. FIGURE 1 illustrates the rhythm part behind the solo: I palm mute single 16th notes, with two- and three-note power chords added in bars 5–8.
The overall harmonic environment alluded to is E natural minor (the Aeolian mode): E F# G A B C D. My goal in crafting a melodic solo was to highlight specific intervals within natural minor as my focal points. Let’s analyze this solo in two-bar sections.
FIGURE 2 illustrates bars 1 and 2, and I begin by referencing the primary lick in “Pernicious,” which puts emphasis on the notes F# and D, via an Em9 arpeggio fragment, F# D B. After playing these notes, I play a quick scalar passage that moves through all of the notes in E natural minor. In bar 2, I play a double hammer-on—F# to G to A—followed by a double pull-off, descending through the same pitches, then a fast ascent through the entire scale.
This sets up the phrase in bars 3–5, shown in FIGURE 3, which begins with notes from an Am7 arpeggio, G E C, played over the A5 power chord. Stylistically, the three-note arpeggio approach becomes an early theme in the solo’s progression. I like employing this approach as it supplies a sense of cohesion to my melody.
In the second bar of