Tips for Soloing
Playing a great modal solo is much more than flying up and down the neck in a scalular fashion. Great modal solos use melodies, phrases, and thematic ideas to tell a story.
Solos can be likened to sentences that form a paragraph.We begin with an initial thought, and then we follow it with a related thought or by developing the first thought. Thinking about your solos similarly will make them cohesive, interesting, and harmonically rich.
Every solo in this book has this cohesiveness. You can tell the soloist was not just stringing together notes, but developing melodic ideas. And that is what makes them great.
Practice tip #1
Play two octaves of a C major scale.
Now play the scale using intervals of thirds (C and then E; D and then F; E and then G; etc.)
Repeat this playing intervals of 4ths (C-F, D-G, etc); 5ths (C-G, D-A, E-B, etc.), 6ths (C-A, D-B, E-C, etc), and 7ths (C-B, D-C, E-D, etc.).
Practicing and exploring these patterns can serve as the bridge between learning a mode and then being able to make music with it.
Listen to The Master Class audio track to hear Rob playing this.
- Play the intervals ascending and descending (up and down), and in several places on the neck. Practice this in different keys (D,A, E, etc.).
Practice tip #2
Play three notes starting from the first note of the mode (e.g., C, D, and E). Then play three notes from the second note of the mode (e.g., D,E, and F).
Play these notes in a descending order (e.g, E,D, and C).
Listen to The Master Class audio track to hear Rob playing this.
- Play four notes starting from the first note of the mode (e.g., C,D,E, and F). Then play four notes from the second note of the mode (e.g., D,E,F, and G).
Listen to The Master Class audio track to hear Rob playing this.
Continue with ascending groups of four using the remaining notes of the mode.
Play same patterns with groups of five and six notes.
