evolucian wrote:
Melodic usually means it contains some form of melody, whether it contains the song's intitial melody or is a progression thereof - still musical. The initial thing was a lyrical quality to it (seeing as thats what the voice offers - whether its singing La or Ooh or Aah.. its still there. So this incorporates heavy opera's trilly vibrato, vocally smooth legato lines... and a decent vibrato aswell. .
A scalar solo is not melodic at all. It is just a scale going up and down and just sounds like crap. Same with arpeggios consistently, crap (in the sense of it not being vocal nor terribly nice to listen to).
+1 to what evo said ...... btw i too loved the brian may solo's back in the day
melodic solo's were huge in 80's when solo's were so memorable that you could virtually sing/whistle it thru ........ all the stadium rock bands had these memorable /melodic solo's happening on many of their hits ....... it was definitely a hip thing to do back then
however solo's do come in 2 packages , one being the worked out melodic solo , which is usually repeated vebatim or as close as it can be repeated at each show.......... and then the other side of the coin is the improvised solo in jazz and blues and many other forms too , where each performance had the solo in the same song by the same player sounding different .........by design/intention
so if you want to play melodic solo's i would suggest you compose the solo just as you you would a melody line , i'm not saying repeat the melody line ?, but use the same composing technique used to create vocal melody lines of using very definite harmony notes over the respective chords ........ and polish it up phrase by phrase till you happy it soars and is melodic.......then add harmony lines to them just as you would to a vocal melody (2 guitarists playing tight harmony lines can be fab .........if i recall the the allman brothers band had some awesome harmony line happening ?.. oh and don't forget you need a great guitar tone to do the melodic solo ........ it must soar tonally so once you have that and done the composing then memorise it and you there ......... these melodic /soaring solo's are well prepared before the performance and each note used is there by design ........
and in contrast the improv solo's found in jazz/blues are mostly just created on the spot by the players mood and musical ability and maybe just use a few memorable hook lines rather than an entire melodic solo
