going beyond the single note solo

Squonk

Bought the July Guitarist magazine, which has quite a handy DVD dedicated to getting good tone.
During one of the lessons, I think it was getting a hot blues sound.

I noticed that dude demonstrating was playing some blues lead but with a lot of two note or three note soloing.
I have tried to make use of the triads, but what I saw was a bit beyond that.

Any suggestions or "going beyond the single note solo" for dummies. :-[

racman

I battle to even do single note solos ?.

Bob-Dubery

Squonk wrote I noticed that dude demonstrating was playing some blues lead but with a lot of two note or three note soloing.
I have tried to make use of the triads, but what I saw was a bit beyond that.

Any suggestions or "going beyond the single note solo" for dummies. :-[

Do you mean playing more than one note at a time? Playing on multiple strings at a time?

[deleted]

One thing that might make it easier is if you have two musical ideas, but you don't need to play them exactly simultaneously. They can overlap and alternate by using similar yet offset timing. That way the two ideas hold the same ground and one is not simply backing up the other. I don't think I could improvise that (haven't tried but pretty sure I can't) so you'd need to spend some time working out positions on the guitar that would accomodate two melodic lines. And then you'd need to have a split personality to play two different melodies at once(I am joking).

As has been mentioned before, this is basically counterpoint. Handel's Messiah is a good example. He just couldn't get enough of it. He didn't just use rhythm, but copied the melodic structure aswell and just bounced all the voices off each other(ad nauseum).

To get your fingers used to it start out with a simple exercise playing single notes with your thumb opposing your other fingers in the rhythm that you want to use. So that way you get your RH muscles used to the tecnique. Then add the LH form.

I play a nice Bach Prelude(opus 999) that has a similar aspect to this (actualy most classical music does). It's realy three parts with the one in the middle being repetitive and the two on the opposite sides being call and response. It sounds like a little robot to me, but Bach didn't know about robots so it makes it even cooler, but that's besides the point. I'll try and post it so you can have a listen, but perhaps it'll be more reliable to just take out any random music and analyse the diferent melodic lines.

Ray

Double stops?

Keira-WitherKay

hey squonk... all the guy is doing is playing what we call intervals.......... intervals is 2 notes played at the same time.... and they harmony notes to each other related to the scale ...or specific chord tones..... and yeah blues players use it a lot ........ jazz players too.....

peace and light
Keira

Squonk

Thanks Viccy and Keira

So they are called intervals. I pulled out my Eric Johnson DVD and he is plays a lot of these things.

@ Bob - I didn't make myself too clear. While soloing over a piece of music I tend to use the notes in a particular scale. In my case the pentatonic scale (Still learning others :-[) I tend to feel the notes and apply a pattern. BUT all these notes are single notes, played one after another. If you listen to an extremely simply example;
Pink Floyd "Another brick in the wall", Gilmour starts the solo with a typical pentatonic scale over the d minor chord. He pays some single notes and then plays two together, which would be according to Keira , intervals.
Another example would be Paul Gilbert's acoustic solo on "I'm the one who wants to be with you", he uses these 2 note (intervals) in most of the solo. It just adds real colour and harmony to the solo.

Something new for me to try

AlanRatcliffe

Also search for "double stop". Country players specifically use a lot of double stops and double stop bends. Here's a few examples:

Squonk

Thanks Alan

will investigate.

@ Ray , your post makes more sense now ?