« | Home | »

How To Create Totally Amazing Country Guitar Solos (it’s quick and easy!)

By Mike Hayes | June 27, 2010

One of the easiest ways to play really mind blowing country
guitar solos is to use lots of open stings, hammer-on’s and pull-
off’s in your playing this instantly gives you a great country
sound that’s fresh and interesting.

Most guitarists study for long hours and practice hard but never
really achieve that elusive country guitar sound, there is much
more to that country guitar twang than Fender Telecasters and
Twin Reverb amps.

Instead of just sticking with the usual major and minor
pentatonic scales another really cool idea is to mix other scales
into your playing such as the blues scale and the chromatic scale
let’s take a look at how all this comes together to create mind
blowin’ country guitar solos.

I’m going to create an interesting country guitar twist to a
standard scale by:

(a) Playing the scale descending instead of ascending

(b) Using some blues notes

(c) Adding a note or two from the chromatic scale

(d) Sprinkling the run with some open strings

(e) Playing some of the notes as pull- off’s

My basic scale will be the G Mixo-Lydian Mode.

Musical resources:

G Mixo-Lydian mode = G – A – B – C – D – E – F – G

G Blues scale : G – Bb – C – Db – D – F – G

G Chromatic scale: G – G# – A – A# – B – C – C# – D – D# – E – F
- F# – G

Applying this information to the guitar and remembering to learn
the run in small sections, playing everything slowly and
accurately then gradually linking the sections together until all
the sections flow; then and only then do we begin to crank up the
tempo.

Section 1: G – Gb (F#) – F – E

———————0–
–8-p-7-p-6———
————————–
————————–
————————–
————————–

Section 2: D – C – B

——————-
—————0—
–7-p-5———
——————-
——————-
——————-

Practice these two sections carefully aiming for perfect
synchronization of both hands before moving on to the third
section.

Section 3: Bb – A – G

——————-
——————-
————–0—
–8-p-7———
——————-
——————-

By the time you add this section to the other two sections your
run will sound complete; you could finish on the note ‘G’ however
I’m going to keep going to give you an idea how you might develop
this basic scale into a very impressive run.

Section 4: Gb (F#) – F – E – D

————————-
————————-
————————-
——————-0—
–9-p-8-p-7———
————————-

Section 5: C – B – Bb – A

————————-
————————-
————————-
————————-
———————0–
–8-p-7-p-6——–

Section 6: G

———
———
———
———
———
–3—–

The next project is to try and incorporate this run into your
solos, here are a couple of ideas for you to try:

Play this run over a pre-recorded chord progression something
like this will sound great.

| G /// | G /// | F2 /// | F ///  |

suggested chord voicings

G
–x——
–3——
–0——
–5——
–5——
–x——

F2
–x——-
–1——-
–0——-
–3——-
–3——-
–x——-

Another idea is to play the entire run as presented above only
instead of finishing on the ‘G’ note in section six play the ‘G’
on the third fret; sixth string then slowly slide up the sixth
string to finish on the octave ‘G’ note on the sixth string;
fifteenth fret.

optional ending for Section 6:

—————-
—————-
—————-
—————-
—————-
–3–s–15—

This idea is great for an ending; by sliding from the third fret
‘G’ to the fifteenth fret ‘G’ you will actually be playing a ‘G’
chromatic scale! What a neat way to finish a song; as you can
see there are many ways to use these cool country sounds on
guitar.

Topics: Country Guitar, Modes, guitar scales | No Comments »

Comments

You must be logged in to post a comment.