[Jim]

Originally Posted by krissovo

Hi All

I love the feel to this and would love to join in, how do you start to solo??????

Do you take say in this instance a C scale and play them in your own order? If anyone has a link to a good site about soloing I would appriciate it as all I have found is confusing sites.

If you haven't done soloing yet, then the best way to correctly learn (so that you really know what you're doing) is probably to get Kirk's PlaneTalk book and/or DVD. That way you will know all the notes on the fretboard, and as long as you know what chord progression is being played (and for Blues and many backing tracks like this it's usually just 3 chords - the I, IV and V chords of whatever key the piece is in - so in a C Shuffle, the chords are C, F and G (or they can be 7ths like C7, F7, G7 - but same idea) then you know the notes that will fit in with those chords and can play with them and come up with a solo that both fits in the the chords being played, and also sounds nice and melodic - to have a melody rather than random chord/scale notes makes the difference between a good solo and a boring one!

I have kind of a disadvantage in that I learned scales MANY years ago, and so I've got the pentatonic (major and minor), Blues, as well as major/minor scales burned into my brain and fingers, and although I bought PlaneTalk, I still find myself using the pentatonic or blues scales as a framework for the soloing, and then using my ear to figure how to use those to get as good a melody as I can - and I use my ear as well to know what off-scale notes will sound good at a particular point in the piece - or just to be used to transisition between scale notes (passing tones is anothe name for these). So for me, I have to kind of unlearn the hardwired muscle memory scales and try to think more about the chords I'm over and what chord tones will work. To be honest, I sometimes do this, and sometimes fall back on the easier scale methods to solo. And sometimes I get a good melodic solo, and sometimes ... not.

So, if you haven't gotten Planetalk, that is my recommendation to get started soloing! I guarantee you won't be sorry because you will learn SO much about the guitar and how to the maximum out of it.

Jim