16th Notes Solo Building

Hi Everyone and welcome to my second lesson!

I wrote this piece especially for you! It can help you practice the 16th note picking, which is harder than it seems at first glance. Guitar playing technically is all about creating a harmony between your hands (to pick the string(s) that your are holding down with your other hand on the fretboard at same time). If you can achieve it, you have to maintain it, that's why continuous practice is very important. I think a good guitar player is like a sports man, always taking care of his (technical) condition.
On the other hand, the soul of guitar playing is the vibratos and bendings. I am pretty sure that I will repeat this a lot of times, because I can never emphasize on it enough. I put slow and long bendings into this lesson, and I also put a lot of slides, and a short legato with tapping. I like to combine different techniques in a solo. Keeping people's attention is not easy, and if you keep doing the same thing, you can easily become boring.
By the way, I like to use the whole neck to play the notes, not only 1 or 2 directions as a lot of people do. If you know the scales and possibilities on the whole fretboard, your playing could be exciting for you and for your audience, as well. In the future I will teach you the modes and some other scales on the whole neck, but for now let’s get back to the lesson.

The lesson's key is F# minor. The first part of this one will show you how to build up your solo the right way if you want to use the classic method to repeat a part. It starts with a melody with bendings, followed by a part which serves as a bridge to the same melody one octave higher (mind your vibratos! Do not be nervous!). If you check the lesson's structure you can see that it contains a main riff which is a "verse", after that it is a modulation to C# phyrigian dominant/ harmonic minor, this is the "bridge" to the "chorus" part which steps back to F# minor.
Because of the whole lesson's structure we need to plan how to build up the whole solo to keep the music's structure.
That's why after I play the melody part an octave higher I use a descending run with slides and legato with tapping, and a bending with tapping (pay attention to your vibrato on the tapped note).
You should do it with your fretting finger but you have to help it with your tapping finger! Right after that comes the modulation; here I used a bit of palm muting to make a staccato sound. The next run is a classical one (with a bit palm muting again), Yngwie Malmsteen used this a lot (usually faster). This is to help catch the F# note on B string (with bending) which is the first note of the "chorus" section (mind your vibratos! Switch to the neck pickup).
30-31 bars contains a F# minor arpeggio which I used with alternative picking 36th bars has another arpeggio part and then comes a slide run to get the final note which is an F#.


I hope you enjoy this one, good practicing everybody!
-Krisztian