How to Play Heavy Metal Guitar Solos

Let musician Alex Skolnick teach you how to play guitar solos in this heavy metal guitar lesson from Howcast.

Transcript

Guitar soloing tips. I usually like to play ideas that are memorable and that you can sing along to. I don't want it just to be a barrage of speed and flashiness. You can throw in speed and flashiness but it should be used tastefully. I think the most important thing is a melody.

So I try to think of some phrase that I can riff around with and maybe in between I'll throw in some flashy notes. For example, if I'm playing in F sharp minor, I might start out with a bend. You know. There's a lot of things I could do but let's just say I started out with a bent. For my next lick maybe I'll lead up to it with a fast lick. Then the next time around I'll start picking it up. Maybe I could throw in some fast stuff like. But it always has to resolve to a melody. You can't, it has to go somewhere. So if you're going to play something fast make sure that it resolve to a melody.

I have a little riff looped up here that I'm going to play along to just so you can hear what I'm talking about. So that's a very short solo, that's a very quick example. But you can see I didn't try to play over the whole thing. I left a lot of space. I tried to have some melodic ideas. I spiced up the melodic ideas with fast stuff but the fast stuff didn't defined what I was playing.