How this SIMPLE, PERFECT solo taught me lead guitar

a lot of people get inspired to play lead guitar when they first hear a Guitar Hero like Jimmy Page Eddie Van Halen or Stevie Ray Vaughan but it was a different solo entirely that inspired me I'm going to share what it is and why it's still phenomenal if you want to play lead [Music] I recently asked a group a question for what they thought was a perfect guitar solo I got lots of answers that you might expect Sultans of Swing [Music] one of these nights [Music] Comfortably Numb [Music] and of course Stairway to Heaven [Music] yeah [Applause] and there were many others but a friend of mine Steve from Chicago said that his perfect solo was George Harrison solo to let it be and it brought it all back to me [Music] what brought it all back was that that was the solo that made me want to play lead guitar now I've been playing for two to three years but it was all Mel Bae now I have nothing against Mel Bae but it just wasn't inspiring music for a teenager or a pre-teen so I was 10 or 11 years old after dinner at my aunt's house my cousin who was 20 years old a lot older than I was said hey let's go listen to some music how cool is that for an 11 year old now he just cranked the volume up like I never could have done at home I'd never heard music like that before but when Let It Be came on and it got to that solo I was totally smitten I said man I've got to play that but I was really lucky that inspired me because you can learn a ton from that solo even though it's just a pentatonic solo first it does use a pentatonic framework but it's major not minor pentatonic which is a little less common and great to know and it uses good phrasing that's common for great solos of its day slides bends and such but the kicker is that it fits the song Perfectly and Harrison plays very melodically but a big key to playing melodically is you guessed it chord tones George used a ton of them in this solo let's have a look here's the chord progression for the solo of the song there's only four unique chords in it c g a minor and F the entire sequence is four bars and it's repeated once so it's a total of eight bars for the solo all these chords fit neatly into the key of C and the home chord is also C so C major or C major pentatonic scale are good choices for this framework but just knowing the scale is not good enough that can lead to the dreaded noodling good players know that they can Target chords as well to sound more melodic now George undoubtedly did this by ear but you can develop that ear by mapping chords onto your scales here's what I mean take the extended C major pentatonic scale now mentally map the chords in the progression onto it here's a c here's a g here's an A Minor here's an F that may seem like too much work but believe me it really starts to become easy after you do it a few times especially if you use three note Triads you still might be thinking oh man I need to play a solo that fits every chord impossible but there's a key that makes it much easier the thing that matters most is that you end your phrases on a chord tone that means when you pause you stop on a note that fits the chord George did this simply and masterfully let's take a look here's the opening phrase [Music] notice it ends on a c which is the root of the first chord in the progression here's the second phrase notice it ends on a g which is the root note of the second chord in the progression here's the third phrase [Music] notice that ends or is bent to a note that's in the a minor which is the third chord of the progression here's the fourth phrase notice that ends on a note that's in F which is the fourth chord in the progression the next phrase is a long one ending on a c chord [Music] and we end on this a c the root of the C chord see what I mean all chord tones the more that you do this the more your ears and your fingers will sink so you'll start to do it naturally now if you want a clear process and more practice to stop noodling and start playing chord tones click on this video because in that video I break down the process step by step and I give you an easy example so you can try it out so check out that video and I'll see on down the road

Channel: Mark Zabel

Views: 105,194

Keywords: georgeharrison, perfectguitarsolo, chord tones, guitar solo lesson, let it be

Id: W3gFYCLObVw

Length: 5min 48sec (348 seconds)

Published: Sat Jul 01 2023