How to come up with melodic lines

Many of my students, after having worked on their chops ask me how to come up with a melodic line - they might be able to pull-off crossroads (from the movie) fine, the bridge section from "As above, So below" from Yngwie - but get them to improvise, and they get stuck with ideas - and the first thing to go is their timing (which is way more important than the notes anyway!). A good way to make a melodic line is to put chord tones on the downbeats. The downbeats are the 1,2,3 and 4 of the beat - the upbeats are the & (i.e. 1 & 2 & 3 & 4 &)

This pervades it's way through many style - particularly in jazz - the bebop scale was a melodic device which added a note to the scale. How many 1/8th notes in a bar ? 8 - how many notes in a regular diatonic scale? 7. 7+1 = 8 (duh). So a mixolydian (and they almost always played it descending) line starting from the 1,3,5,or b7 would include a natural 7, a major 1,3,5,6 would include a #5 and the minor from a 1,b3,5 or b7 would include a natural 3. So go knowck yoursleves out and makes some phrases that work well over a particular chord, go play in on every fret position - but make the timing the most important (if you want to understand timing better, download my e-book below)

Here's a tip for creating Jazzy lines

Jazz players will almost never use triads. They are going for a more sophistocated harmonic approach when playing or soloing. The most important notes in any chord are the 3 and the 7. These are the two notes that define which chord family the chord is coming from - the major, minor or dominant chord family. When comping alongside a piano, many guitar players will just limit their chords to these two notes. These are also useful when soloing. Try this simple example. Find a jazz chart (i.e. autumn leaves or something). Play the 4 bars as chords. Now, work out where the guide tones are for each chord. Play them istead of the chords. Then, work out a solo where you start the line on the 3rd or the 7th of the current chord and finsh on a 3rd or 7th of that chord - going into the 3rd or 7th of the next chord. You will quickly see that your line - even when played with accompaniment - will outline the chords and you will hear them just from what you're playing!

Bending strings

(from Phillip Cassidy)

Thinking inside a line!

If you know your scales and you're used to playing sequences or scale runs but you feel like your either in a rut - or you're finding it difficult to put the lines "in the pocket" (this is not only playing in time - but making it feel good too), you can rectify this by "Thinking while you're playing". You can start today by listening to every single note that goes by in your run. Is it clear? Is it falling at the same time as the click? Go from where you are to a string skip? Thinking WHILE your inside a line will give you options of resolving on better resolution notes, playing evenly and clean, and keep your lines in the pocket!

Can you play standing up?

You've practiced hours in your room, a major gig requiring all your chops looms. A good question arises - can you play everything standing up as good as you can play it sitting down? Are you singing? Can you play your guitar tightly whilst singing? In a gig, everything that will go wrong might happen - so you can make it easier on yourself if you simply act out all YOUR parts in your room. Rig up a microphone and record yourself standing up, singing and playing and see if it meets your own personal standards - or better yet - the standards of your heros!

When you get to the gig, you'll be all prepared.

Also, a live gig is 80% visual - so don't stand there like paint drying, move about, make eye contact with your audience. Often, nobody gets excited by those perfectly executed sweep arpeggios until you play something with your teeth!

That 'Jazz feel'

'Jazz feel' for your soloing can be quite hard to acheive if a) You're a rock guitarist or b) Nobody tells you what you're supposed to do to 'swing hard'!

Here's the key that took me from being told off in my improv class that I suck at jazz feel to the next class where World renowned Jazz Band Leader Roger Fox declared "It's like the light's come on - now you sound like a jazz guitarist!'

Here it is:

• Swing the phrase: it's like playing triplets (1 + a 2 + a etc...) but leave out the '+" i.e. 1 a2 a3 a4 a
• Most importantly - make the first note soft in volume and accent the 'a' notes. If you start on a downstroke, pick harder on the upstrokes! This takes quite a bit of practice but is do-able. What you're doing is accenting all the 'off-beat' notes! You may have to rework all your shred licks to incorporate this - but then you have a jazz feel to them!

Get awesome using your delay

I assume that if you're a guitarist reading this, you may have some sort of delay at your disposal. Here's a great way of improving everything you play.

• Set your delay at the longest possible repeat time. Turn the feedback right down so that there's only 1 echo. Turn the delay level up as loud as your guitars initial sound.
• When you play something, you can hear what it really sounds like in the following delay. You can hear if it sounds like you want it to sound. Improve every area of your playing with this simple method.
• Depending on the length of your delay, you can only practice short ideas, i.e. vibrato, short licks, bending, an alternate picking pattern (get it clean!), sweeps, etc...
• enjoy your playing and improve in record time!

Everything you will improvise is something you have played before!

Improvise a solo - chances are, the best part of it is something that you've played lots of times before. Taking that into consideration, here's an idea that will make your improvising, whether it be chordal or lead work, more awesome than ever before.

Make little pieces! That's right! What i mean is this: select 3 different melodic devices .i.e. scale run up, sequence down, octave arpeggio up - finish with vibrato! Once you have the design of it (so it sounds great muscially when played slowly), use a metronome to slowly speed it up until it's at a really good pace. The more pieces you make like this a) your techniques will blend better together and b) you'll be able to improvise amazing solos by joining piece to piece - gobsmacking other musicians in the audience!

some ideas to use in your pieces:

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How long can you solo before you make either a timing mistake or an articulation mistake

- or anything that sounds plain bad? Here's an approach that may help you! QUIT TRYING TO SURPRISE YOURSELF! The person you want to surprise is your audience! Tripping over yourself becuase you don't know where you're going is just going to make you look and sound like an idiot! Try to plan 2 steps ahead of where you're going - especially if you're playing at faster speeds! Play stuff you know you can nail! See if you can tape record yourself soloing over a metronomae or a drumbeat for a solid 3 minutes without making a mistake. If you're having problems, make it shorter. Pay attention to timing (know what timing subdivision your going to play in!) and make sure you can hear each note clearly.

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The Persian Scale (Generated by Guitar Freak of Nature)

Here's a scale you can try. Choose 4 chords from the options (start with one from the C column) and create some persion sounds!