lapsteel wrote:Well just find the stuff you like and pick out the most memorable parts of the solo...improvise the rest. Alot of newer players stare at tabs for hours, but the trick is to use your ears to get the timing, bends and other subtleties. Even if your improvisation sounds wrong push through until it starts to sound better...play, listen, play, listen, play....etc. That way you avoid getting that stale I'mjusttryingtoplaylikehalenbutIdon'thavethechopsyet syndrome. And of course put some effort into learning how to pick out keys to play in and memorize some appropriate scales....
This is essentially what I'm after -- I should've said that i"m not looking for solos to learn note-for-note by tab (most online tabs are at least a little wrong anyways)..
It's about playing the song a couple times in a row, listening (really listening) to it, picking out how they're using the scales, then trying to get the same bends and hammer-ons/pull-offs as the song is using, or the phrases that stick out.. not trying to learn a whole perfect solo.
Basically the learn "learn from the masters" approach since I don't take lessons and rarely play with other musicians.. I've gotta learn from somewhere. I said it before, but I don't really believe the people who say they just picked up guitars and understood all the scale shapes, modes, where to bend, how to phrase solos, etc without ever taking a class or looking in a book. That or I don't have the ears to pick it up purely from listening and monkeying with the guitar -- even though monkeying with the guitar is a large part of what I do, I could never get get near pulling off a "solo" until I did all the work to memorize some pentatonic shapes, read about where people put bends and hammer-ons/pull-offs, learned that the root notes are important, and such.. Then I spent quality time with the metronome going up and down the neck with each scale position to try and bring my accuracy and speed up.. and here I am today..
And to continue on my little rant, another reason why online tabs SUCK is that you'll rarely find they say "here he's soloing in the 4th position pentatonic in A minor," (jazz scores seems to be way more like this), but the tabs will just be a bunch of notes up by the 12th fret and you kinda have to imagine what scale shape fits there. Would much rather just puzzle that stuff out myself than memorize a tab file.