Kirk Hammett guitar solo songwriting composition improvisation

Guitar blog posts · The Guitar Blog

Guitarists criticise Kirk Hammett, but who needs fancy guitar solos?

I recently read an interview with Kirk Hammett in Total Guitar and discovered that there’s an ongoing online debate about his guitar solo in Lux Aeterna. 😮 I felt I needed to address it

As someone who grew up in the 80s, Metallica has been a significant influence on my musical upbringing. I learned a lot from their guitar transcription books before even knowing what I was playing.

I understand that there’s some expectation from guitarists to evolve artistically, and it’s safe to say that Hammett’s solos were more diverse in their earlier albums, which he admits in the interview.

Nowadays, and from what I could hear in their latest album “72 Seasons”, their music still primarily relies on the minor pentatonic/Blues scale, and Hammett is content with mainly using the minor pentatonic scale for his guitar solos. So Lux Aeterna’s solo is a bit more interesting, as he uses some chromatic runs. 🙂

Personally, I love this guitar solo as it brings the energy the song requires. I listened to a few other guitarists’ alternate solos to the song, and I didn’t feel it at all. They might be excellent technically, but there wasn’t any musical connection to the song.

Some of the criticism regarding the solo is that it jumps from one idea to another with “no logic”. But doesn’t it create a sense of hastiness that’s related to the feel and meaning of the song?

In the creative process, it might be true that these bits were glued together from different takes. Hammett said he’s now very much into improvisation and left the editing stage to Lars Ulrich and the producer Greg Fidelman.

This leads to an interesting topic, what is the purpose of a guitar solo?

Is it for lead guitarists to showcase their shredding skills, like in those alternate solos? Or is it for adding a part that melodically expresses the song’s feel, energy or meaning without lyrics?

There are other approaches to incorporating a guitar solo, like using it to tell a story. But in this case, it seems that those other two answers are the main schools of thought.

I support the latter. To me, if the song needs a guitar solo (which is not a must). It’s a break from the vocal parts into a more abstract expressionism that doesn’t have to follow any rules. It exists because it adds some value to the song.

Also, I think it’s essential to have a flow into the guitar solo, so it doesn’t feel like it was forced into the song. In Lux Aeterna, specifically, I love how the band clears the stage for it by literally stepping down (chromatically).

Personally, I’m more into solo guitar than guitar solo. 🙂 On my latest instrumental guitar album, I had only one “traditional” guitar solo that goes into a blurry cloud of sounds. In another track, I used sweep picking to add an extra layer behind eight other guitar layers. 😀

What are your thoughts on this? Where do you stand?

Read more articles about guitar composition on my guitar blog!

Photo of Kirk Hammett by Raph_PH.

April 18, 2023

Musical expression on the guitar - Guitarist Gary Moore RIP

Creative Guitar Challenge · Guitar blog posts · Music · The Guitar Blog · Tips for guitarists / guitar students

How to enhance musical expression in your guitar playing

For improvisation, songwriting, and composition on the guitar in particular, these five ideas can help you be more expressive

The idea for this “musical expression on the guitar” article began with an answer I gave to a question in a guitar Facebook group. The question was, “How do you improvise on the guitar in a more musical way?”

My reply was: “The key is to develop your inner voice and ear and make it a whole-body experience, which is more than just “thinking” with your fingers. It’s about connecting all the different elements and components of a musical experience.”

Then, as I gave the question some more thought (and discussed it in my group “Guitar Songwriting & Composition”), I became aware of its problematic wording. What does “more musical” mean? The intent behind the original question was probably “how to be more expressive on the guitar” or “how to play the guitar with more musical expression.”

So I thought I’d break down my answer into five effective concepts that help me and my guitar students.

Five Ways to Improve Musical Expression on the Guitar

1) Get Up, Stand Up

Most of us sit while playing the guitar. But standing up can already make a big difference. You can then move more freely by, for example, swaying your hips and gesturing with your hands and head. This also helps you get into the rhythm and immerse yourself in your playing. This is what I meant by making it a whole-body experience. It’s like the difference between practising and performing. When you stand up, it can feel like a live gig, even if the crowd is the furniture around you. Also, sitting too much is not very healthy.

If you play classical / flamenco guitar, you can still move while sitting. But you can also try to stand and rest your foot on a high stool.

2) Sing

Using your voice—either your inner or actual voice—can help a lot with being more expressive on the guitar. For example, when you “scat” (sing what you play at the same time), your playing can sound more human. In other words, you will use speech-like phrases. It’s because when we speak, we say a few words, pause or take a breath, and say a few more words, and so on. When you do that with the guitar, the result can be similar. You’ll play and sing a few notes on the guitar, breathe and rest, then play and sing a few more notes, and so on.

If that’s tricky, you can also play something and then sing it, or the other way around, such as singing something and then playing it.

Watch these two short videos about guitar scatting:

Guitar scatting part 1

Guitar scatting part 2

3) Listen to the Music

Playing the guitar expressively is not just about playing one phrase, the next one, and then another. Instead, think about it as a conversation between you and the guitar. It’s bi-directional. So after playing a phrase, listen to what you’ve just played before automatically playing the next one. Ask yourself, “Where does this phrase want to go?” This way, your phrases will stimulate you to respond and create other related phrases.

This concept is particularly crucial when playing with other live musicians. The ability to listen to those around you is probably the most important aspect of music expression and creation.

4) Surprise Yourself

If you “think” too much with your fingers, your playing might sound too mechanical. For example, it can happen when you automatically play over a scale you know, like the pentatonic minor scale. Especially when repeating previously practised exercises, like scale sequences. It can be much more exciting to improvise and come up with new note combinations you’ve never tried before.

To break the patterns, pay attention to how you play. Are you mostly using the same order of fingers? Mix it up.

5) Silent Notes

We tend to focus too much on what notes to play. But it’s equally (or even more) important to focus on how we play these notes. For instance, adding interesting dynamics and tone can be much more expressive than a constant stream of notes. This way, you can repeat the same phrase while diversifying it by playing with other elements of music.

Learning the power of the elements of music also helps with finding your sound and your own style on the guitar. It can make your music and your playing more unique and original.

Musical Expression on the Guitar – Summary

To sum up, to play the guitar with more musical expression, think about it as a whole-body experience by standing and moving your body, singing, listening to your playing, surprising yourself with new note combinations, and focusing on other elements of music.

I’d love to hear your thoughts on this article! Comment below. Also, if you’ve implemented these concepts, it’d be great to hear how they helped you!

After Note

While working on demonstrating these ideas in a video, a new guitar tune came out. So, instead of a video that explains and shows these concepts, here’s that tune that I came up with. I thought it was important because, ultimately, the idea of musical expression on the guitar is about creating new music that excites you. Need help applying these principles to your music? Let’s have a guitar chat!

https://youtu.be/O_oVVk7Fp60

Photo of Gary Moore: Jan Reif

Did you like this article about musical expression on the guitar? Comment below.

January 24, 2023

Creative Guitar Challenge · Guitar blog posts · The Guitar Blog · Tips for guitarists / guitar students

5 easy ways to adopt a creative guitar mindset

Why guitarists focus more on the technical side of guitar playing while struggling with the creative aspect + 5 easy and proven ways to enhance your creativity on the guitar

Creative guitar mindset: why do we need it? It may be trivial, but I think it’s important to stress the impact that our mindset has on our guitar playing and music creation. Out of the different types, I’m going to focus here on the creative mindset, which is fundamental for music as a creative art form.

Although this is quite a simple concept, I don’t think that many guitarists think this way. But I can understand why. One of the reasons is related to the way we begin learning guitar. The first thing we do is treat guitar playing as a physical activity. It’s understandable because controlling our fingers to do something they’ve never done before is a challenge. We weren’t born to play the guitar.

So our initial focus is to see the guitar as a tool for finger exercises. This way, we might get the wrong impression that this is what the guitar is about. We may adopt a sports-like mindset, believing that we should focus primarily on techniques. This is heightened when we want to sound like the great, technically incredible shred guitarists.

Guitarist’s creative mindset

Don’t get me wrong. I have nothing against honing our technical skills on the guitar. But my guitar philosophy is that music is about conveying emotions, and the guitar is the best tool to achieve that. So in a creative mindset, guitar skills are meant to help us express the music we hear in our heads to create meaningful songs and compositions. This is my definition of a creative mindset in this context. A more general definition can be “think like an artist”.

“Arts and crafts” is a good analogy for these two types of mindsets (sports and creative). “Arts” represents the artistic and creative side of music, and “crafts” is the technical and craftsmanship part of playing music. Each one relies on the other and complements it. To convey our emotions on the guitar, we need to be able to execute them well. To give meaning to our finger movements and guitar skills, we need emotional content. So there’s some balance we can maintain between the “arts and crafts”.

There’s no shortage of resources for improving technical guitar skills, but it seems that guitar lessons on creativity are scarce. I can understand why. It’s much more difficult to teach guitar creativity! But because this is my true passion and purpose in life, I’ve spent a lot of time, effort, and energy finding ways to teach guitarists to be more creative and expressive. I’ve learned it from my guitar teachers, researched it academically, and tested it in the real world on myself, my fellow musicians, and my guitar students.

After discussing the importance of adopting a creative mindset on the guitar, let’s go over ways of achieving it.

5 tips on adopting a creative mindset on the guitar

1) Embrace this daily habit

Enhancing a creative mindset is like adopting a good habit. Like any habit, daily repetition is the key to success. So you can simply allocate time every day to practising it. This kind of practice is about picking up the guitar and playing something you’ve never played before. You can improvise, jam, noodle, and explore the guitar from a new angle. Allow yourself to experiment with it. This can be even just 10 minutes a day, and you can treat it like your daily meditation or your “me time.”

Choosing the right time of day and place can help with incorporating it into your routine and life. For example, I practice mainly at night time when the house is quiet while laying on the living room couch.

2) Don’t think too much

When you practice the above daily exercise (or when playing anything on the guitar), try not to think too much or at all. Mainly, don’t judge and critique yourself by thinking “it’s not good enough”, “it’s not original enough”, or “I don’t know what I’m playing”. We are our worst critics. Being critical is a great type of thinking for other tasks, like making progress and improving our guitar skills. But from an artistic point of view, it adds an unnecessary roadblock to the creative process. So decide that you’re going to clear your mind and enter a state of flow. The great drummer Vinnie Colaiut summarised it well with his mantra: “Thought is the enemy of flow”.

If you ever tried meditation, you probably know that it’s hard to stop our brain from thinking. How can you stop its main function…? But you can enter a mind-wandering state, or daydream. Anything is fine as long as you allow yourself to explore the guitar with no judgment.

3) Shut your eyes

What can help you with the previous tips is to shut your eyes while playing. This simple act can block some distractions and disruptions in your environment. Because music is mainly an auditory experience, shutting down one of your most active senses, sight, can help. You can then focus more on the most important skill for a guitarist or musician: the ability to listen. This type of listening skill allows you to hear the potential of what you’re trying to create and immerse yourself in this creative activity. Besides, playing without looking at your fingers is a great exercise that builds trust with your fingers and the sense of touch.

Other ways to decrease your sight are by playing in a dark room (I even played in caves), or covering your eyes with a blindfold (maybe you have a travel eye mask from your latest flight…).

4) Do a warm-up

It can take some time to leave your thoughts behind, find something that excites you, or enter a flow state. So when practising the daily 10 minutes, it might take five minutes or even more to get into “the zone”. The zone is that state of mind where you feel comfortable and curious to explore new things after letting go of any annoying thoughts. This way, creativity is like a muscle that you need to stretch and warm up to exploit its full potential. So be patient with yourself and allow time for things to happen (and they will happen!).

You can also do “normal” warm-up exercises before your 10 minutes begin. These can even lead you to a great creative session. For instance, did you know that Guns N’ Roses’ hit “Sweet Child O’ Mine” began as an exercise that Slash practised on his guitar?

5) Create a safe space

If you still struggle to get into a creative mood, it might be related to your surroundings. A safe space is a time and place where you feel secure enough to explore the unknown. It’s like the “sandbox” concept in the software development world, where you can try things out, test them, and make mistakes. So finding or creating your own safe space in an encouraging environment can help.

I’ve found that these safe places can occur in the context of a lesson with my guitar students. Magic happens when you have trust and are encouraged to get your creative juices flowing. I’ve witnessed many a time students creating amazing music in front of my eyes and ears

Want to get more creative guitar mindset tips?

These five creative guitar mindset tips are just a few out of many! I write about them in more depth in my guitar book.

If you’d like to know what they are and can’t wait for the book, I can show you what they are and, more importantly, how to implement them. Contact me here.

I’m a guitar teacher in north London who mainly teaches online using a unique music education platform. If you’re looking into improving your guitar songwriting and composing skills – I’d love to hear from you. Use the link above or comment below to schedule a guitar chat with me.

January 20, 2023

Guitar blog posts · The Guitar Blog · Tips for guitarists / guitar students

Unlock Guitar Songwriting Secrets with Easy Music Theory Methods

Music theory is a great tool for writing songs on the guitar. In this article, I’ll show 5 ways to create music that will sound good and also give tips to make your songs less common and more original

Before getting into guitar songwriting tips, I need to mention an important idea. Although music theory provides effective songwriting tools, you can ignore them all. It’s because being creative usually entails breaking the rules and finding a unique way of creating music. There’s a great quote accredited to the guitar legend Jeff Beck (RIP), who left us this week:

Guitar legend Jeff Beck - "If I don't break the rules at least 10 times in every song, then I'm not doing my job properly."

“If I don’t break the rules at least 10 times in every song, then I’m not doing my job properly.”
— Jeff Beck

Photo: Simon Fernandez Music Photographer

Let’s first begin by defining what music theory and guitar songwriting are.

What is music theory?

Music theory is a… theory. As such, it’s open to interpretation. So I’ll propose a working definition for this article. Music theory is a compilation of methods and ideas to organise sound and explore and understand its various possibilities to create music.

What is guitar songwriting?

This is another blurry term, and I’ll define guitar songwriting as the process of creating popular music on the guitar. I also like to use the term “guitar composing.” Composing is more related to classical music, but guitar music can be instrumental, whereas songs are usually associated with lyrics.

Here are the 5 simple methods and at the end of each method, there’s a guitar songwriting tip.

1) Diatonic Harmony

The term “diatonic” in music theory is such a great tool for songwriting. It allows you to turn the seven notes of a scale into music that will most likely sound great. It’s because these seven notes are connected by strong bonds.

You can think of it as a family. Yes, there are sometimes disagreements and tensions, but “blood is thicker than water” and there is natural love. So the seven notes are like seven family members.

One of the basic interpretations of diatonic in songwriting is “diatonic harmony,” which means chords and chord progressions based on the seven chords of a scale or key.

Let’s start with the key of C major. There are 7 notes in C major: C, D, E, F, G, A, and B. From each note (also called a “degree”), we construct a related chord: C, Dm, Em, F, G, Am, and B-.

If you choose a combination of some of these chords, you will create a chord progression, and it will likely sound good. For example, C, G, F, and Am.

Guitar songwriting tip #1:

These four chords are frequently used. So to create a less common chord progression, include some or all of the other three chords. For instance, C, B-, F, and Dm.

2) Time Symmetry

Music theory brought us the term “time signature” (also “metre”). It’s an effective way to organise beats. The most common time signature is 4/4, and because it’s so common, its synonym is a capital C. It means that music is divided into 4 beats, and these 4 beats are grouped in a block called a “bar” (or “measure”).

So if you want your chord progression to sound good, you can use symmetry. If you look around, you’ll probably notice many symmetrical items, like furniture. We humans are very much into symmetrical shapes, and the same thing applies to music.

You can create symmetry in music by allocating each chord to a 4-beat bar. For example:

| C / / / | G / / / | F / / / | Am / / / |

Guitar songwriting tip #2:

To make your chord progression more original, break the pattern or stretch the symmetry. For example, you can create a chord progression with an odd number of bars, like:
| C / / / | G / / / | Dm / / / | F / / / | Am / / / |

3) Melodic Tones

The next music theory concept is called “chord tones”, which are simply the notes of each chord. These are great for creating melodies around a chord progression. Every basic chord consists of 3 notes (a triad), and to add a melody that sounds good, you can sing (or play with another guitar) a note or more from the same chord.

For example, chord C consists of the notes c, e, and g. If you sing or play one of these notes with the chord C, they will sound harmonious together. It’s a very simple idea… Let’s see it in action.

Chords:
| C / / / | G / / / | F / / / | Am / / / |
Melody:
| e | d | c | c |

Guitar songwriting tip #3:

To make it more original and interesting, use non-chord tones as well. Non-chord tones can be notes from the same scale that are not part of the chord. For example:
Chords:
| C / / / | G / / / | F / / / | Am / / / |
Melody:
| d | e | d | c |

4) Functional Harmony

Functional harmony is a music theory concept that presumes that each chord in a scale or key has a specific function. For example, the first chord is called the “tonic”. If all the chords are a family, then the tonic is considered the head of the family. It’s the first and main chord of the scale.

The tonic functions like “home”, which means that it’s the chord you usually start and end with. It’s like starting the day at home, going to work, and then coming back home to your family. This means that you can think of the other chords as “outdoors”.

In practical terms, it means that if you want to create a “homey feel”, you’re going to base a chord progression around C. For example:

| C / / / | G / / / | F / / / | C / / / |

Guitar songwriting tip #4:

You can also create a chord progression that feels like the outdoors. For example:
| Dm / / / | B- / / / | Em / / / | Em / / / |

5) Final Form

What you can do with the chord progressions and melodies is arrange them in a form. We sometimes take it for granted, but various forms have been developed for centuries. In popular music, there are a few common forms.

For example, a popular form begins with two verses, a chorus, one verse, and then two choruses. In short, we can write it as AABABB. The A part is the verse, which can be one chord progression with one melody. The B part can be the chorus with different chord progressions and melodies:

A: | C | G | F | C |
A: | C | G | F | C |
B: | Dm | B- | Em | Em |
A: | C | G | F | C |
B: | Dm | B- | Em | Em |
B: | Dm | B- | Em | Em |

Guitar songwriting tip #5:

To make your song more complex and interesting, add more sections, like a C-part, which can be another chord progression and melody. For instance: | G | Dm | B- | Am |
For guitarists, this can be our cue for the guitar solo.

Last tip: Even better, create your form and organise your music in a way that feels right to you.

What did you think about these guitar songwriting tips and methods? Comment Below.

If you’d like to advance your guitar songwriting skills – get in touch! I am a guitar teacher in north London and also have an online guitar school.

January 13, 2023