But to answer the original question, there is a profound world of difference between jamming or riffing and playing a heartfelt solo that includes the elements of phrasing, emotion, personality and know how.

Essentially I think that a beautiful solo is an expression of a person's personality and their emotions, the two come together at the same time.

I'm all for jamming and riffing, that's how you learn, but when you go into an actual solo that's a whole different thing, if it's in the area of a melodic heartfelt solo.

If this instance you just genuinely have to feel it, and most of the time your job is to see which notes need to be cut, not which notes need to be added.

To me it's kind of a spiritual experience where you are sort of summoning up your phantom if you will and you channel your personality through the fretboard.

If you're doing that you won't usually sound like anyone else, you'll sound like you, and you won't be playing just anything that you could be playing, you will only be playing what you ought to be playing at that exact moment second by second. I usually advise people to slow it down, just grab a note and hold it, bend it, hang onto it, massage it, see how that feels, just sustain things, before you rush ahead to deliver a flurry of un-felt notes. Slow practice is mandatory in practicing, and the same goes for solo generating as well, at least for me. Machine gun tactics don't impress me at all.

At least that's the way it feels for me anyway.

David Snyder
Songwriter/Renaissance Man
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