Beginner soloing

blodzoom

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I just learned the a minor pentatonic scale and my teacher says next week we will trade off solos. That sounds great but when I try to improvise, nothing very good happens.

Does anyone have any tips on figuring out some licks to play or a resource for some licks I can steal to start getting the feel for it?

Or just give me a lick to practice?

Thanks in advance
 
Try improvising over backing tracks or records in the same key as a pentatonic scale you know, one or two notes in the right place can sound good, it doesn't have to be shredding. Getting used to to starting and ending phrases on the right note in the right place is important. Aim for the root note to begin with. Play around and listen what happens.

Techniques like hammer-ons, pull-offs and double stops (playing two notes of the scale at the same time) greatly enhances pentatonic soloing but are things you need to practice. Don't be in too much of rush and enjoy it!
 
Jon,

I think this already helped. A major thing is that I need to stop trying to shred, it's just not happening. Slowing down and doing less sounds better.

I'm not really sure how to start and end on the right notes. I'm starting to get timing better and sometimes I do a bit that sounds good and other times it's blah, I think that might be the note choice that you're speaking of. When I'm playing with a backing track on youtube in A minor, I don't really know what their playing, just know that every note that I play in the scale sounds Ok but sometimes better than others.
 
Patterns and progressions

I just learned the a minor pentatonic scale and my teacher says next week we will trade off solos. That sounds great but when I try to improvise, nothing very good happens.

Does anyone have any tips on figuring out some licks to play or a resource for some licks I can steal to start getting the feel for it?

Or just give me a lick to practice?

Thanks in advance

Back in the day, when I took some private lessons from an instructor at the NCE he gave me some techniques for improvisation. The thing you need to do is write some short exercises consisting of variations on some simple patterns. To be able to utilize those short patterns in an improvisations is invaluable. Also the overall improvisation should follow a viable progression of chords. Memorize and practice some and that will the basis for your improvisation.
 
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