Some of this is repetitive from the good advice above but may get you thinking. Know the melody in its simplest form. Try it with double stops. Try playing the melody for half the break and veering elsewhere on the second half. Try it ala Sam Bush or Bobby Osborne which were both heavily influenced by fiddlers( which I am no good at). Start it in one octave and jump up or down an octave to finish it in. Alter the melody with the bluest of blue notes.
It is hard to do some of this on the fly. If it is a song I intend to play a lot or perform I always get the melody then experiment with a couple other ways to play it to keep things interesting. The melody is king but sometimes it gets tiresome and a slight twist can keep things interesting. On Nov 10, 12:25 pm, Don <adobeinthepi...@gmail.com> wrote: > What I like to do is work out some rough sketches for various > possibilities of what I could play rather than a totally memorized > solo. Then I have some ideas I can draw on depending on the > feeling/emotion I have for the song at the time. I can play the > straight/embellished melody. I can play down in the first position and > use open strings for a bigger sound. I can play up the neck out of > doublestop positions (find the melody up in a closed position and > embellish). I can play something notey out of the pentatonic (say it > ain't so). I can play a tremolo break. I can play something bluesy. I > can play a Monroe style break out of chop chord positions. If I've > worked out all these ideas, I really know the song and I can use one > or more of these ideas to come up with something appropriate and > coherent. > > If there's a highly recognizable solo for the song already, ie > Monroe's break for "I'm Going Back To Old Kentucky", then I'm going to > learn that and play it note for note for at least one of my breaks. -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Taterbugmando" group. To post to this group, send email to taterbugma...@googlegroups.com. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to taterbugmando+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/taterbugmando?hl=en.
