Guitar soloing, simply explained

There are lots of names for everything about music theory. I will keep it simple and use only one name.  Each one is bolded out below. 


All you need to know : I hope you have seen a guitar and know what frets are. Also when you play a single fret. Its called a note.

This is a keyboard:

Notice the key yellowed out. Notice how it repeats over the keyboard. The distance between two similarly located keys on the keyboard is called an Octave. There are twelve keys between them. These are called 12 tones. These correspond to the 12 frets on the guitar. So the musical distance between two  consecutive frets on the guitar is same as two keys on the keyboard and this is called a semitone difference. A difference of two frets (or two keys on the keyboard) is called a tone.

Fact: The keys on the keyboard are arranged to make playing the key of C easy. The note in yellow in the image above is "C".

When notes are arranged with the following distance between them:
root-note tone note tone note semitone note tone note tone note tone note semitone note
Or Simply:
tone tone semitone tone tone tone semitone
Its called a Major Scale

Fact: So you can see why the key of C is easy to play on the piano? Its cause if you play all the white keys on a piano you get the major scale of C. 

The notes on the major scale are what make the interval. So The major scale can also be written as:
1 tone 2 tone 3 semitone 4 tone 5 tone 6 tone 7 semitone 1 ... cause you are at the octave point rinse and repeat.

kapeesh?

But I wanted to play solos.
And so you shall. The 4th and the 7th ... require some skill to place correctly. Why you ask? Cause they are semitones away from 3rd and 1st respectively.

For clarity: Here is the 4th: 

And here is the 7th:

Remove these and this is the interval sequence you are left with:  1 2 4 5 6 ... 1

Five notes ... penta notes. These are called the Major Pentatonic Scale. Play these irrespective of the last note you struck anywhere on the fretboard and you CANNOT sound bad. 

So. What is left is for you is to 

a) Find out which key you are playing in. Determined from chords, more on that on another day. 

b) Remember the names of the notes on the 6th String (the lower E ... fattest string). 

c) Remember these 5 adjacent positions on the fretboard. The root note is colored green

It is important to think of the root notes and the intervals. This will eventually lead you to becoming a master. This is actually more helpful than learning the note names of the fretboard. Also, when you have the root note targeted on the lower E figure out the intervals of all other points on the lower E with respect to that. This will keep you from slipping off the scale. 

How to practice

1.) Lay down a chord progression. For key of C one sample will be (among various other options ... this is solo lesson not rhythm lesson)  C G Am F.
2.) Be aware of root note. 

3.) Observe the intervals on the lower E string.

4.) Play the solo and REMEMBER ... have Fun! 

Read the fretboard like the matrix and kick some agent butt! 

Piano images made from this tool : http://www.pianotools.com/cgi-bin/piano_visualization_tools/intervals.pl