By now, perhaps you are coming along well with the exercises. But you may wonder how on earth do you apply technique to soloing? This is a difficult question and is similar to the equally difficult question, "How do you play lead"? There are no strict answers to these types of questions. Some people prefer to learn a handful of riffs, and then their playing becomes dominated by their riffs. I prefer to view solos like vocal sections. Whether it is a solo, or a melody, I feel that something is always being communicated, and what better way to communicate than treating your guitar like a voice. So when I write solos, they usually are inspired by a melody and are dominated by the melody. A solo may have several main parts, and technique comes into the picture when I try to connect the parts meaningfully.

The exercises that follow show riffs from a few songs I recorded (some in dire need of a re-recording!). In the included audio files, you will notice that you don't hear the riff until several seconds after you start playing the file. I did this so that you can hear the musical context of the riff (i.e. what led up to it).

Earlied I said I like to use descending legato runs with pauses to resolve tension. At least, I think I said that anyway. Well, I also like to play ascending legato runs with pauses to create tension in the first place. Note the placement of accents in this riff. It really helps with the tension building. And then after, it leads nicely to an agressive picked passage, and finally a sweep arpeggio riff to bring the idea to an end (i.e. from there it goes to the verse of the song).

With this riff, make sure that you are applying a lot of finger pressure to the slides so that those notes are sounding strongly. And for the picked passage, make sure you are picking smoothly and accurately.