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).

Another technique I love to use are descending legato runs with intelligently placed pauses (i.e. accented at down or upbeats in the song for instance). They tend to make for a great ending to a solo. Vai and Satriani do this a lot too. The key is to make it fluid sounding. The sweep arpeggio at the end of this lick adds to the descending feel of the lick and adds variety to the legato phrasing.

For this exercise, the most important things are to be fluid with the legato, and to focus on the accents. The arpeggio run at the end can be tricky, but like everything else on this site, it can be nailed with practice.

Note: I re-recorded this song and played this lick a little differently. You'll notice in the clip that the pauses during the descending legato part are longer than what is shown in the tab.