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).

I find most Pentatonic riffs to be overused, so when I do play Pentatonic style lines, I try my best to add some sort of twist so that it doesn't sound like every other pentatonic riff out there. In this example, I add sweeps to build an ascending pentatonic run. I think you'll agree that this doesn't sound like a typical penatonic riff. Indeed it is pure Pentatonic though. This toughest part of this lick will be the rapid position shifting that is needed. Futhermore the sweeps make it somewhat asymmetric, in that each sweep has a slight different shape.

Like I said above, the position shifting and sweeps are the toughest part of this riff. When you play this one, really build up aggressively to that final bent note.