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).

It is so easy to sound immature when it comes to tapping. For some reason people think tapping gives you a license to play as far outside a key as possible, if you know what I mean. I rarely tap, but when I do, I try to make it melodic and harmonically interesting sounding. I prefer tapping passages along the lines of what Vai or Nuno Bettencourt would do. In this example, there is a repeating pattern that descends for closure of a solo. The repeating pattern involves a quick trill with the tap finger and a tapped slide. It gives the riff a nice flowy sound. Make sure your tapping skills are up to speed!

There is a lot of position shifting going on in this riff. So make sure you are shifting to the right positions. It is very easy to hit a few wrong notes here and there with this riff (as I often do!).