Learning solos without tabs

by Amazigh
(North Africa )

Question: I'm struggling night and day to understand how to create songs or play some famous ones using scales, chords and arpeggios.

What I don't understand is how to play a solo without looking at online tabs. I'm now doing scale exercises which I hope will lead me to the ability to play anything I hear, but I'm not sure of that.

Please shed light on that, because I really am thirsty.

Answer

In the early stages of learning guitar scales and soloing techniques (both covered in the scales and lead sections of this site), you won't be able to pick things up purely by ear. It takes time.

Your ear is still developing. Just like your fingers adapt using "muscle memory", your brain must adapt to the various tonal flavours and movements within different scales before you can recognise them in the songs you love.

Don't stop yourself from looking online for a tab. It's not that big a deal. Yes, eventually you'll be able to pick certain things up by ear, but for now, it's useful, even just for getting your fingers moving, to play along to your favourite songs with or without the aid of tab.

Some songs are too complex to pick up purely by ear for most people (including me!) anyway.

What I will suggest is, once you've found the tab and start to learn the solo, find out what scales and arpeggios are being used, referencing what you've learned from the lessons. This will be very beneficial for future reference and general ear training.

I like to know what scales are being played in the songs I like so I can write my own solo to it, using the same scale.

You may be interested to know that there is a great piece of software out there that slows down solos for you and really helps train your ear. It's called Riffmaster Pro. You can get a 10 day free trial here.

Hope that helps. Keep learning, but don't be afraid to get that tab for some instant inspiration!