Electric Guitar: Play a Few One-Note Solos

Occasionally you should play a one-note solo on your electric guitar. I'm serious. You should play a solo consisting of only a single note treated in many different ways. Why? Because simplicity in music (and in life) is important and effective; and what could be more simple in musical improvisation than playing a solo of only one note? Also, it was Einstein who said that things should be kept as simple as possible, but no simpler, and they don't get much smarter than Einstein. Minimalism can be a nice effective idea when used moderately in music. Ludwig Wittgenstein, the great philosopher, was a minimalist and also a rather laconic speaker since he thought that whatever cannot be expressed clearly should be dismissed with silence; and he also reasoned that things the world that SHOW themselves, yet that cannot be spoken about constitute "the mystical." But I seem to have gotten away from talking about one-note solos, so I shall return to that subject:

You can have your single-note solo last for as long as you like. Four bars, eight bars, twelve bars, sixteen bars, or more; and the background chords and accompaniment can change behind you or underneath you as much as is necessary and you can insert plenty of dynamics. Experiment with other musicians in your band changing chord progressions or tranposing into different keys behind you, or direct them to do anything you want, while you simply stick to that single note on your guitar throughout the entire solo.

Add vibrato. Pick the note repeatedly. Fast or slow. Go in and out of time with the rhythm of the tune. Stop playing the note briefly. Add space and plenty of breathing room. Bend the note a little, but not too much (use microtonal bends - quarter steps or less, smears I believe they are called) because you never want to stray too far from the single tone you have chosen to express yourself with. Mainly you should concentrate on that single note while attempting to instill as much energy, emotion, spirituality, passion, tension, release, and everything else you've got into the solo; play the note adding in whatever is boiling inside of you.

And when choosing the note for your solo, make sure it is the absolute best note that you can find. Actually, it must be the PERFECT note that fits (or goes against) the song you're playing, because it has to be the MAIN note of the solo.

What could a single note solo be compared to in real life? Are there some comparisons we could make? Yes.

Sometimes people have an entire meal consisting of only one dish, Benjamin Franklin wrote in his autobiography how he moved to a new town when he was a young man and could afford only a loaf of bread for his single meal of the day; and a truck driver I once worked with went into a grocery store on his lunch break and purchased a single package of bologna and ate only that for his noon day meal; he had no bread, no condiments, no cheese, nothing to drink either, only the bologna which he took out of the package and folded in half and bit into it with his false teeth.

Are these things like single note solos? I guess they could be. It depends on how you observe the situation and analyze it.

Also many punk bands do not play solos at all; so if you decide to play a one note solo you can be considered at least slightly more sophisticated than them.

Another reason for playing a single-note solo is that it may help your ideas improve. Years ago (and even to this day) when I was first learning about improvisation, and practicing it a lot, I would notice that whenever I would practice every day, playing for many hours, my ideas during improvisational solos would become noticeably stale and uninspired, as if I were merely playing the same ideas over and over. But if I did not practice much during any particular day, or skipped a few days of playing altogether, even though my technique would go down considerably and I would play rather sloppily, whenever it came time to improvise, my ideas would be fresh and exciting and alive and it would seem like I was playing entirely new melodies that had never existed before. So when your improvisations start to go stale, remember to play a few one-note solos, and you may get some good improvisational ideas on the next songs you play.

Another thing that might be considered similar to one-note solos is the word 'abacot,' which is a word that exists in dictionaries but is not in fact a real word; it was simply a misprint that happened a long time ago and lexicographers kept copying the same mistake over and over again. How can a one-note solo be considered similar to the word abacot? Well many musicians probably do not think a single note solo is a "real" solo since it isn't complicated or sophisticated enough, just as abacot is not considered a "real" word, although it's still listed in dictionaries.

But one-note solos can be quite expressive if approached in the right way. Actually that is the challenge I am trying to convey here. I want to encourage you to make your one-note solo interesting by adding other things to it. Phrasing, picking, incorporation of attitude, various methods of attack, manipulation of tone, stylistic subtleties used in as many different ways as possible to make the single note solo sound fresh and exciting.

Source:

"On Soloing," How to Become a Guitar Player from Hell, Jason Earls, Pleroma Publications, 2007.