Are great solos composed or felt?

[gibbytones]

guys..
im sure you'll have heard amazing solos in your lives.
here is the question.

are Great Solos composed or are great solo made on the spot when you feel the music running through your veins?

 

[budakbone]

For me i think its made on the spot............as it is something like a reflex action.lol u dun think.....it jus came 8)

 

[DoubleBlade]

I would say both play equal roles in determining the success of a solo.

You can have 101% feel but then there might be a possibility that whatever you solo freestyle may be just rubbish to the audience.

That's where the style of arranging comes in....

You can have 101% composition skills but what good would your solo be without any feel to it? Might as well get a robot to do a guitar solo for you....

That's just my thoughts.

 

[MackSonne]

Many solos out there are thought out, worked out, played many times, listened to again, and played many times again, until everyone is happy with it.

More than often writing a solo involves hard work and material references. The hard work comes from finding a way to make the solo fit into the rhythm background, and other technical considerations. It's a lot of grey matter rather than spirit-matters.

Otherwise, how do you think people can just freestyle solo on stage? They've been playing around and practising their music well so when time comes, they can just fall back on their routine.

 

[gibbytones]

yeah. i always thought it was getting the mixture right.
drawing the line between composing and feel.

for me personally. i just compose the skeleton of the solo im
gonna play. the rest just happens....

 

[eugen3]

i know of some bassists who write bass solos note for note after spontaneously playing it, then trying to figure what notes they actually played.

 

[gibbytones]

haha i find myself sometimes in the same situtation.

I play a certain solo for a certain song the way i felt.
and after some months i wanted to tab and i couldnt figure
how i actually played some notes
and the best part some were totally not in key but sounded perfectly
normal.

 

[kentheman2000]

It's all about how a person can interpret his feelings into the solo... If you can successfully convey the image you wanna show to your listeners, that's a good solo.

 

[ShredCow]

Personally, I hate it when the composer of a great solo says something like, "I don't know... It just came out that way..."

I'm like... Thanks lor... Now I can't steal your secret.

Anyway, great solos are both composed and improvised. Its been done both ways. Unless someone wishes to do the math and record some stats to prove it, I'm on the fence and I'll do both - which ever manages to rock the song more.

 

[Crawldaddy]

Hmm.

^^+1

One cliched solo is the Stairway to Heaven, which was composed in the form of its structure and link notes.. then the rest was just on-the-fly.

But I find that David Gilmour's approach is worth trying out. He plays a few takes and listens back to the takes for bits and pieces he likes and stitches the pieces together in one final, rehearsed take.

 

[penta-tonic]

wrong forum.