Blowhard, Esq. writes:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1Cwz_CwRgEY#t=4m41s
What makes for a good guitar solo? Lord knows it’s easy for them to slip into self-indulgence, but it seems to me a good solo functions a lot like a good bridge — it elaborates on the melody or chord progression to open the song up, giving it a larger, more epic feel. Conversely, good solo works almost like a standalone piece — a mini-song within the larger song, just like a good fight scene is like a mini-movie within the larger one.
What’s your favorite recent solo — be it guitar, keyboard, or otherwise? Above is mine, already cued up. It lasts 1:14 and for me contains just the right amount of elaboration, improvisation, and repetition. Sounds to me like the guitars, Dan Auerbach, is working off primitive pentatonic scales (The Black Keys are solid revivalists, not innovators), but he never lets it devolve into wanking. He frequently (at the 4:35, 5:05, 5:13, 5:30, 5:42, and 5:52 marks) finds a hook and repeats it, thereby grounding the music — and giving you a chance to groove and rock out — before moving onto the next riff.
Related
- Back here I shared my embarrassingly overeager fandom for this band. (Hey, it was the first concert I went to in a long time, gimme a break.)
Blowhard, Esq.
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Simplicity is to me one key element, like this solo demonstrates. It needs to evolve as well, to end up somewhere , preferably right before it exits.
It’s not recent, but this one wins for brevity: less than 15 seconds and only 4 phrases, but he gets the bottlerocket thing going:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mDtVWyxCMAU#t=2m8s
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I remember seeing Smashing Pumpkins back in the day, when they were touring for “Siamese Dream.” Billy Corgan was complaining that the radio edit of “Mayonnaise” omitted the solo. “Why’d they do that? The *whole point* of a rock song is the guitar solo!”
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Something about The Black Keys just annoys me. I’m not sure what, but I rarely enjoy anything they do. Though having said that, the solo ain’t bad.
I don’t listen to a whole lot of current guitar-oriented music, but this track by the brilliant and under-appreciated Wussy is not so much about a guitar solo, but about great guitar work overall. Crank it up.
Oooooh ooooooooh, the sky breaks in two.
Ooooooh oooooooooh, it’s the end of you.
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Sorry I don’t do recent well.
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no bridge here. the solo is just how it ends.
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or
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and no bridge here. the solo is a beginning statement.
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In such a brief form as the pop song, a solo runs the risk of not meshing very well with the before and after. Like, “Hey, wouldn’t it kick ass if we threw in a solo here?” Why? “Just cuz.” It hits the audience over the head and wakes them up from the dream.
To fit in more seamlessly, the solo should be smoothing a transition from one emotion to another — the more different those two, the more impressive the bridge that joins them.
The simplest way to do this is to bridge the gap between silence, ordinary, mundane life before or after the song — i.e., put the solo at the beginning to lure in the listener, or at the end to guide them out. Guitar solos are rarely at the beginning or end, although “Wuthering Heights” by Kate Bush has a wonderfully serene solo at the end, contrasting with the insecure lyrics and melodramatic vocal delivery of the rest, suggesting that things work out for the singer.
Where the guitar is absent, the saxophone is up for the task. “Smooth Operator” by Sade has a great mood-setting opening solo, while crescendo or fade-out solos lead us out with something novel (not abrupt, not the same ol’ same ol’) on “Dancing in the Dark” by Bruce Springsteen, “Danger Zone” by Kenny Loggins, and “Mediate” by INXS. (Honorable mention to “Modern Love” by David Bowie and “Dance Hall Days” by Wang Chung.)
As for solos that smooth a transition within the body of the song, three excellent examples come to mind, though I haven’t thought it over extensively:
“Bohemian Rhapsody” by Queen, guitar solo that moves us from tragic to comic tones.
“Sweet Child o’ Mine’ by Guns N’ Roses, guitar solo after the tender and secure first half that plunges us into an uncertain and Sublime mood.
“Avalon” by Roxy Music, sax solo after the reflective and wistful first half that lifts us up into pure elation during the finale. Probably my favorite of the ones I’ve discussed, since it continues on after the transition has already been made, where the restrained sax contrasts so powerfully with the high-spirited female vocal.
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“Like a Hurricane” is a good example of a song that starts out with a guitar solo, albeit a brief one.
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One of the great lies about the whole ’60s / ’70s / ’80s period in music is that today’s musicians have evolved beyond the juvenile, balls-to-the-wall, rock out with your cock out kind of music that was symbolized by the rock guitar solo. Rock musicians are supposedly more grown-up and family-friendly nowadays.
No, they’re just boring and off-putting.
We already had grown-up, sophisticated solos that were spirited rather than spastic, pensive rather than pummeling. Namely, the sax solo, and every other pop song from the 1980s had one of them, just as every rock song back then had a guitar solo.
Back then there was grown folks’ music that was still young at heart. Now we have teenagers whose lives are less eventful than those of their doofus dads and soccer moms. It is as unnatural as popular music devoid of instrumental solos.
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Now this here be some guitar.
http://youtu.be/iDQAtoGClE8
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Nice thread! I’ll toss in another. If you like a surfeit of guitars here is Poco’s Hurry Up, the first track off their second album. The first half of the song is singing and the second half is taken up by short, snippety guitar solos, traded off between band members, sort of like the very end of Abbey Road. Rusty Young’s pedal steel is also in the background impersonating an organ–a kind of double solo with multiple leads
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