Favorite Guitar Solo?

Two actually.
1.) Angus Young – You Shook Me All Night Long
2.) Allan Holdsworth – Joint Ventures (from the Heavy Machinery album)

My favorites change over time. But my first answer has to be the solo from The Unforgiven by Kirk Hammett.

I agree Bill!
AND, since you have that solo as a lesson for students, I have a great continuation exercise for
you that will TRULY teach your students more about the art of improvisation =)
Remember the timing variation exercises form my previous lessons?
Well, this is sort of a more real-life continuation of that.
1.) Learn the solo from Shook me BY HEART, and especially focus on the rhythmical content.
2.) THEN, you play over a backing over the solo section from “Strange Kind of Woman” by Deep Purple. The key here is
a.) To play the Shook Me-solo Note-for-note over the Deep purple backing, FIRST with the same rhythmical values. Thanks to the triplet-feel of Strange, and the slower tempo, this will clash rhythmically something terrible. Won’t groove an inch even! ☺
b.) Then, play the solo again, but this time, play it in triplet-feel, using the EXACT same notes and order, just rest on certain ones longer and use triplet with rests on the others to get a good match over the Strange-backing.

Get the idea? Truly perhaps THE best exercise for learning to break out of a lick or line and adapt it to any circumstance! I WOULD have used this as an example for my IG-lesson, but alas this kind of copyrighted material is hands-off (for now at least).

Hey Guys, 🙂

I cannot pick a single favorite, because I like too many! Besides, I’m not big on rating “art” similarly to gymnastics – IE: 1st-place; 2nd-place; 3rd-place; etc! :rolleyes:

So instead, here are some of my faves from some of my favorite guitarists (in NO PARTICULAR ORDER, except it’s sort of chronological…):

George Harrison – “Something” (The Beatles – Abbey Road)
Jimi Hendrix – “Machine Gun” (Band Of Gypsys)
**Neil Young – “Cinnamon Girl” (Everybody Knows This Is Nowhere)
Jimmy Page – “The Song Remains The Same” (Led Zeppelin – Houses Of The Holy)
Leslie West – “Mississippi Queen” (Mountain – Climbing!)
John McLaughlin – “Lila’s Dance” (Mahavishnu Orchestra – Visions From The Emerald Beyond)
Al DiMeola – “Race With The Devil On A Spanish Highway” (Elegant Gypsy)
Ritchie Blackmore – (Tie!) “Smoke On The Water” & “Highway Star” – (Deep Purple – (Machine Head)
*Steve Hunter – “Train Kept A Rollin” (Aerosmith – Get Your Wings)
Larry Carlton – “Kid Charlemagne” (Steely Dan – The Royal Scam)
Michael Schenker – “Pack It Up And Go” (UFO – Obsession)
Alex Lifeson – “La Villa Strangiato” (Rush – Live Exit Stage Left)
Eddie Van Halen – “I’m The One” (Van Halen I)
Yngwie J. Malmsteen – “Black Star” (Rising Force)
Steve Lukather – (Tie) “Roseanna” & “I Won’t Hold You Back” (Toto IV)
Steve Morse – “On The Pipe” (Steve Morse Band – The Introduction)
Elliot Easton – “Shake It Up” (The Cars – Shake It Up)
Steve Vai – “For The Love Of God” (Passion & Warfare)
“Dimebag” Darrell Abbott – “I’m Broken” (Pantera – Far Beyond Driven)
Ty Tabor – “It’s Love” (King’s X – Faith, Hope & Love)
Paul Gilbert – “Daddy, Brother, Lover, Little Boy” (Mr. Big – Lean Into It)
Dean DeLeo – “Trippin’ On A Hole In A Paper Heart” (Stone Temple Pilots – Tiny Music – Songs From The Vatican Gift Shop)
Guthrie Govan – “Fives” (Erotic Cakes)

NOTES: *This is NOT a typo! Some people may NOT be aware that Steve Hunter (of Lou Reed’s and (later) Alice Cooper’s touring bands) NOT Joe Perry or Brad Whitford, cut the solo for this epic/classic rock track! …..Hmmm…..?!? :rolleyes::p:

**I had to include this track’s solo simply out of respect for Neil and the balls he had to embrace “the one-note guitar solo!!!” for 4-bars and then (brilliantlly) REPEAT IT!!! (for a total of 8-bars on that one-note!!!) Genius!

OK, that’s it…(I think)… and I’m sure I missed some that I love, but as I said before, these lists are impossible for me! (LOL!) :rolleyes: 😮

Thanks for your patience guys. Enjoy!!! 😉

~Bill Meehan~ 😀

In all honesty guys, I probably have over 50 favourite solos 😀
So here are the first 5 that popped into my head.

Iron Maiden – Fear of the dark (From A real live one)
lynyrd skynyrd – Free Bird
Guthrie Govan – Waves
Jimi Hendrix – Little Wing
Joe Satriani – The Extremist

@FretDancer69 6931 wrote:

LOL is that for real? :O i gotta check that out xD

Well i have to many favorite solos, I will have to list them some other time though.

Yes! Check out the studio version/recording of “Cinnamon Girl” by Neil Young! Seriously, I LOVE the song, it’s just that it has the most minimalistic guitar solo of “all-time!” BTW, for what it is worth, this song uses an interesting tuning called “double-dropped-D,” which is:

D6__A5__D4__G3__B2__D1

So, both E-strings drop down a whole step to “D’s.” I ‘ve experimented with this tuning, and it’s really cool, because it’s the bottom half of “Dropped-D” or “Open-D” (with the D5 power-chord on the bottom 3 strings) and the top-half of “Open-G” with the G-major triad on the highest 3-strings (G-B-D respectively!) Therefore, this song is great for playing “slide-guitar,” droning-riffs, etc. I find that using a new tuning like this can be a fun/new way to get cool “songwriting/riff-writing” ideas too! 😎

~Bill Meehan~ 😀

Hmm, way to many guitar solos to name but here are a few:

1. Limelight-Alex Lifeson
2. Mr. Crowley-Randy Rhoades
3. The Trooper-Adrian Smith&Dave Murray
4. Hells Bells-Angus Young
5. Ride the Lightning-Kirk Hammett

Those are all very good solos.

Coop

Bill, I understand what you mean bout Hammett. He is real hot and cold for me. But along with all the out of tune, unmelodic solos that he does there are some gems.

The Ride the Lightning CD has some of his best work I think.

Ride, Creeping Doom, and Fade to Black are all very good IMHO.

STuff off Death Magnetic….well not so much. LOL!!!

Coop