Here’s a great article on guitar playing where it explains that most guitarists today overlook “melody” but all they want to do is show off and play fast notes all the time. This is one thing that I’m trying to work on in my own guitar playing. Trying to sound melodic. Trying to make my lead guitar solo’s sound like someone singing a song. The goal is you want your lead playing to sound memorable and you want to play something that someone can remember.

Of course, it is definitely possible to mix playing with a melodic feel and shredding together ’cause I can think of two guitarists who are great at that. Those two guitarists are Joe Satriani and Al Di Meola (two guitarists who are my heroes). Even though those two guys can shred on guitar, they are still able to pull off sounding melodic at the same time.

A lot of guitarists out there overlook melody. Most guitarists just want to show off and try to impress people but if you really wanna impress people and melt their faces, melody is key.

I’ve watched a lot of interviews with Joe Satriani and he would always say things like “Forget finger exercises, learn to try to sound melodic each time you play”. Joe never agreed with finger exercises. Ya know, scale exercises and chromatic exercises that help you play fast. Nobody wants to hear that shit… people want to hear music and that’s what I’m trying to work on myself. Why do you think Joe Satriani sounds musical all the time? He knows what he’s talking about. You should check out his new record, “Shockwave Supernova”, it’s really good.

Check out this interesting article…

http://www.guitarworld.com/session-guitar-shredding-great-know-how-play-melodies

Kev