Today's Guitar Solo Tip #2  is about breathing your phrases.
Learning to ‘breathe your phrases’ is one of the fastest and
most effective ways to transform your phrasing skills from
mediocre to excellent! The idea of comparing your guitar
phrasing with your phrasing patterns when you speak is a
very simple concept. But although simple, this is a very
powerful idea that can transform the way you play. Let’s
look at one of the best ways to work on this now.
Breathing your phrases: one of the things that come
natural to us as we speak is the necessity to pause from
time to time to get a breath of air. It isn’t often that you
hear someone saying word after word, sentence after
sentence, without stopping for air! However, it does happen
and most of us have been on the receiving end of a one-way
conversation like that at some point. How did it make you
feel? In our own experience, we feel irritated with those
types of encounters. No one likes to be talked “at”. Here’s
the point we are trying to make: How many guitar-players talk
“at” their listeners instead of trying to communicate
something to them? It would appear that, for some guitarists,
the whole goal of their “communication” is to dominate the
“conversation,” using every technique known to man at top
speed and without pause. We wonder if these players understand
what effect this type of phrasing has on their listeners.

Contrast that approach with a mature player who is, in fact,
a virtuoso, but chooses to communicate with his audience.
For sure, there will be flurries of wonderfully advanced
playing – fast runs, speedy arpeggios, etc. – but this will be
balanced with musical ideas containing beautiful vibrato,
emotional note-bending, and rhythmic variation.

We are not saying that fast, virtuoso playing is unemotional. It
certainly is very emotional and passionate at times, and is
a wonderful tool for self-expression. However, it is only one
piece of the puzzle. One of the biggest problems some
inexperienced players have is that they use their technical
skill to cover up their poorly developed phrasing skills. In
other words, they play fast constantly to try to mask the fact
that they lack the necessary skills to truly communicate and
express themselves. This is a shame, but it can be corrected.

Okay, so hopefully you’ve decided that you do not want to be
a guitarist who talks “at” his audience with very little to say.
Let’s try this breathing exercise together. The point of this is to
demonstrate that there is an inherent natural flow to effective
communication. There must be words, notes, and substance,
but there also must be space and rest.

Step 1: Take a seat in your usual practice space. You should be
sitting upright so that you can breathe properly. Inhale deeply
as you would when you are getting ready to say something
important. As you exhale, try and sing a little melody until you
run out of breath. Give this a try before continuing.

Did you do it? Most likely, your melody wasn’t very long.
Don’t worry if it wasn’t the greatest melody in the world.
Perhaps it wasn’t even an original melody... that doesn’t
matter.

Step 2: Repeat Step 1 four (4) times in succession. The 1st
time, sing a melody. Then pause, and inhale. As you exhale,
make your 2nd melody an attempt to “answer” your 1st one.
The 3rd time, sing another new melody, and the 4th time,
attempt to answer the 3rd melody. This process is called “call
and response.” Many great blues singers and guitarists have
mastered this technique (but this technique can be found in
all styles of music).

If you’ve done this, you now have four (4) bars of naturally
flowing music that you composed, and you didn’t even touch
your guitar.

Make sure and practice doing this in as many musical
situations as possible. Here are a few possibilities: the next
time you are composing a song or melody, try this breathing
method first. Sing your melodies along with the chords. Do
this over and over until you find a melody you like. Then get
your guitar and learn the notes. Also, be creative with this
exercise. Use different rhythmic groupings, inflections, and
dynamics. Use your imagination!