How to Write a Harmonised Guitar Solo

So, I’ve been talking a lot about chords, rhythm playing, and soloing…but not much about where the three things meet in the middle- the twin guitar (a.k.a. harmonised) solo. If you’re in a band with two guitarists, getting the two to harmonise can add a depth to the sound that probably isn’t used enough in most modern music. It really beats the boring, old, “having one on rhythm, and one on lead, or both doubling the same chords” technique!

Why wouldn’t you want to harmonise the two guitars? It gives the audience something more interesting than chords to listen to, and- when used in the right places- it can really sound ROCK (or, if you prefer, METAL!). Examples of bands that have and do use harmonised guitar solos include:

• Thin Lizzy
• Metallica
• Queen (on recordings)
• Fleetwood Mac
• Iron Maiden

Trust me, a well placed guitar harmony can really make your band stand out from the crowd! So how do you do it?

Creating Harmony

Firstly, I’m going to assume you already have a solo, and just want to harmonise it. If not, and you want to know how to write a solo in the first place, head this way.

As I discussed in the post on harmonising a scale, the best way to harmonise something and stay in key is to limit yourself to the notes of the scale you’re already using…if you know what that is. You’ll probably want to stay in key to make it sound good, although there are exceptions.

Now, there are two ways of going about this. The easy way (with a lot more trial and error), or the more in depth way (which, once you know the theory, will be much quicker). The easy way is to know your intervals, choose one, and then write out the second guitar part so that each note is that far away from the note played in the first guitar part at the same time.

Good intervals to use include: major and/or minor thirds, fourths, fifths, and major and/or minor sixths. On each interval post, I’ve included the shape of the interval, so it shouldn’t be too tricky. The most difficult bit being finding intervals that work.

Now the in depth way…

The Theory

In the article on how to harmonise a scale, I also mention that you start making a basic chord by: picking a root note, then going a third higher (three letters). If you want to create a full chord, you would then go on to add a 5th (five letters higher than the root), however, for a twin guitar solo we don’t need to go any further than that! We already have our starting note (for one guitar) and a harmonised note (for the other guitar).

Again, you can pick any interval you want, but we’ll choose thirds for this example. If you know the scale of the original, you can start out harmonising in thirds by following this method: take the first note of the original line, and then go up (or down) the scale by three notes (including the note you started on) and play the solo using the same scale from there (if you don’t yet understand intervals or scales, I suggest reading the post on thirds linked above).

Soloing

Here is an example. Say this was part of a solo that you’d written:


e-------------------
B-------------------
G-----6-7-9-7-6-----
D-7-9-----------9-7-
A-------------------
E-------------------

The lick uses the A major scale, in this shape:


e--------------------------------7-9-10-
B-------------------------7-9-10--------
G-------------------6-7-9---------------
D-------------6-7-9---------------------
A-------5-7-8---------------------------
E-5-7-8---------------------------------

Now, the lick we want to harmonise starts on the 7th fret of the D string, goes up the scale by four notes and then comes back down. Therefore, to harmonise this we start on a note, say, three notes below the 7th fret, D string (so 8th fret, A string), then go up the scale by 4 notes, then back down.

Here is what we end up with:


e-------------------
B-------------------
G---------6---------
D---6-7-9---9-7-6---
A-8---------------8-
E-------------------

An if you play these two together you’ll be harmonising in thirds (the second lick is a third below the first).

If you have questions, please post them as a comment below.
Rob.

September 14, 2011 at 7:00 pm | How to, Music Theory | No comments