with Kevin Downing

Plenty of guitar players are fascinated bythe twin guitar solos heard on such recordingsas Thin Lizzy's The Boys are Back in lown, SteelyDan's Bodhisatfvo, Fleetwood Mac's Albatross,Allman Brothers' Jessica, and ABBAT KnowingMe, Knowing You - to name a few. Many rockbands have included twin guitar solos in theirsongs because i t adds something unique tothe music when used well , and some l ike theAllman Brothers and Queen have made i t adist inct ive trademark of their sound. A wellthought out and placed harmonised guitarsolo can really make your band stand out fromthe crowd.

Twin gu i ta r so los a re a lso known as'harmonised solos'and doubled solosiYou canbuy harmoniser pedals that can achieve similarsounds as those I am covering here, or you canrecord yourself playing one part while you playalong with the other part. However, it is muchmore fun when two guitarists play harmonisedparts together in a l ive situation. I f you are notused to doubled parts, this style of playingcould take a bit of gett ing used to, but i t 's wellworth the effort.

To understand how harmony playing worksyou need to understand some basic music

Twin Guitar Solos

theory, which isn't difficult. The following solo Ihave written out is in the key of F major whichhas the notes F, G, A, Bb, C, D, E, F. Most twinguitar solos harmonise their parts with thirdsand sometimes add a fourth. A third from F isA.or G is Bb,e tc - you count F as 1 ,G as 2 ,A as3, Bb as 4, or if counting from G - G is '1, A is 2,Bb is 3 and C is 4. When harmonizing melodiesyou can go either way, up or down to achieveyour desired effect.

lf you take a look at Excercise 1 , you can see Ihave a little melody that goes along the secondstring. Ex.2 is the harmonised notes of Ex. 1 onthe first string. lf you count up three from everynote you wil l discover they are al l thirds apart.For those who know a bit more theory - someare major and some are minor thirds.

You don't have to play this little solo onseparate strings like this, but I did it for a reason.One person can easi ly play the both partstogether, but it doesn't sound as good as twopeople playing it with separated parts. Try it.PIay both parts together by yourself, then playeach individual part separately by gett ing afr iend to play one while you play the othet orby yourself by recording yourself playing onepart and playing along with the recording.

Ex. 3 is another simple melody, which isharmonised in Ex. 4. There are a couple offourth intervals in this l ine (F-Bb) just to give abit of different colour.

You most probably heard instantly that theseparated parts sound so much better thanthe one you played all by yourself. Why isthis? There are a lot of reasons but the mainone is that two guitarists playing separatedparts have different playing techniques, strings,guitars, pedals, amplifiers and the like to makethings sound so much different.

Not every situation you are in has the luxuryto two guitar players, so when you do comeacross another player it is a great idea to workout some doubled solos. One t ip - they workbest if there are a lot of long notes and themusic isn't going too fast.

To hear the mp3 for this lesson go tohttp://www.g u ita r.co.nzlcateg o rylreso u rces/freelesson s/

Kevin Downing is a professional guitarist,teacher and author based in Palmerston North.His contact details, along with many freebies, areon his website at www.guitar.co.nz

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