Guitar Solo #6 "The End" by The Beatles

 Today's guitar solo comes the biggest rock band ever - The Beatles. And this solo just happens to arrive at the end of their very last record. These guys were so big that the band's interpersonal relationships were considered news by legitimate journalists, and the news around the time this was recorded was that the guys in the band no longer liked each other.

But they wanted to go out wailing, so they rock this little gem at the end of a album-side-long medley that explores the band's (well, McCartney's) sensitive side. After they launch into the simple A7, D7 chord change *(later sampled by The Beastie Boys in "Sounds of Science") the three amigos rekindle their love for one another, right there, on two-inch tape for everybody to hear (at about the :53 mark in the video above).

In this solo, The Beatles are "trading fours" - a jazz term for alternating solos. First Paul comes in with his lightly distorted Epiphone Casino (that's the kind of guitar he's playing), then, a couple bars later George's slightly cleaner sounding Les Paul comes in, then John's gnarly sounding Epiphone Casino. I'm willing to guess that someone has already analyzed the note selection in these solos, pointing out that Paul's are sentimental, George's are meditative, and John's are rebellious, but I'm not willing to find that dissertation in the annals of music academia.

Here's a video of all the solos:

Can you spot their personalities in their note selection?

Whatever, I care less about the individual notes these guys choose to play, and want to focus instead on how the players interact in this solo. Like I said earlier, these musicians had been through a lot together, and here we can hear them finding the joy and passion they shared together through music twelve years earlier. For better or worse, rock and roll, and our interest in it, includes the musician's personalities. We imagine it's possible to know them as people, for good or ill. So here we can imagine, in the heat and fire of a scorching guitar solo, the years of animosity and bad blood evaporating for a moment, and four guys remembering, finally, why they'd come together in the first place.

And here's the thing: the guitar solo (the concept of the guitar solo, not just the solo in this song) is itself a celebration of rock and roll and the abandon that it invites. The solo is an invitation to lose yourself, either as player or listener, to destroy your ego and simply exist in the music for a moment. The Beatles know that and you can kind of hear how they give themselves over to that celebration in this solo, but, and this is the amazing part, you can also hear how the solo, the celebration, has restorative, healing properties. Just like rock and roll itself.

Guitar Solo #5 "Keep On Rocking in the Free World" by Neil Young

Today's guitar solo comes from the gnarliest Canadian I can think of (admittedly that's not saying much), Neil Young. I think it's important that we study a live clip of this song, firstly because it's a much better version, and secondly because Neil's approach seems better suited to the live setting.

On this blog I want to divide my analysis of these solos into three basic categories:

1) tone - the technology related to the way the guitar sounds. This could be achieved through effects like reverb or wah-wah pedals, or the tone could be the result of the gear, say a Les Paul plugged straight into a Marshall stack. Or it could be the result of technique: playing with the edge of the pick, or a drill, or whatever.

2) note selection - the theoretical aspects of the music. What notes are being played, how are they being played (sweep picking, tremolo picking... etc etc), the relation of the notes or rhythmic elements in the solo to the rest of the composition.

3) passion - the indefinable and innately human emotion (or lack thereof) displayed by the player during the solo. They may be passionately happy, or passionately sad, or passionately angry, but whatever they're feeling, they are feeling it intensely and communicating some sense of that feeling sonically to the listener.

Guess which element this solo is swimming in? If you guessed passion, you win some sort of prize. Congrats, you're master of the obvious. The first solo which runs in the video above from 2:51-3:20 is like a stinging bee, filling your ears with delicious, angry venom. Listen to that. Usually Neil's solo sound, as distinct as the bedraggled and chaotic way he summons the fury from his array of old amps, is built around a fiery delivery. In a weird way, it's kinda like Neil, in his solos, is celebrating every guitar solo; it's the act itself, the rebellion of it, the exuberance of the moment, the connection to the music. It doesn't matter what notes he's playing - what matters is that he's playing 'em, and that he's feeling 'em, like way down deep inside his soul or something.

For the second solo (which begins in the video above at 4:28) Neil punishes his guitar tech and tuner by applying insane vibrato by way of his Bigsby whammy bar (check out the madness at 4:55!). I'd be willing to bet somebody's gonna need to re-tune that guitar before the next song. In the second solo you can hear Neil referencing the simple melody of the verses, while kicking its ass.

Listen to how simple the song is. A player could learn this song in 15 minutes, but it'd take lifetimes to get Neil's tone and passion. In fact, unless you're a total badass, don't try. You'll never be as much of a badass as Neil. This song works because of its simplicity, the brilliance of the arrangement (pay attention to how much they accomplish with the chord change they play right before each solo 2:43 and 4:20), and because the chaos and freedom in Neil's playing resonates perfectly with the song's message about the liberating power of rock and roll madness.

Guitar Solo #4 "Owner of a Lonely Heart" by Yes

Today's guitar solo arrives to us from the muso quadrant of 80s video rock - yep, Yes. I'm still on the solos that I really like, but I must say I don't have a single Yes song on my ipod and my only exposure to "Owner of a Lonely Heart" was on MTV when I was a teen and currently on any number of oldies radio stations I blast on my drive to work.

I kinda like this song, and, truth be told, I like it more every time I hear it. Before dissecting the solo I just want to draw your attention the variety of guitar tones going on here. There's ridiculously distorted guitar playing the main riff, but, if you listen close, you can hear the clean, rhythm guitar somewhere between scraping and thumping out a counterpoint tension. Then the nice picked bass plays a riff around the chiming guitars. Cool.

The solo starts at 2:34. What you're hearing is primarily the result of a pitch-shifting effects pedal, (I just about shift my pitch every time I hear that guitar solo!). The pedal plays notes a fifth above and one a full octave below whatever note Trevor Rabin is fretting on his guitar. This kind of sonic tomfoolelry has long been the purview of prog-rock musos like Fripp and Belew. What I like about this tone is how it's both totally unnatural sounding, while at the same time it evokes the appropriate emotion sonically. It's lyrical, sounding like laughter in places, where in other places the discordant wailing conjures Hendrix with all his pulsating toney goop. This solo sounds uncannily human in places, while machine-like and alien in others. The effect of this dichotomy heightens the tension in the rest of the song.

Too often, in prog rock, the idea or concept, the structure beneath the music is given too much emphasis. One time I was in a band that practiced at the DePaul music school. One night we were setting up as a class was finishing. I heard the teacher tell a student, regarding music, "You have to consider how it looks like on paper." I knew then and there that a music education simply wasn't for me. I'm pretty devout in my opinion that you do not need to consider how it looks on paper.

You need to do what Rabin is doing here: consider how the sound works within the emotional context of the music. This song is groovy while in many ways its alienating and unnatural sounding. To be honest, I have no idea what the lyrics are about (does someone shoot an eagle?), but I get a specific vibe from the dynamics and the tones of the instruments, the phrasing of the lyrics. This solo fits that vibe perfectly.