Hi - just signed up to the board - and I think it's great.

I've played for a few years now and am quite a competent rhythm player, but I have never got the hang of soloing. Does anyone have any advice on the next steps?
I am self taught, so have never gone down the scales route, and would image that is quite important, but what should I do next?
Looking forward to your wise advice!
G

Welcome to the board gmonster, well...advice....ok, wise....dunno....first thing that got me headed in the right direction for soloing was to begin spending more time with scales. In this way, you'll learn what goes with which keys, chords and progressions and proper finger placement, i.e. which fingers to use on which strings/frets and in which positions. Have you had a look at the scales section here in chordbook?

GuitarZen

Yeah!! what a great site!!! I have been playing about 3 years, self taught   And I couldnt ever figure out those scale box things in books. I used the scales thing on this site and WOW it works!!!!
I know I have'nt  been wasting time with chords but now I think I may be on my way to solo too!!
THX CHORDBOOK!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

gmonster, Mr. Zen is right. you're going to have to go down the scales route for reason he stated.

jasonggabbott, Of course, chords are not a waste of time. In my opinion, a solo is pointless without a rhythm.

jasonggabbott, gmonster

I would highly suggest finding somebody/sombodies to jam with. If that is not an option right now, you can always purchase a looper.  With that you can lay down a rhythm track, a good 5 minute or so progression. get it to looping and practice your solo over it. Voila !!  You are now playing with yourself. (sounds bad doesn't it ?)

Of course this would require that you have an electric acoustic, or electric.  Oh wait ! just of thought of another option. jasonggabbott already mentioned it. If you can't find somebody to jam with and do not own an electric or electric acoustic, you can find background rhythms on the net like the ones on this site in the "cool stuff" section. Look in the scale section and find a scale that goes with the track. Once you find a scale that goes with the track, improvise a solo within the scale pattern. You can can also, at times, use the same scale in different positions on the fret board. The thing is to play the solo in the right key or it won't sound very good. 

Once you have found the scale and are improvising a solo in the proper "key", the next step, I would think would be to work on string bends, hammer-on, pull-offs, slides and such (embellishments). Try to play a slow melodic solo at first, you'll get faster with time and practice.

I "think" somebody even sells cd's with background rhythms too. I saw some on the net somewhere.


* disclaimer  *

This is just my opinion as I am a beginner.  But it worked for me..

One book i suggest trying to buy is The Guitar Grimoire Scale book.
The guitar grimoire series is an amazing set of books that will help your guitar learning drastically.
The scale book covers thousands and thousands of scales.

Might i suggest that when trying to solo, practice picking upward and downwards. Learn some songs that require going over all the strings with double picking. it will help a lot.

once youve got that down, learn some scales and try to double pick those. Gradually increase your tempo over time. Try switching from scale to scale in different keys, learing your fretboard and where everything is.

Cheers, Mike.

start with chord tones...playing only notes that fall within the given chords of a song...this is called playing arpeggios and jsut branch out from there you will soon "accidentally stumble" upon many scales and lead patterns just moving from chord to chord also playing this way helps you develop your own style as you created your "synthetic"scales and lead patterns..it will soon define your musical individuality as you being to write melodies and whole songs around these patterns. I would from time to time reference scale sheets and such to make sure you are on the right track.

this is the non intellectual way to learn lead. If you dont like the discipline of learning scales and working them to death and blah blah blah...then learn the way I previously stated. But if you have a haed for books and for studying by all means learn your scales.