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Mark Tremonti has no trouble putting a guitar solo together. That’s the fun bit for the Alter Bridge guitarist, an moment to cut loose once the difficult business of songwriting has been done.
“I have always focused more on songwriting. The guitar playing has kinda come along for the ride,” he says. “One of the most fun times as a player is after you’ve recorded a record, and then it’s like, ‘I don’t have to worry about the songwriting. I can just play fun lead guitar stuff.’”
But lead guitar is only fun if you feel like you are saying something meaningful in a solo. Those bars have to count.
First of all, that solo has to sound like you.
“One of the biggest compliments you can get as a guitar player is when somebody says, ‘When I hear you play, I can tell it’s you,’” says Tremonti. “Because you can fall into the trap of learning, say, I’m obsessed with Steve Vai, and I learn all Steve Vai’s stuff. ‘Oh, you sound like Steve Vai!’ No, I want to sound like myself.
“[Pauses] But at the same time I wish I could play some of those Steve Vai licks as well as some other people!”
Luckily, everyone has something that is unique about their style before they even consider the solo. Sometimes that something takes a while to notice.
I am learning new techniques all the time. Right now I am trying to incorporate more economy picking into my playing
Tremonti admits it was only recently that he realised he was swimming against the tide; where most players rely on downstrokes, he relies more on upstrokes – it means when he learns someone else’s lick he already has to “reinvent” it for his style.
“I am learning new techniques all the time,” he says. “Right now I am trying to incorporate more economy picking into my playing.”
But that’s just the picking. That’s how Tremonti is going to actually play the notes. He has a more developed strategy – proven over time – for choosing the right notes in a solo, and it involves getting his Boss TU-3 out and getting his electric guitar out of standard tuning.
Because that forces him not to rely on the scalar patterns that are hard-wired into all of us through practice and habit.
“A lot of the solos on this record – and a lot of Alter Bridge records – are written in alternate tunings. I love writing in alternate tunings because you are not going to use the same patterns that you normally would,” he says. “If I am playing a song that’s in standard tuning, I’ll rely heavily on pentatonics and diatonic scales that I am familiar with, but in an alternate tuning, I have to dive in and go, ‘Woah! What am I gonna do!? What open strings work? What little patterns can I remember quickly?’
“I have always been a pattern player to begin with, so with alternate tunings, you take that to my younger self, say, ‘Okay, these picking patterns work. How can I use them?’”
Tremonti has long deployed alternate tunings for Alter Bridge, Creed and his solo band. Sometimes those alternate tunings are simple/commonplace, such as Drop D on Creed’s Torn.
Sometimes they’re a bit more unorthodox – at least in metal guitar. Open D5 (DADADD) is a favourite (Open Your Eyes, etc), and often deployed a half-step down on (Ghost of Days Gone By). Looking to bust out of the same old riffs, the same old patterns? The guitar tuner is your friend.
You can read MusicRadar’s conversation with Mark Tremonti in full soon. But we’ll leave you with this. After all this talk of soloing, what does Tremonti consider the greatest guitar solo of all time?
“Greatest solo of all time? I’d go back to Comfortably Numb as something that you can’t ague with. It’s just the most emotive piece of music. [Both solos?] Yeah, actually right through the entire song. . Another song that I think is a beautiful piece of music is [Stevie Ray Vaughan’s Lenny.”
Funny enough, back in 2011, we conducted an online poll on the greatest guitar solo of all time. David Gilmour’s Comfortably Numb solo (taken from Pink Floyd’s 1995 live album, Pulse) was predictable high-charting at fifth spot. Number one? Alter Bridge’s Blackbird.
“It was an immense honour to be nominated in this poll. Looking at the other listed nominees it seemed absolutely impossible to win,” said Tremonti. “We definitely feel unworthy and want to thank our die-hard fan base for voting!”
