Learning solos.

My short term memory is not good.. Down to my Dyslexia. Consequently I seem to take an age to memorise a solo piece. I can play it fairly well if I have the Tab in front of me…but remembering beyond the first 12 bars or so… very tricky.
Also, where one bar is not dissimilar to another again difficult.. How do you chaps who play on stage manage it. Any tips would be most welcome..

Tabs are ok to give you a quick "orientation" if correct on their own. I would suggest to try to use your ears more and listen carefully for the melody contour and not eyes to read. Reading music sheets is for the orchestra, this is rockin'roll

Think of soloing as singing with the (insert your favorite instrument here)

On stage some people feel it, some wing it.

i can play through a tab a couple times and ill be able to play the song no prob, i prefere playing by ear as there are a lot of tabs now that are impossibe to play with out transposing half of it anyway, but when i first started looking at tabs and even now when there is a hectic solo piece that you cant quite hear properly in the song, i look at the tab and learn 1 bar at a time and master that one bar, then i go to the next bar and then back to the first...

as soon as you find you cant focus on the tab, the notes just arnt sinking in then take a break, come back to it later... or the next day...

works for me...

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blues - its a religion...

I think it comes with experience. After playing for a while you no longer think of it as what notes come next, it turns into "where is the song going". Knowing the arrangement of the song is key.

I break a song into Intro-Verse-Chorus-Solo. I keep it simple, play the same thing for the verses, the same thing for the chorus. That way there's only fours parts to learn for the majority of songs and you can change it up on the fly.

You'll find that when you make up your own stuff it'll be darn near impossible to forget it and it'll be easier to adlib because it's yours.

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Tune Low, Play Hard & Floor it!

Whereas I can't read tab and have to rely totally on memory I have found that just remembering key phrases of a lead break to be good enough and to improvise the rest. Most audiences really couldn't care less if you do some improvisation to make a lead break your own so to speak.Unless you intend to memorize the whole Clapton lead break to While My Guitar... note for note like the Beatles tribute band Rain does,I wouldn't sweat it.

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Make it your own and repeat.

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The best thing to do is learn the scales like you were talking about in your other post,and then find a recorded rhythm track like a 12 bar blues,and then try to play some lead over the chord changes....you will get the feel of it and have fun at the same time.
I know some of my answers might not make sense when you're trying to learn from a book but that's the way I learned,playing along with records many,many years ago.
When people aske me about guitar playing,I tell them that I've done this for so long it's second nature,almost like knowing another language...I've done it for so long it just happens,I don't even think about what I'm doing...unless it's a song with a very different chord progression and I'm playing rythym.
Keep on playing,it's a great pasttime.

That's good advice. Play short sections, and although it might seem counterproductive at the time, take breaks or play something else and go back to that song again. I find that after I've given myself a break, I have much better luck when I come back to it.

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i usually do solo's by ear, but as it has most likely been mentioned on here before, if it is a long solo break it up into manageable chunks and I don't mean a whole page of tab, just a couple of bars.
If your like me when the time does arrive to use tab then take breaks in between practices. For example practice it for 15 minutes then have a break of 5 minutes, otherwise you will become frustrated and won't want to play it when your just getting to grips with it.
After a while and you can piece it all together and practice it, it should sink in, it does with me and I have a terrible memory ha ha ha.
Peace

By ear and feel here. It's a gift....... Mike

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The blues ain't nothin but a good man feelin bad.

Concentrate, tap your toe and focus on the song, don't get distracted by looking out at the audience or looking around the room, concentrate, you know the parts, you've played them that is why you know that you aren't playing them now.

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you can save the world with your guitar one love song at a time it's just better, more fun, easier with a fender solid body electric guitar or electric bass guitar.

just rip it. make it your own. i think the audience will appreciate it.

Thank you everyone for your method/advice..

I have cloth ears. I could never learn a solo particularly a complicated one just by listening. Don’t have the talent.. Can’t even tune by ear.. Shame on me. Disagree on reading music fendermandan. Part of the whole learning thing ( not that I can yet ) Also we are not all RR,s

Yes, breaking it down and short bursts seems to be the consensus, which is pretty much what I do.. Probably looking for the magic bullet. Which like in most things does not exist.. Practice, practice, practice.

Best regards.

There is some truth to what fendermandan says, your ears are the most important tool in playing music and they need to be trained just as much as any aspect of playing. Tabs were a "crutch" for me for a long time but these days can figure out a riff if I hear it. I don't mean I can mimic what I hear but I can relate it to what I know. As you build up your lick library you will too. I still have to use tabs but it comes much easier and I can almost site read tabs if I know the song.

Learning to tune by ear is a easy way to start. Tune the low E with a tuner then try to tune the other strings by ear. You probably check your tuning at the start of every practice session so why not do just start off by practicing tuning by ear. You can check and see how close you were then just tune up with a tuner and go on to playing.

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Tune Low, Play Hard & Floor it!

Being able to improvise a solo by ear will save you if you're jamming with someone and you're listening for the changes...but not everybody can do it...many try but you can tell who is listening and who sticks to the things they've learned like tabs or running up and down the scales.
Like Cherokee747 said,it's a gift....you gotta feel it.