Quote:
Originally Posted by FrankHudson
There are many ways to deal with this, and several have already been discussed. I agree with everything that's been said already (including the "most audiences are not all that enamored of instrumental solos by most players": these are all some of the ways to deal.
Still, speaking of arrangements/performance there are some songs where it helps to take a break from the words. For example, something happens that isn't described but only assumed, and the song's narrative takes thing up again afterward. Or something emotional or thought-provoking enough has been invoked and you want the song to hang around a bit to let that sink in.
At the height of the folk scare this is where the neck-rack harmonica solo would go. Most folkies weren't harmonica virtuosos, but it worked back then.
How good is your rhythm? If you can play your single note lines with same drive and propulsion they can carry on without the chords behind them. There's no law official or empirical that says that a whole chord must be heard at all times. If your "full arrangement" has some cross-rhythms or other timing interplay with the chordal guitar part and the melody guitar part, consider foot taps or stomps, or even one of those "porch board" style amplified stomp-percussion devices.
One doesn't have to be a virtuoso like Joe Pass to intersperse chord voicings, sometimes even partial chords inside a predominantly single note passage or the statement of a top line melody. Similarly, even for flat pickers, lower string drones and partial chords can ring out behind treble string parts. Altered tunings may give access to some lower harmony notes.
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Yeah more recently I have really gotten into strumming just parts of chords like strumming an Em but not strumming the high E string. Or even say just strumming the 4th, 5th and 6th only in an E chord. Combining that with muting you can do a lot with that. It has taken a lot of practice to get muscle memory to stop my pick before contaminating the chord by hitting that E string but I am much better at it. I find that being able to do that opens up a whole new world and is like playing a totally different chord. I even like the sound of muting just one string in a chord to give it a different sound. By strumming partial chords I can alternate pick or strum to get basically a solo out of it on some songs. Not sure if that makes sense but I am not sure how else to describe it.
Again, I am decent at making solos out of chords in my more upbeat songs. Most of mine like that are actually strumming the chord and maybe a hammer on and a plucking another string or two and then strum the next chord and maybe do it again. It does break up the monotony of the just strumming a plain ol chord. But it just seems much harder to do a solo on my slow songs.