How To Play Emotional Guitar Solos By Analyzing The Singing Techniques Of King Diamond - Part 2

Closely analyzing the vocal phrasing of amazing singers is helpful for making your lead guitar playing more emotional.

The first part of this article series, you were shown four ways to use King Diamond’s melodic singing style to improve your lead guitar playing.

The following are three more ways:

The following are 3 more ways:

1. Play Guitar Harmonies And Solos With Layered Harmony

Using harmony (2 or more notes played together) in a phrase, lick or solo can make it sound very interesting and exciting. Using layered harmonies is arn method for making a regular harmony sound even more exciting.

This music video demonstrates how King Diamond has utilized layered harmonies in his music:

(check out 7:23-8:54)

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The following exercise helps you make your own layered harmonies:

Step 1: Make sure you have a metronome and something to record yourself playing such as your phone or software of some kind. Then, set the beats per minute on yourrnmetronome to a mid-pace. Record yourself playing an “A” on fret fourteen of the G string and let it ring for ten beats. Hear it.

Step 2: Now, record a “C” note on fret thirteen of the B string – only this time, record it starting on the third beat. This creates harmony with the “A” note fromrnthe last step. The “A” note rings on its own through the first couple of beats. Hear it.

Step 3: Last, play and record note “E” on the 17th fret of the B string as soon as beat 5 begins. This will add a 3^rd layer to the music. Hear it.

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This is harmony creates an outline for an A minor chord. Rather than playing all three notes of the chord at once, you spread them out over time.

This lead guitar playing video gives you more approaches for playing emotional guitar solos.

2. Create Interest In Your Lead Guitar Phrasing Using Thicker Texture

King Diamond is known for using tons of variety in the way he delivers his vocals. For example, he might sing cleanly one moment, and use screams or growlsrn another moment. He uses growls as a tool to add to the texture of his vocal lines. When he sings clean high notes, it reduces the texture of hisrn lines/melodies. You can hear how this sounds by checking out 35:11 - 36:01 in the video.

You can also generate the same growling effect King Diamond uses by employing the use of double stops in your guitar licks. Double stops refer to playingrn two notes at the same time. This will give your guitar phrases added texture and can serve as a great contrast to phrases with a lot of single notes in thern melody.

The following video shows how cool double stops sound:

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3. Achieve Mastery Over Pitch Variation & Guitar Phrasing Fluency

King Diamond seamlessly combines together high falsetto, screams, growls, layered harmonies, delayed vocal vibrato and various additional techniques. Thisrn contrast of techniques and styles generate a lot of excitement through musical tension. You can make your guitar playing feel exciting too by masteringrn guitar phrasing fluency.

Guitar phrasing fluency = having the ability to integrate every phrasing technique you know. Having this creates pitch variation and makes your guitarrn solos much more creative and interesting.

Here is an exercise that helps you achieve mastery over both pitch variation and guitar phrasing fluency:

1. Create a list of every guitar phrasing technique you already know how to use (These guitar soloing improvement articles help you in creating this).

2. Create/improvise a short guitar lick of no more than 5 notes and play it again and again. While doing this, focus on either the first and last note ofrn the phrase, or whichever note(s) you sustain for the longest period of time.

3. Each time you repeat the lick, play the aforementioned notes using alternative phrasing approaches such as the following:

-Play notes in the higher range (similar to how King Diamond uses his falsetto to sing at higher octaves) at times when it is unexpected. This isrn especially cool when used at the end of a phrase.

-Use double stops to add texture.

-Use vibrato in a variety of different ways (such as using it in a delayed manner, playing wide/narrow vibrato, etc.).

-Apply vibrato to both the notes in a double stop (this sounds killer!).

-Use a variety of phrasing elements to accentuate a single note. Here is an example: play the last note in the phrase by quickly moving up to a higherrn octave, use a double stop, then use the tremolo bar to add heavy vibrato to both notes (or you can add it manually if you don’t have a tremolo system).

This pitch variation exercise trains you to improve your fluency with a variety of guitar phrasing techniques.

This guitar soloing video lesson gives you more approaches for writing emotional guitar solos .