A guitar solo may be the big moment in a song when you get to cut loose, but there are plenty of opportunities to support a song melodically throughout its performance—in fact, pretty much
A guitar solo may be the big moment in a song when you get to cut loose, but there are plenty of opportunities to support a song melodically throughout its performance—in fact, pretty much every time your lead singer shuts his mouth.
The key element here is the fill, an instrumental phrase played between vocal lines. Fills serve to provide filler—hence the name—in the moments when the song needs a melodic focal point, due to the absence of a vocal line. When placed effectively, fills can heighten a song’s intensity. For this reason, guitarists tend to fill more frequently as a song progresses, usually starting in the second verse.
To create an effective fill, you need to get in, play something hot, and get out without detracting from the bigger picture—the song itself. Depending on the style, this means creating anything from a singable melody to a swaggering riff to a raunchy eruption of notes. You’ll also need to be able to make smooth changes in volume and sound, adjusting your guitar, amp and pedals as you shirt quickly between rhythm and lead duties.
In this lesson you’ll learn how fills work in a variety of styles—from blues to pop to rock and metal. Once you’ve learned all these figures, try playing them in other keys and plugging them into different songs. Then try doing the same with some of your favorite players’ fills.
THE BLUES: Call-and-Response
The earliest guitar fills were played in the 1920s and 1930s by solo country-blues artists like Charley Patton, Son House and Robert Johnson, who often punctuated their vocal phrases with two measures of improvised licks—bars 3–4, 7–8 and 11–12 of a 12-bar blues—creating a call-and-response effect between playing and singing.
Later, electric bluesmen did the same,