soloing tension, release

[nano]

Hi everybody.

I was looking around for some advises to improve my guitar playing when I found you.
I been playing guitar for three years, the last one harder, in which I began with jazz. I've improved my chord construction knowledge, however the practice hasn't rocketed as much as the theory, because I don't know anybody to share ideas with.
Thankfully, I found this community which I hope will help me grow.

After this introduction (apologise me if I posted it in the incorrect place), can you tell me how do you do your solos? I mean do you always make the tensions on 2 and 4 beats, puting the arpeggio note on the 1 and 3? Or do you make it on your own, relying on your ear?
And how do you do to make dorian sound dorian and mixolydian sound mixo?

Thanks.

[scraggo]

>>And how do you do to make dorian sound dorian and mixolydian sound mixo?

To practice those 2 modes, I would listen to records and pick up the vocabulary over tunes that emphasize those modes - for Dorian, choose "So What" "Impressions" "Little Sunflower" "Recordame". For Mixolydian, I would choose "All Blues" or some other blues that is not in minor.

[shadowguitarist]

Hi nano,

You have quite a number of difficult to answer questions!

My approach to soloing has always come from a lick vocabulary philosophy i.e. I believe that most of improvisation is actually pre-learnt and only about 30% of what you play when you solo is 'made up' on the spot.

What I believe you should do is to learn as many new licks as you can to play over all the main chords i.e. maj7th, minor7th, dominant7th chords etc.

Your question about creating tension on the 2nd and 4th beats is an interesting one which I use to ponder about a lot. My opinion of this now is that if you start thinking about what notes to play on what beat, you're missing the point! Ignore the rule about the 2nd and 4th beat and focus on what sounds good. This comes with practise. Expand your jazz guitar lick library and listen to as many jazz tunes as you can, to get inspiration.

Coming up with your own licks isn't hard but as a beginner, you're better off learning licks from others.

>>And how do you do to make dorian sound dorian and mixolydian sound mixo?
The tunes that scraggo had pointed out are good for inspiration. In general, if you want to embellish the sounds of a mode, play arpeggios which are built from the notes of the mode. E.g. for D dorian - arpeggios which you can use are Dm7, Fmaj7, Am7, G7, Bm7b5.

Hope that helps!