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Go with the flow. If your really having troubles, try and find a backing track (for whatever style floats your boat - for most classic rock and blues applications a simple 12 bar blues progression in said key is enough) and just try and come up with licks. It's hard for me now to explain all this, because in retrospect, it all sort of just came to me. I didn't have to be taught... confused

Two words: Let go!!! I remeber when I was learning how to imrpovise I would overthink things, now adays I just do it without thinking I apply the techniques I know such as bends, vibrato, hammers ons, pull offs, pinch harmonics, and swiching between octaves to really make a pentatonic based improvised solo work, I learned how to do it, usign a backing track though, on Stetinas Metal lead primer..

(ps. silences sometimes are good things, try to move pauses around)

When i started to learn soloing i automaticaly copied the style of kirk hammet (not that i wanted to smile ). His style is cool and easy if you know certain scales and a few tricks with mini arpeggios. I like it this way.

Only if his context is "half-minute tapping solo al'a Eruption"! The most tapping I've ever done is some EVH triplet taps travelling up and down the e and B strings. Though I recently came up with a great sounding tap riff that, when played at high speeds, sounds an awful lot like something you'd hear in a DooM or Quake game... IOW, freakin' sweet!

Anyhow, pick urself a mode and have at it. The only tried and true method is to doodle for hours on end and try to remember, write down, or record what you come up with. For the blueser, the blues and minor pentatonic (blues is just minor pent with the 4th added), are good for blues playing, Mixolydian and Dorian are pretty good for Jazz, and Ionian is great if your boring (Ionian = major = blegh).

Also, most of Steve Vai's stuff is done using the Lydian mode (raise the 4th 1/2 step - ex: C Ionian = CDEFGABC, and C Lydian = CDEF#GABC). Satch sometimes uses Lydian as well.

Hope this helps someone xD