Guitar Soloing Basics—Exploring Melodic Variations

In the realm of lead guitar, with all the focus on licks and riffs and scales, it’s easy to lose sight of the fact that soloing is about creating a melody that supports and enhances the song. To accomplish that, what better starting point could there be than the actual melody of the song you are playing over?

In previous installments of this series on soloing basics, we’ve touched on how you can take cues from the song’s melody in soloing, but our main focus has been on building a vocabulary of notes from scales and chord shapes. In this lesson we’ll zero in on the melodic aspect: how to bring a melody to life on your guitar and use it as a launchpad for a solo.

As an example, we’ll work with a melody that has been lingering in our ears for over 170 years: Stephen Foster’s “Hard Times Come Again No More,” a song that’s been interpreted by a wide range of artists (a couple of personal favorite versions are by Emmylou Harris and the duo Eastmountainsouth). We’ll start by playing the unadorned melody and then explore ways to embellish it and create variations.

Play It Straight

Example 1 shows the melody of “Hard Times” as originally published, transposed to the key of D (the 1854 sheet music was in Eb). The chord progression I’ve indicated cycles around D, G, and A (the I, IV, and V chords), with a quick E7 (II) in the chorus. Some other takes on this song add in more chords or strip it down further (omitting the II, for instance). 

For the rhythm part, I play a sparse bass/strum pattern with a flatpick: bass notes on the 1 and on the first beat of every chord change, and light strums or partial chords on beats 2 and 4.

Between the standard notation and tab I’ve marked and numbered the song’s main melodic phrases, corresponding with lines of lyrics. We’ll refer to these phrases by number throughout the lesson. 

The verse melody starts with a pickup—two eighth notes walking up the D string to land on an F# on the downbeat of the first full measure. Play slowly through the first two phrases, taking note of the dotted eighth/16th rhythm in measures 2 and 3, a recurring motif in Foster’s melody. Continuing in the verse, phrases 3 and 4 repeat phrases 1 and 2 almost exactly.

Then comes the chorus, and perhaps the melody’s best moment: in bar 9, when it dips from an A to a G# and back to A, beautifully embodying the “sigh of the weary” in the lyrics.

Play through the full melody several times to internalize it. This is a great practice for any song you’re learning or improvising over, to ground yourself in the melodic lines and rhythms that define the song. Just playing the melody like this, with no frills, can absolutely stand as a legitimate solo.

Make Connections

As a next step, let’s bring out a more vocal quality in the melody by using slurs, as discussed in the third lesson of this series (November/December 2025). 

In Example 2, play through the first two phrases incorporating hammer-ons, pull-offs, and slides. Some of these slurs simply connect melody notes, as with the hammer-on in the pickup measure, while others add grace-note embellishments, such as the quick slide to F# on the downbeat of the following bar.

Notice that the B note in measure 2, which we played on the open second string in Ex. 1, now is on the third string, fourth fret. In soloing, there are often good reasons to play notes fretted rather than on open strings, just because you can do more with them: slide up to or down from them, hammer onto them, add vibrato, bend them, etc. An open string note doesn’t offer these options. In this case, fretting the B note allows us to add a grace-note hammer-on.

Example 3 takes a similar approach as Ex. 2, adding slurs to phrases 5 and 6 in the chorus. In a couple of spots, play extended slurs. On the last two beats of the first full measure, for instance, pick the A note and use slides to descend to G# and back to A. 

Change It Up

Now let’s check out some ways to create variations on the melody. 

One idea is to stick with the pitches of the original melody, but change the rhythms. Example 4 does that with the first two phrases. In the pickup measure, play three 16th notes instead of two eighths; the phrase starts one 16th later than in the original. Add other 16th notes into the following measures, along with several quick slurs. The basic shape of the melody is the same as in the original—
you’re just embellishing it a bit by repeating some notes and subdividing a few beats differently. 

Take the opposite approach in Example 5: retain the rhythms of the original melody (again, using phrases 1 and 2 as an example), but change the pitches. Rather than opening with D–E–F# as in the original, play F#–G–A, and continue similarly. While you’re no longer playing the notes of Foster’s melody, the connection to it still comes through in the rhythms.

In Example 6, blend the approaches in Ex. 4 and Ex. 5. Start and end the two phrases with the same notes as in the original melody. In between, play lines that depart from the original in both pitch and rhythm. In measure 3, use an eighth-note triplet with pull-offs. Mixing pieces of the song’s melody with your own variations like this can be a great way to build a solo that’s clearly based on the song but extends it as well.

Another way to embellish a melody is to play during a break in the melody. “Hard Times” doesn’t have long gaps around or between phrases, but there are a few places where you can fill in a short pause. 

Example 7 shows an idea for a fill that precedes the verse melody. The original melody starts on beat 4 of the pickup measure, but in this example, start on beat 3 with four 16th notes that lead into the melody’s opening phrase. This would be a nice kick-off to a solo.

Try another short fill in Example 8. This one goes at the end of phrase 4, during the pause between the end of the verse and the beginning of the chorus (bars 8–9 in Ex. 1). In this case, you’re adding a sort of punctuation to the verse.

So far we’ve been playing the “Hard Times” melody in a fairly low register, starting on the D note on the open fourth string. One other way to vary the melody is jumping up an octave, where the melody starts on the third fret of the B string. To play the melody in this higher register, you’ll need to start moving up the neck a bit. Example 9 shows phrases 1 and 2. Take note of the suggested fingerings, which will help you navigate from second position, where we’ve stayed for almost all of the examples so far, to fifth position and back down again. The slides, hammer-ons, and pull-offs also facilitate the position shifts.

Full Pass

Now that we’ve looked at numerous ways to vary the melody, let’s try all of them out in a solo through the whole “Hard Times” form—verse and chorus—as shown in Example 10.

The solo begins with a short fill, along the lines of Ex. 7. Play additional fills to kick off phrases 3, 5, and 7 (in measures 4, 8, and 12, respectively).  

After the opening fill, play the phrases 1 and 2 following the notes of the original melody but varying the rhythms (as demonstrated in Ex. 4). Use a number of dotted eighth/16th rhythms, playing off of Foster’s rhythmic motif.  Then in phrases 3 and 4, stay close to the original rhythms but change the pitches (as in Ex. 5).

In phrases 5 and 6, go in and out of playing the original melody and creating variations. At the end of phrase 6 (in measure 12), move up to the top strings, setting you up to play phrases 7 and 8 an octave higher than where you started. This octave shift gives a nice lift to the end.

The resulting solo is definitely recognizable as “Hard Times” but also carves its own path. Try doing the same in your own improvisation. Cue up the rhythm track at the end of the video and see what you come up with. Keep Foster’s melody in mind as you solo, touching on it and departing from it to whatever degree you like.