5 Ways To Build Vocabulary, and Why You Should Care
If you've got something to say, spending time on crafting vocabulary pays dividends.
What Vocabulary Is
If you listen to an entire album of music where one guitarist plays all of the leads, you’ll notice some patterns or repetition in their playing. And, if you learn multiple solos note-for-note by the same guitarist, you’ll stumble across instances where you say “oh, I already know this lick from the last solo!”? What you’re noticing are artifacts of that guitarist’s vocabulary.
Vocabulary on the guitar is directly analogous to spoken language: it is the collection of phrases and expressions you use to express yourself. While your use of these phrases and expressions is actually repetitive to some greater or lesser degree, it’s also what makes your speaking accessible to your audience. The same is true on guitar.
I’m not sure I’ve ever actually heard a guitarist that doesn’t have repetitive licks and phrases in their playing, and it’s not specific to a genre of music. The really crazy thing to me has always been that fans never describe a player’s vocabulary as “repetitive”, which would read as a negative. They seem to always describe them with words like “unique”, “distinctive”, and “inimitable”. Fans commonly say “You know it’s <favorite guitarist here> the second you hear them”. I don’t disagree, and a part of that is down to their vocabulary.
A Few Examples
If you’re confident you know what vocabulary is already, you can skip this. Otherwise, stick with me:
Listen to Hendrix’s solo on Fire. The very first phrase in the solo — the first 4 notes — is a classic Hendrix phrase. He bends the 7th up to the root note on the high E string, followed by the minor third. Now listen for just that little phrase in the solos for Hey Joe and Little Wing. If you really go deep in the catalog and listen to his live stuff, it’s all over there as well.
Listen to Eddie Van Halen’s Eruption. At about 5 seconds in he does a repetitive lick that is classic Eddie vocabulary. He’s playing (in very fast succession), an open high E string, then pulling off frets 8-5-0 on the B string, followed by picking the 8th fret of the G string. The 8th & 5th frets are the 7th and 5th scale degrees, followed by the open B string. Eddie does this a lot, although not in the same key. In Eruption, it’s in the key of A (fretted A, but he’s tuned down a half step, so it sounds as Ab), but in Somebody Get Me A Doctor you can hear him doing it in E (sounding Eb), and there’s a treat in there because he does the same pattern on the lower strings just a beat or two later.
Hester Chambers, of Wet Leg, has very subtle techniques that serve as her vocabulary. My favorite one is her tiny 1/4-note bends. Hester is often playing a single-note pattern accompanying the vocal and over a contrasting, often way heavier rhythm track. To add color & texture, make the pattern less monotonous, and provide a bit more ‘feel’ or ‘vibe’, Hester will inconsistently, when she feels like it, bend one of the main landing notes in the pattern, just a touch. To get a feel for the technique where she’s really not subtle about it, listen to Mangetout
The King Of Vocabulary
In the area of vocabulary, T-Bone Walker deserves special treatment. A great many bits of vocabulary that are heard on later recordings decades later were pioneered by T-Bone Walker. In fact, he had so many techniques and licks in his bag of tricks that later guitarists like Chuck Berry, BB King, Albert King, Ronnie Earl, Stevie Ray Vaughan, Duane Allman, Eric Clapton, and Jimmy Page all name him as an influence. Walker just had a ton of vocabulary, and he played quite a lot. I mean just on one track he played a lot! Listen to Mean Old World - a 4-minute song that starts with a guitar solo that’s 2:20 long! It’s not unusual to find songs with 45-60 second solos to start the song. T-Bone Blues and Two Bones and a Pick come to mind. In addition, he often inserts (sometimes intricate and genuinely interesting) fills between phrases in the verses. The consummate showman, I’m sure Walker probably focused heavily on making sure the crowd wouldn’t get bored when he played a lot, by creating new vocabulary to keep it interesting.
5 Ways To Build Vocabulary
Now that you have an idea, and a bunch of things to listen to to get an understanding of what vocabulary is, let’s talk about how to build vocabulary of your own.
1. Learn To Play and/or Transcribe Note-For-Note Solos
To transcribe or learn to play a solo by ear, you’re going to have to listen to that piece quite a large number of times to get it down. And, if you’re not already an expert in music theory, which would make your intuition better and your guesses more likely to be right, you’re going to plunk at notes on your guitar along with the recording to figure out “is that a major third or a minor third” or “is he playing the 10th fret or the 11th fret”.
Going through this process is really rewarding. It develops your ear, which pays huge dividends, and it also helps you build vocabulary.
As a bonus: I used to “study” certain guitarists. I wouldn’t just learn one solo or song — I’d learn three or four. For artists I really liked a lot, I’d try really hard to learn an entire album! Doing this has the added bonus that if someone ever says “hey can you lay down a solo here that sounds kinda like Jerry Cantrell?”, or “hey I’m starting an AC/DC cover band, do you know how to play like Angus Young?”, you’re ready. One time a guy at a blues jam came up and played what was really a country song. He ripped out a pretty mean solo, too. Luckily, about 30 years ago I learned almost the entire Brooks & Dunn Greatest Hits album, learned who Brent Mason was, then learned some of the stuff he did for Alan Jackson as well. It had been decades, but I think I held my own! You never know where this stuff might pop up, and besides, it’s great fun!
2. Play Out
Go to open mics and jam sessions. Join a garage band. Join a wedding band. Join any band. Getting out and around other players is an amazing way to build vocabulary! Watch other players. Ask them “what did you do there?”. Ask them who their biggest influences are and go listen to them. Going to jams is a great way to do this. Being in bands that play with other bands at festivals or just on the same bill is a good way to meet other players who have totally different influences and pick up new things.
Once I was out at another guitarist’s gig. I’d heard about this guy for months, but we were both always playing on the same nights at different places, so this was the first time I was seeing him. He played a lick and I immediately thought “oh man I hope I remember that when I get home so I can steal it!” About two months later he was at my gig, and I basically walked right up to him and played his lick. After the gig he said to me “hey, that lick you played - I play a lick almost exactly like it! Can I show you?” My heart sunk… “Oh damn… that wasn’t your lick?” I didn’t remember it quite right by the time I got home, but it was still a killer lick! I’ve done that a million times over the years. I don’t even care if I remember it right anymore if I’m happy with the lick I wind up learning.
Get out there! There are licks to steal!
3. Learn Licks Played On Other Instruments
Learn saxophone or trumpet lines. Learn piano solos. Learn pedal steel licks. Different instruments are kind of optimized for, or make it easier, to place notes and assemble phrases in different ways. So, while there’s often overlap in vocabulary between different instruments, there’s also lots of stuff that you’ll typically hear almost exclusively on trumpet, or saxophone, or clarinet, or flute, or piano.
The first time I did this I was about 14-15 and I tried to learn the horn lines from Sir Duke by Stevie Wonder. It was not easy for me. But, it was really rewarding, it expanded my understanding of the fretboard, and it gave me more confidence going forward that I didn’t need to only think about grabbing licks from guitarists.
4. Sing Over Backing Tracks
Next time you play a backing track, don’t touch your guitar until you sing the line you want to hear. Our voices are the closest “instrument” to our brain. If you hear something in your head, chances are the fastest way to communicate what you’re hearing isn’t to figure it out on the piano or guitar, it’s to sing it.
So, sing what you want to hear over the backing track. Then turn off the backing track and try to sound out how to play what you just sang. Then try to play the new lick over the backing track. Take your time & be patient with yourself. If you have trouble remembering what you just sang, pull out your phone and record yourself singing over the backing track, then you can learn what you sang note-for-note, by ear.
I don’t know about other genres, but I’ve heard a lot of jazz guitarists do this. I know for sure if you watch video of Barney Kessel playing, he sings the whole time he’s playing in every video I’ve seen him in.
5. Pick Up A New Scale, Chord, or Mode
A while back, I finally hired a teacher. I was self taught for 40 years and just felt like I was in a rut, and wanted to use more of the crayons in the box, so to speak. That was going to involve learning some theory. At one point, I was learning the Dorian mode. I went through the motions of practicing it, but I’d always get distracted by melodies and ideas I was hearing in my head that I could make using the notes in the Dorian mode, so I’d start noodling around, and I came up with a lick I use at my weekly blues jam every now and then that comes straight out of Dorian mode.
I did the same thing when I learned dominant 7th arpeggios. For whatever reason, when I got to the D-shape arpeggio, something clicked in my head. Instead of just playing the notes in the arpeggio, I started sliding up to each note in the arpeggio, for no good reason. That led to me discovering a really cool lick that I’m pretty shocked I haven’t heard other folks play before.
Do boring things. We need boredom. It promotes creativity. Get bored playing a scale, let your mind wander while you practice. Eventually it might land on something cool, triggered by your practicing, and being super bored.
Why You Should Care About Vocabulary
You should care about vocabulary on the guitar for the same reason you build vocabulary in your native spoken language: it makes expressing yourself easier for you, and it makes you easier to understand and more accessible to listeners.
This is not to say that your solos should just be a disjointed collection of random vocabulary. You still have to learn the fretboard and the fundamentals, so that you’re able to create smooth transitional lines between vocabulary, and you’re able to find things you hear in your head that you want to express in the moment.
If you’ve found a way I haven’t mentioned to build vocabulary, let me know! The great thing about guitar is that you can never know everything, so it never gets boring!