Tag: 80s

80s Game Rock Guitar Solo (+TAB)

Original, heavy metal / hard rock guitar solo (155 BPM) in D minor, inspired partly by 80s Rock (Iron Maiden, Stratovarius and others), but mostly by Arcade game – boss fight – music!  Are you up for a challenge? 

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About this solo

This melodic rock solo in the key of D minor took a while to put together! In other words, I had to level up, both in playing and in editing skills to make everything work. e.g. playing the sweep-picking part ‘cleanly’ took more practice than anticipated. In fact, I re-recorded the entire video because I wasn’t happy with my first performance. Although – obviously – a lot can be corrected in the ‘editing’-phase, I like to keep these edits to a minimum, to keep things ‘real’ for you guys! Hopefully, this 80s game solo, called ‘Arcade’ is as fun and inspiring for you as it was for me. 

The 8-bit version of the solo (video-outro)

I know this is a bit of a gimmick, but I wanted to see If my guitar solo would work as an 8-bit game melody. Here is the 8-bit version I composed with the Magical 8-bit plugin. This was too much fun 🙂

Gear page:

80s TV-theme style guitar solo

Enjoy this 80s-TV-Themed Guitar Solo, featuring synths, palm trees, all the wrong colors and some fun guitar licks!  Solo played on my Suhr Modern Pro HH.

About This Solo

I was born in the 80s, so that might explain my fascination for 80s music (that and playing too much GTA Vice City back in the day). This 80s guitar solo is played over a retro-themed rock backing track in the key of A minor. The track opens with a classic Moog-synth pattern (Arturia Mini V), that inspired me to play long notes, and gradually build up a more melodic solo with some classic 80s guitar spice. The solo is mostly A minor & A minor pentatonic

Backing Track

Epic 80s backing track here or you can purchase the track (high quality wav-version) here: 

Featured Lick
Septuplets
Septuplets

To paraphrase Bob Ross, this guitar lick was a ‘happy accident’ during improv. This legato lick has 2 septuplets patterns (beats 1 & 2), before sinking into the groove of the song again. 

Gear

👉 Check out my gear page on Thomann: gear-thomann.guitar-inspiration.com

Epic 80s Rock Guitar Backing Track #02 (A minor)

This second 80s rock backing track called ‘Out Of Bounds‘ is inspired by 80s rock guitar music and my love for 80s TV music (yes, a guilty pleasure). I took some inspiration from the Arturia Mini-V3, CM-V and TV-shows like Miami Vice Jam along with the YouTube video (chords are shown on the screen), or download the chord sheet below.

About the track

About 9 months ago, I released a first 80s rock jam track and – to my surprise – it’s doing very well on YouTube. So recently, I thought it was time to write another one of these tasty 80s rock guitar backing tracks, this time with a little more emphasis on the 80s synth sounds. The CMI-V and Mini V from Arturia provided just the right mood I was looking for.

Featured Lick

This 80s rock backing track follows a very simple chord progression (only 3 chords) in the key of A minor. During the verse, the clean guitar plays the following lick:

80s Guitar Chord Lick
Am9 Motif

So the main motif in this 80s rock backing track is an Am9 arpeggio, with a ringing 9th (open B-string). The part is doubled with an effects track and some heavy chorusing (Syntorus by D16-group). 

Improvising Tips

Improvising tips for this 80s rock backing track include A aeolian, A minor pentatonic.

Gear
  • Synths: Arturia CMI-V, Arturia Mini-V  (links to plugin boutique)
  • Electric Guitar: Suhr Modern HH
  • Amps: Fractal AX8
  • Bass: Spectrasonics Trilian
  • Drums: Steven Slate Drums 5.5
  • Recorded & Mixed in the Box.
Buy The Track

If you’re interested, you can purchase a high-quality (cd-mastered) version +mp3 of this guitar jam track here

👉 Check out my gear page on Thomann: gear-thomann.guitar-inspiration.com