For months, one lick at the end of a solo stayed out of reach because it was too fast for me to figure out. The solution I found was to isolate the guitar, slow it down, and learn the whole solo in an afternoon. Here's the exact workflow I used to make it happen.
The lick I kept avoiding
For a while, I wanted to learn a guitar solo from a song, but I just wasn't able to. There was this one lick at the end of the solo that was too fast and sounded a little muddy. Most guitar tracks are mixed with a handful of other instruments, which can make it difficult to listen to specific notes and details.
This was exactly the case of that song, so the solo just sat there. Every few months I'd pull the track back up, get stuck on the same four bars, and close the tab.
Everything changed when I took it apart
After a while, I decided to change my approach. Instead of guessing my way through it (like I did countless times before), I decided to actually take the song apart and hear exactly what was happening. Not just looping the solo and hoping it would eventually click for me, but breaking it down piece by piece, muting the parts that were adding up to the confusion and leaving only what could help me figure out that lick. That's really what learning someone else's solo comes down to: hearing it clearly enough so you can build it back up on your own instrument.
Isolate the guitar and get straight to the hard part
I dragged the whole song into Moises, and with the stem separation feature, I had access to every instrument in the track on its own: bass, drums, keys, guitars. What I did was isolating the lead guitar and leaving everything else behind for a minute.
With that level of control, I didn't need to sit through the whole song to get to the part I was going to work on. Moises has a feature called Sections that lets you go straight to the part of the song you actually need, so I skipped ahead to the solo. Then, I looped just that section, to focus on those few bars I was trying to decypher.
Slow it down until you're comfortable
After I had isolated the lead guitar and looped the solo section, I needed to make it slower. So, I used the Smart Metronome to bring the tempo down to around 96 BPM. I also turned on the Count-in, since that first beat always trips me up, so I gave it four beats to come in clean every time I looped back around.
Last, but not least, I wanted to know right away what chord I was playing over, so I pulled up the chords for that section too, so there was nothing left to piece together by ear.
Get up to speed
After a few rounds at a slower speed to figure out every note, it was time to bring it back up. One click resets the Smart Metronome to the song's original 104 BPM tempo, and I tried the lick again at full speed.
There's a specific feeling when a part that felt impossible a few minutes earlier just falls under your fingers, almost like your hands were waiting for the rest of you to catch up. That's the moment you're actually working toward, not just getting through the lick, but getting to where it feels natural.
Time to do it for real
Once I was comfortable with the song, I muted the isolated guitar track and played along with the rest of the band. And that's the fun part: I wasn't practicing by myself. I was interacting with the bass, the guitar, the piano in real time, the same way I would if I were actually in a room or on the stage with these musicians. Learning a lick in isolation is one thing, but locking it into the pocket of an actual song and vibe it out is a completely different skill.
Time to try it yourself
That's the whole workflow: isolate the part that's giving you trouble, slow it down until it makes sense, loop it until your hands catch up, then play it back with the band. It works for me, so I'm pretty sure it will work for you too. So, next time you're struggling with a guitar solo or a tricky lick, don't let it sit on your list for months the way I did, and pull it apart instead.
Try it with your own track. Try Moises free!