Guitar Solos for Beginners: 5 Real Solos to Learn in Order
Most first solos get abandoned three bars in — not because they're too hard, but because the player tried to learn the whole thing at once. You don't learn a solo. You learn a phrase. Then you learn the next phrase. Then you connect them. Done that way, solos that looked impossible become things you can actually play.
The other problem is picking the wrong one first. Jumping straight to Eruption or Comfortably Numb is the guitar equivalent of choosing a black diamond run on your second day of skiing. There's a progression, and following it actually works.
The Foundation: One Scale Position Is Enough
Before you dig into specific solos, you need one thing: the pentatonic minor scale in first position. For a solo in Am or Em (which is most beginner solos), it lives at the 5th fret. Box 1 of the A minor pentatonic: fingers on strings 6 through 1, starting at fret 5 and staying between frets 5 and 8.
You don't need all five positions. Just box 1. The pentatonic scale positions guide explains the full system, but box 1 alone will take you through every solo on this list and well beyond.
Get the shape under your fingers before you try to learn a solo. That means playing up and down the box slowly — not fast, not to a metronome yet, just getting the string and fret combinations into your hands until you can move through them without looking.
How to Actually Learn a Solo
The method matters more than the solo. Here's the one that works:
Find the tab (Ultimate Guitar or similar). Listen to the original song and identify the first phrase — typically the first 4-8 notes before a natural pause or bend. Learn just those notes, at half the original speed. When you can play them cleanly five times in a row without a mistake, add the next phrase.
Never connect two phrases until both are clean on their own. This sounds obvious and almost nobody does it. Most players try to go start-to-finish repeatedly, which embeds mistakes alongside the correct notes. Phrase-by-phrase, you're only ever reinforcing what's right.
Speed comes last. Once all phrases are clean, practice the full solo slowly. Gradually push the tempo up using a metronome. Go up 5 BPM at a time. If something falls apart at a new tempo, back off 10 BPM and consolidate. Slow is fast — I know that sounds like a fortune cookie, but it's the literal mechanism.
Solo 1: "Wish You Were Here" Intro Melody (Pink Floyd)
Technically this is a melodic intro, not a traditional solo — but it's the right place to start. The opening fingerpicked figure is single-note, slow, and one of the most recognized guitar passages ever recorded. David Gilmour plays it in standard tuning, and the notes sit entirely in a comfortable range for beginners.
The challenge here isn't technique, it's the right-hand fingerpicking pattern. If you've only strummed before, your picking hand needs to start learning individual string targeting. Slow down until you can pick each note cleanly without accidentally catching adjacent strings. That accuracy is exactly what you'll need for every solo after this.
Once you can play the main riff from memory, play along with the recording at a fraction of speed and focus on making it sing — consistent note length, no dead tones, every note ringing fully before the next one starts. The goal isn't speed. It's clarity.
Solo 2: "Nothing Else Matters" Intro (Metallica)
This one feels like cheating because it uses a lot of open strings. The clean guitar intro is Em arpeggios plus a handful of melody notes — slow, beautiful, and very learnable. The tempo is around 69 BPM, which gives you room to be deliberate.
The technique here: alternate picking every note (down, up, down, up, even on arpeggios) and keeping the picking arm relaxed. The common mistake is to strum through the arpeggio figures instead of picking each note individually. Listen to the original closely — every note is distinct.
This isn't a solo in the traditional sense either, but the single-note melodic context is the same. Learn it and you've built the right-hand discipline that makes actual solos much easier.
Solo 3: "Wonderful Tonight" Solo (Eric Clapton)
This is the standard recommendation for first real solo, and it earns that title. Clapton plays it in G major, mostly using the G pentatonic position around frets 3 and 5 on the G and B strings. The whole thing is about 8 bars. The tempo is slow (roughly 95 BPM). The phrases are short, singable, and forgiving.
There's one bend in the middle section — a whole-step bend on the B string at the 5th fret. If string bending is new to you, the string bending guide covers the supporting-finger technique that makes bends actually land in tune. Without the supporting fingers, the bend will be weak and flat. With them, it sounds like Clapton.
Plan for 2-3 weeks to get this solid. Learn it in three phrases: the first ascending run, the middle bend-and-descend, and the closing figure. When all three are clean, connect them. Then play it with the original recording and smile at yourself — that's a real guitar solo.
Solo 4: "Sunshine of Your Love" Main Riff (Cream)
This is Clapton again, this time in a heavier context with Cream. The main riff to "Sunshine of Your Love" is technically a riff, not a solo — but it's the kind of single-note lead playing that beginners think of when they picture lead guitar, and it's genuinely learnable within the first 6 months.
The riff starts on the open D string, runs up to the 4th fret, and then lands on the 3rd fret of the A string. The notable challenge is a half-step bend on the B string at the 3rd fret — bend up a half step (one fret's worth of pitch) and let it ring. That's the signature sound of the riff.
The riff is in D, so the D minor pentatonic box covers it well. Use the scale finder to pull up D minor pentatonic and you'll see the shape immediately. Once the riff is solid, you can improvise variations over a D jam backing track — that crossover between "learning a riff" and "improvising" is where lead playing starts getting fun.
Solo 5: "Comfortably Numb" First Solo (Pink Floyd)
There are two solos in "Comfortably Numb." The second one (starting around 4:55 in the studio version) is one of the greatest guitar solos ever recorded and not a beginner solo. The first one (around 3:00) is shorter, slower, and completely achievable once you've done the first four entries on this list.
Gilmour plays it in B minor, but he tunes down a half step, so the shapes on your guitar are technically in C minor if you're in standard tuning. The solo uses big, expressive bends — whole steps and even a step and a half on the B string around the 12th fret. The technique requirement here is supporting fingers and accuracy: bending without support causes the string to go sharp and then sharp again, instead of landing cleanly on the target pitch. The string bending guide covers exactly this.
The first solo is about 20 seconds long. That's manageable. Break it into four phrases and work each one separately. When it comes together, it's a legitimate milestone — the kind of thing you'll still be playing years later.
After These Five: The Improvising Shift
Learning solos note-for-note is one path. The other is improvising — playing your own single-note lines over chord progressions rather than copying someone else's. Both develop different skills, and both are worth doing.
Once you've learned 2-3 of these solos, you'll notice something: you start recognizing familiar shapes in new songs' solos. A phrase you learned from "Wonderful Tonight" shows up, transposed, in something completely different. That recognition is your ear and your hands starting to work together. It's what makes improvising over chord progressions click rather than just feeling like random notes.
The five pentatonic positions are worth learning once you've committed box 1 to muscle memory. They extend your range across the neck and are what lets you follow the chord changes in a song rather than camping on one position. You don't need all five to start improvising — but they'll all become useful eventually.
One honest note on hammer-ons and pull-offs: every solo on this list is playable without them, but all five will sound better once you add them. Hammer-ons in particular create the smooth, flowing quality in Clapton's phrasing that you can't get by picking every single note. Worth adding once the basic solo shapes are solid.