[Drew Neal]

I'm trying pickup improv soloing. I'm primarily using the minor pent, but I'll vary a bit outside of that. I feel like I'm hitting resolution notes very well, but they completely lack color and motion.

My touch and vibrotto can be improved, but that isn't where my ear says I need to be better. What I hear when I listen to good guitar solos is a lot of slides into notes and very fast lead ins to the resolution note.

I'm not getting very far trying to pull these out on my own. If this makes sense to anyone, please provide any tips you may have.

[Ax]

Solos are all about feel. Feel the song out and play what the song makes you wanna play. For me, I solo better when I throw myself into the lyrics and really get into what the song is about. But you need to add to your repertoire of both scales that you use and techniques. Me, I use a lot of bends, some slides, tremolo picking, sweep picking, all sorts of stuff...

[Guitarbite1985]

All I can say is learn from other players...we have recorded history upon recorded history of guitar solos. Learn some guitar licks from them, and incorporate (not necessarily copy) them into your solos. The pentatonic scale is a great scale to start soloing from, but you'll often find that it sounds rehashed because of its extensive use in modern music. Guitar World magazine has hundreds of guitar tricks and tips that you can follow up with. Check that out.

[gtrdave]

^^^what he said^^^

Plus, the minor pentatonic alone isn't going to get you very far. There are many more scales and many different positions to learn those scales in. Even then, you need to create something out of the notes of the scale as playing the scale in ascending or descending form is rather boring.
So, my better advice is to both continue to learn and practice scales and to listen to other guitar leads, licks, solos and riffs, trying to pick up what you can.
That's how I learned.

[Rainer.]

To bend the convo a little, if you're interested in creating melodies in a more academic sense, I'd look into doing some study of classical counterpoint and compositition. It may expand your horizons to understanding how a melody fits into a chord structure, and uses of various melodic devices such as anticipations, retardations, passing tones, suspensions, chromatics, and then call and response, "question/answer" phrasing, melodic sequence, inversion, modulation, etc..

You may find it quite relevant to producing improvised melody.

[Guitarbite1985]

To hear a counterpoint example...you can go on youtube and listen to yngwie malmsteen play. It'll give you an idea of what it might sound like. I can't find the video right now, but you can look up his lessons and you should come across it.

[Folk_guy]

I find the pentatonic scales (major and minor) to be limiting if used exclusively. I would start learning other scales or modes to use, and learn which ones work over what chords the best.