Hi fam,

I know it can be tough to maintain your guitar chops during busy seasons of life. One way to help with this is to have a go to solo that is very challenging for you. If you can learn that solo and maintain it over time, it will help you keep your chops sharp for any new things you need to play or learn in the future.

The song I’ve chosen to do this with is “Hold the Line” by Toto. Steve Lukather is just a beast of a guitar player, and this solo covers bending, vibrato, pentatonic scales, modal scales, alternate picking, sweep picking, economy picking, and plethora of other critical techniques that pop up over and over again in music I love to play.

The video for this lesson goes through the solo in detail, and the TAB and jam track are available for you to download on this page. If you are into rock, it’s a great solo to push yourself. You don’t have to use this solo to keep your chops sharp though. You can pick any solo that you are into and really challenges you. Just follow this three-step process to use any solo to keep your chops sharp.

1 - Learn the notes
2 - Polish the solo to performance ready.
3 - Keep it sharp every week or two.

Now for a little background on this video. I recorded the performance for that you see here over a year ago, before Lily-Ann was born. I got busy with other things and haven't had time to record the instructional part until this past week. The cool thing is that I was constantly coming back to this solo over the past year. That made it pretty easy to jump back into it and record the instructional bits. That’s a real world example of how having a go to solo that pushes you can help maintain your chops.

Hope you enjoy it,
Nate