Chris Buck’s five top tips to improve your guitar solos
The easiest thing to do when you’ve built the kind of massive online audience that Chris Buck has is to make it your job. The 34-year-old Welsh guitarist has over 400,000 followers across YouTube, Instagram and TikTok, and plenty of worse guitar players with smaller followings are doing very well for themselves by leaning into the influencer life… but Buck is built differently in that regard.
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Instead of tacking into the wind of the Instagram guitarist, Buck has committed fully to making a success of his band, Cardinal Black – a refreshingly old-school approach to ‘making it’ and one that seems to be bearing real fruit on the band’s second album, Midnight At The Valencia.
“To us this record has come to represent the idea of putting 10,000 long hard hours honing your craft as a musician,” states Chris Buck. “All the years being in function bands, hard toil in rough clubs and weddings, playing as a band growing up together musically and personally. These are definite themes both lyrically and musically that really tie the album together along the theme of ‘the journey’ and how we got to this point.”
Image: Marty Moffatt
It’s been quite a journey for Buck and the band – they first formed over a decade ago, then broke up after one EP to pursue other projects, before deciding to come back together during the first lockdown and make a proper go of it. In the years since they’ve built a strong following across the globe, toured with Myles Kennedy, and even played the Royal Albert Hall in support of Peter Frampton.
All the while Buck’s reputation as one of the finest players around has grown and grown – but when it comes to Cardinal Black, he’s more determined than ever to ensure that his guitar work doesn’t overshadow his bandmates.
“I wanted to focus on writing parts to compliment the song” he notes, “Rather than just blazing away on solos – although there’s still plenty of that live! It’s a much more obviously personal record compared to the first one, it’s representative of our lives, becoming parents, losing family members, good and bad times,” notes Chris. “In a band you spend so much time together and have so many shared experiences. It is such a long journey. Adam (drums), Tom (lead vocals) and I have been doing this for 15 years, I know those boys as well as I know my own wife!”
Image: Marty Moffatt
Tone Hound
As anyone who has watched Chris’s popular Friday Fretworks videos on YouTube will be well aware of Chris’s passion for quality vintage guitars, and recording the album at the well-stocked Powerplay Studios in Switzerland allowed him to sample their dizzying array on in-house gear including a ’63 Jazzmaster, ’62 Strat and a ’62 SG Junior, all running into a pair of 60s Fender amps. It was quite a contrast from Cardinal Black’s first album in 2021.
“The first record we recorded on a bit of a shoestring budget with friends loaning us guitars, amps, and decent mics,” Buck recalls. “So it was nice to go into this record and have anything we could ever dream of at our disposal. Vintage drum kits, Moog synths, Mellotrons, Hammond Organs, all recorded through Stevie Nicks’ old Neve desk – dream territory, such an inspiring environment to be in, just so conducive to being creative!”
There was one guitar – with one very famous owner – however, that really stood out in the process.
“On the solo for the track Morning Light and the entirety of the track Your Spark (Blows Me to Pieces) I used a 1956 Les Paul Junior that Powerplay owner and album producer Cyrill Camenzind told me used to belong to Keith Richards,” he reveals. “Apparently, it spent some time up with Sonic Youth before ending up at the Powerplay. It’s a great sounding guitar, a bit idiosyncratic, a couple of setup issues you had to play around, but awesome sounding guitar that sent me on a bit of a Junior hunt for a while!”
Chris won’t have much time for guitar hunting in the coming months, as Cardinal Black are hitting the road across the UK, Europe and USA in support of the album – and he feels vindicated in his decision to embrace band life in the way their audience has grown in barely four years.
“Undoubtedly when we launched you could see the audiences consisted mainly of guitar heads that maybe knew me from YouTube,” Chris states knowingly. “Over time the crowd of people in front of my amps who want to see what guitar pedal I’m pressing at what moments of the set. That’s diluted now, we see a more varied audience demographic, people bringing their wives along or families. Artistically people seem to connect with the songs and the things we say and do.”
“That’s cool because you realise your music is speaking to people not just the technical proficiency of the guitar player which is nice! It never ceases to amaze me to see how much people get invested in bands, and with Cardinal Black we really try to treat everyone like part of our family.”
Chris Buck’s Five Tips For Better Guitar Solos
Chris is one of the most expressive and melodic guitar players around – while also being able to shred it with the best of them. But how does he manage to keep things tasteful while melting his fair share of faces? Well, these lessons hold him in good stead – and they’re things you can easily incorporate into your own playing, too.
Follow The Vocals
“‘Take cues from the vocal melody’ would be the biggest tip. It gives the listener something to hook onto, especially if it’s the song’s hook. Tom and I end up quoting each other a lot and it’s always a fantastic starting point for a solo.
“It reminds me of a Marcus King quote I once heard, where he said something along the lines of, ‘Your vocal melody ain’t worth a damn if you don’t want to reference it in your guitar solo’.” [Marcus actually said that to Guitar.com! – Ed]
Tom Hollister of Cardinal Black. Image: Marty Moffatt
Keep It Simple
“There is no need to overcomplicate things, it doesn’t have to be a display of technical prowess. Especially if the band is primarily about the songs. They just need to be a transition to move the song from this point to the next point.”
Build The Intensity
“To create a good journey for the listener, building in intensity is a big part of trying to be narrative driven in your solo. You can construct it like you would in a story or sentence. Punctuate it and give it emphasis where needed.”
“You wouldn’t speak with the same intensity throughout an entire sentence, you emphasise the parts that have the most impact, that’s the same with soloing.”
Image: Marty Moffatt
Don’t Start At The Top
“Start low, aim high. Even on a very basic level that gives you a framework. Often my favourite parts in a solo are the transition bits before the cool bit, don’t overlook those parts as they set up the cool bit that everyone remembers, but without the setup it wouldn’t be as cool.”
Look For Inspiration Outside Guitar
“I listen to and take a lot of inspiration from singers. I love Otis Redding and Sam Cooke, even Adele. If you listen to the way they approach a note, their phrasing and their unique vibrato, it all adds up to create their distinctive style.”
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