Get the Process Started:
Most people who get introduced to playing guitar solos will start out with pentatonic scales or some other scales. Those scaletones will need to live somewhere, you can play chords yourself and play some notes in between the chords, this will help but it may be difficult in the beginning as you will need to maintain the rhythm of the chords while playing single notes at the same time.
An alterative to overcome this problem is to use backing tracks which will play songs (or part of songs) while you can focus on playing melodic ideas with a scale which will form the backbone of you solo.
A better idea to get those chords to play is to record the chords onto a loop pedal, then (while the loop is playing) jam your solo ideas over the looped chords. Why is using a loop pedal better than using backing tracks? You actually played those chords yourself, you created the rhythm and hopefully will have a feel to play over those chords.
Where Do We Go From Here?
Okay now you have your chords playing back to you and you can play some melodic ideas over those chords, how can you make those notes improve to make them sound like a music statement?
Playing Phrases is the answer. A music phrase is a short idea, a short melody or riff. Once you have one idea your goal is to connect that idea to the next phrase, in this way your phrases will become short, musical stories. Solos form little musical ideas put together. The better the melodic content of these short ideas are, the better the listener will be able to hear what you are trying to play. The typical beginner fault is to make the solo sound like “searching for the right notes”
Once you have the “right” notes, connect them with other notes to make the solos longer and more convincing.
Singing melodic ideas before you play is a good habit to play better melodic solos on the guitar. Try to make a habit of singing your notes, it will improve your solos and overal musical ideas.
Happy exploring, and hope to see you soon again.
Eddie