If you’ve been playing guitar for a while, you’ve probably noticed something frustrating. Every time you solo, you play the same licks. The same patterns. The same shapes in the same positions. You know you should be more creative, but when the moment comes, your fingers default to what they already know.
Most guitarists assume this means they need to learn more licks. So they go find new ones — YouTube, tabs, instructional videos — and add them to the pile. Now they have more licks. But the same problem happens: when it’s time to solo, they still default to the same handful of familiar patterns. The new licks don’t show up because they were memorized in isolation, disconnected from everything else.
The problem isn’t a lack of licks. It’s a lack of creative process.
What Most Players Are Missing
There’s a difference between knowing licks and being able to create with them. Knowing licks means you can play them as learned — the same notes, the same rhythm, the same phrasing, every time. Creating with them means you can take a single idea and turn it into dozens of variations on the spot.
That’s what separates the guitarist who sounds the same every night from the one who sounds different every time they play, even over the same song.
The good news is that creativity on guitar isn’t a talent you’re born with. It’s a skill you develop through a specific kind of practice. Most guitarists have never been shown how to practice creativity — they’ve been shown how to practice licks, scales, and technique, and then told to “just feel it” when it’s time to solo. That gap between technical ability and creative expression is where most players get stuck.
The Practice Circuit Approach
I use a method with my students called a practice circuit. The idea is simple: instead of learning new licks, you take one lick you already know and systematically transform it into something new.
There’s a specific sequence to the process. You start with the lick as-is, then move through a series of modifications — changing the phrasing, altering the rhythm, reworking specific sections of the lick, keeping some elements while replacing others. Each step builds on the one before it, and by the end of the circuit, that single lick has generated a dozen or more variations that all sound different but are rooted in the same musical idea.
The result isn’t just more licks. It’s a fundamentally different relationship with your musical vocabulary. Instead of pulling from a memorized list of patterns, you’re generating ideas in real time. That’s what improvisation actually is — not recalling licks, but creating phrases.
Why This Works When Learning More Licks Doesn't
When you memorize a new lick from a video, one of two things happens. Either it goes into storage as a fixed thing — a sequence of notes you play the same way each time — or you forget it entirely because you never found a place to actually use it. Either way, your playing doesn’t change.The practice circuit trains your brain to treat licks as raw material, not finished products. You stop thinking of a lick as “this specific set of notes in this specific rhythm” and start thinking of it as a starting point with dozens of possibilities built into it.
Students who work through this process regularly start hearing options they didn’t hear before. They’ll be soloing and realize mid-phrase that they could take it somewhere different — and they have the skill to actually do it, not just the instinct.
That’s the shift. You go from playing licks to playing music.
Why Most Teachers Don't Teach This
Most guitar teachers treat creativity as something that just happens once you know enough material. Learn enough scales, memorize enough licks, play long enough, and eventually the creativity will come. For some players it does — eventually. For most, it doesn’t, because nobody showed them how to practice the creative process itself.
And most teachers never will — because they’ve never thought about it. They teach the way they were taught, use the same methods everyone else uses, and never invest in finding better approaches. It’s not that they’re bad players. Many of them are great players. But playing well and teaching effectively are two very different skills, and developing new methods for training creativity takes work that most teachers simply don’t do.
Teaching someone to systematically transform musical ideas requires a different kind of lesson. It’s not “here’s a new lick, go learn it.” It’s “here’s a lick you already know — now let’s pull it apart and rebuild it six different ways.” That takes a teacher who understands how creativity develops and has a method for training it, not just a library of licks to hand out.
The practice circuit is one of several methods I use to develop creative ability in my students. The ones who commit to it stop worrying about running out of ideas. They have more ideas than they know what to do with — because every lick they already know becomes a source of dozens more.
If your solos sound the same every time you play, the answer probably isn’t learning more material. It’s learning how to use what you already have.
About The Author
Brian Fish is a professional guitarist who has been dedicated to helping other guitar players in Northeast Ohio pursue their musical dreams since 1994. He’s passionate about guiding others on their musical journey! He is the Guitar Playing Transformation Specialist, instructor, mentor, trainer, and coach at
Guitar Lessons Geauga.
Brian has also assisted people from around the globe in developing a solid sense of timing and enhancing their creativity through the fantastic rhythm course, “Ultimate Rhythm Mastery,” available at MusicTheoryForGuitar.com.
If you live in Geauga County / North East Ohio, Guitar Lessons Geauga can help you become the player you’ve always wanted to be.