Getting Started on Solo Arrangements
I find solo arrangements one of the most enjoyable things you can play on the guitar. It is just great to be able to sit down and create complete music on your own. Unfortunately, solo guitar is difficult to get good at technically, and it is particularly hard in the beginning. There is no standard approach you can apply, as with the piano where you can play the chords with the left hand and the melody with the right. Start working on simple arrangements, and with time you will acquire the skill necessary to play the more advanced arrangements.
What to pay attention to
Here are three pieces of advice that I feel very strongly about.
Keep time. When you are rehearsing a solo arrangement and you have got to the stage where you know how to play a few bars, in the sense that you know what your fingers are supposed to do, make sure you practice in time. Don't worry about playing in super slow-motion, the tempo does not matter. What matters is that you keep the flow. Use a metronome or a click track regularly so that you won't be able to cheat, which can easily happen even if you are in good faith. Solo arrangements are rarely difficult because they are fast, rather they are difficult because the fingerings are complex. Once you can play an arrangement slowly, in time, it is usually reasonably quick (and fun!) to work it up to performance speed.
Move your fingers only when you have to! You frequently have to let several notes ring at the same time and, similarly, you frequently have to play several notes simultaneously. Be economic with which fingers you move, and when. You need to get beyond the application of 'chord grips' as they are used in strumming. Have a look at the example shown on the right. In bar one, there are two inversions of Dmin7, the first falling on beat one and the second on beat three. If you were to repeat bar one a few times you are effectively playing chords, and you have to change the fingering of all four notes at the same time when you switch between the two chords. It requires a quick adjustment. Now consider bar two. After fretting the first note on beat one, you have time until beat two to fret the other three notes. The same goes for the second chord. You have time until beat four to fret the three notes after playing a single note on beat three. The notes in the two bars make up the same two chords and uses the same fingerings so it is tempting to employ the same left-hand mechanics in both cases. However, bar two is easier to play than bar one and it also sounds more fluent in a solo arrangement (mp3). Be aware how long you have to fret the notes, particularly when they make up a chord that is familiar to you. Don't go for the all-notes-at-once approach unless it is strictly necessary.
Record yourself. You absolutely have to record yourself occasionally. Things just don't sound the same when you playing and when you are listening. It is partly physical, I think; some things are just more fun to play than others, and that biases your judgement. In addition, I also find that small details sometimes make a big difference. For example, whether you play a chord on the beat, or just before the beat, can change the feel of a passage completely. Above all a recording will make any problems with your time-keeping painfully obvious.
You should also think about how you want to use your right hand. Do you prefer to play with the pick only, or do you like plucking the strings with your fingers? I don't want to try to sell you a specific right hand technique because I think it is a personal choice. If you keep an open mind and experiment occasionally you avoid getting stuck with bad habits, and you should be able to keep improving.
Notation
All solo arrangements are provided with three types of tablature: 1) clock notation, 2) tablature for a 7-string guitar, and 3) tablature for a 6-string guitar. You can think of the clock notation as being tablature for a monstrous instrument, referred to as Big Ben, with eight strings, all tuned to Ab. Since it isn't possible to put more than one note on each string simultaneously it is necessary to have strings with identical pitch. Thus, Big Ben is tuned from low to high in the octaves 1-2-2-2-3-3-3-4. Below it is shown how a chromatic run from the open E on the lowest string to the E in 12th fret on the M3-7 (or the C6) maps out in each of the three systems. Unfortunately, the Big Ben instrument cannot be exported to gp5, it is available in gp6 only. I have not included traditional music notation so if you need it you have to import the examples into one of the tablature editors listed in Getting Started and enable the standard notation.
The colour coding is used to draw your attention to the fact that there are effectively only three different strings on the M3: E, Ab and C. You get from the fret number to the clock notation in the following way.
On the strings tuned to E, indicated as red, you subtract 4 hours. Thus, if you are in fret 7, the note is 3 in clock notation, which is B.
On the strings tuned to C, indicated as dark green, you add 4 hours. Thus, if you are in fret 2, the note is 6 in clock notation, which is D.
On the strings tuned to Ab, which are without colour highlighting, the fret number is the same as the clock notation. Thus, if you are in fret 9, the note is 9 in clock notation, which is F.
You have to get used to "wrapping around noon" as you do in real life. For example 4 hours before 3 is 11 and 4 hours after 9 is 1.