Soloing without a group is one of the best and fastest ways to develop your own style, but more importantly, your CONFIDENCE! At first, you're going to feel really inadequate when it's your turn to solo WITH a group.
Just use one or two chords to practice with. This works with any style, rock, blues, bluegrass flatpicking, fingerpicking, and so on. If you can record it, you might discover some combinations that just flow and you'll want to keep those to incorporate into your own style. Sure, there's nothing new under the sun, BUT keep the styles you like the best, and they'll become part of your personality when you play. If you have more than one personality, just try to keep from playing everything you know in every tune! This can be hard to do. Remember that you can't just "come up with stuff" out of your head if you haven't learned it ahead of time. If you don't have the technical practice,(scales, finger exercises, chord progressions, keys, etc.) you can't expect to have all these great spurts of genius just fall out of the sky. So learn your first guitar licks and styles note for note, then later you will automatically create your own phrasing style. Try taking two or three notes out of a phrase and use them somewhere else. In another key, another tempo, totally different style, and keep that little phrase in your memory bank. Yeah, you have to think a little. Your tastes change, styles change, you'll come back to something that you left behind and dig it all over again. So don't get stuck in only one groove. Here are a few ways to get your soloing happening. First, pick only ONE chord you think sounds cool at the moment. Now pick a tempo and a style to strum it, or bang it for, let's say, two beats. Now add a riff or a simple lick in the next two beats. Go back to the chord and do it all over again, changing the lick a little each time. What this does is FORCE you to fit your notes into those two beats. Tap or stomp your foot to keep the timing going strong, and soon you'll actually be "coming up with stuff" on your own. Didn't work too well? Change to a different beat altogether, and think of a familiar tune or groove, and go with that. I like to do this with a raised 9th chord in the key of C or E. After you're used to it, add a second chord, and keep 'em both in those two beats, maybe strum double time using 16th notes. This is really good practice, and it doesn't matter what style you're into right now.
Using 16th notes and strums is perfect for flatpicking bluegrass style, jazz, R&B and funk. This is why I say that you can step over to jazz easier than you think. The closest thing there is in my view to picking jazz is bluegrass flatpicking, with country picking a close second. Why? You've got to use alternate picking and play scales. Try flatpicking yourself for a while, in the first three or four frets, then when you're ready, move up the neck, with no open strings. There are some great scales to practice in our "basic" CD, with soundclips and diagrams to follow. Danny Lee.