The best neo-soul guitar performances

Neo-soul guitar is exploding and innovating at an incredible speed! If you don’t stop to look around once in a while, you’ll miss some of these awesome performances!

In this article, we’ve picked five of our favorite neo-soul guitar performances and some of the details that make them such a fun and exciting spectacle. Hopefully, these ideas will inspire you to create your own neo-soul guitar performance.

Nicklas Myhre - “Juniper”

If you’re not hip to Nicklas Myhre, prepare to have your mind blown! Nicklas has been one of the pioneering neo-soul guitarists and composers for the last five years.

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‍His silky-smooth playing and immaculate production skills continue to be a huge hit with audiences across Instagram, Tiktok, and YouTube.

What makes Juniper a special performance?

Nicklas’ playing and writing style showcases the perfect combination of jazz guitar harmony, R&B chord choices, and elements of prog rock.

Let’s take a deeper look at what makes Juniper so breathtaking to listen to:

1. Clearly defined melodies play a huge role in Nicklas’ playing style.

• It’s no coincidence that Nicklas’ videos are such a hit and this performance underlines the importance of making the melody clear and singable.
• In this performance, Nicklas helps us to remember that “memorable is masterful”.

2. Subtle shakes and shimmers make us shiver!

• The little details really do make a big difference!
• Take for example, the vibrato that Nicklas uses on the last chord and melody note of a phrase.
• It helps to sustain the chord or melody note for a little longer, but it’s also the perfect articulation trick used to imitate the human voice!
• Slips, slides, double shakes, and a sprinkling of whammy-bar action can help phrases go the extra mile.

3. Sitting in the pocket helps this performance go from sounding right, to feeling right.

• Sitting ‘in the pocket’ is a term used by guitarists of all genres to describe the feeling of being in sync with a band’s groove.
• Neo-soul guitar is heavily indebted to the rhythmic ideas first heard in 90s hip hop.
• Although Nicklas isn’t playing with a band in this clip, he still makes sure that everything he plays catches the strong backbeat of the track.
• Rhythm is often an overlooked element, but it’s the glue that holds great ideas together!

P.S. Here’s a gift just for you – a direct link to Nicklas’ neo-soul guitar Master Class available on Pickup Music!

Beau Diakowicz - “Hazel”

For the last eight years, Beau has been a key player but largely enigmatic figure in the extended guitar multiverse. One comment that consistently appears under Beau’s videos is that “he always makes it look easy”.

While digging back into the neo-soul guitar archives, we stumbled across this masterful performance from the buttery-smooth guitar phenomenon.

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Although this is only a short clip of Beau’s magnificent playing, there’s a lot that we can take away from this extraordinary performance.

What makes Hazel a special performance?

Beau’s virtuosic playing style is easily recognizable through his mind blowingly smooth and inventive chordal passages paired with fluid legato single-line melodies. Hazel showcases all of Beau’s innovative techniques and lyrical songwriting.

Let’s take a closer look at what makes Hazel a neo-soul guitar masterclass:

1. A mixture of picking techniques

• One of the key features of Beau’s playing style is how highly adaptable his picking technique is.
• In this performance, he seamlessly blends hybrid picking (with the pick and fingers) when playing chordal passages, with regular alternate picking when playing single-line melodies.
• But, the change between both techniques is so smooth that you’d only know this by watching the video.

2. Tapping + chords

• Reggie Wooten, Lenny Breau, and Eddie Van Halen are players who have explored the chord tapping technique.
• This is when you play a chord with the fretting hand and tap the melody notes with the picking hand.
• Beau takes this technique in a slightly different direction by creating a brief flurry of notes that imitate the sound of a wind chime.
• When used sparingly, this sound effect has a fluttering, pianistic quality to it that always catches the listener off guard!

3. Harmonized melodies in 3rds and 4ths

• This scintillating melodic device is heard throughout the gospel and R&B guitar traditions.
• Its primary use is to add a thicker texture to a single-line melody by pairing it with a harmonized melody below.
• No one this quite like Beau!
• As heard in Hazel, his fluency using 3rds and 4ths to harmonize melodic passages is crystal clear.
• The addition of rapid slips and slides in and out of these passages goes a long way to making the phrases sound ultra smooth.

Tiana Ohara - “miss you / flow”

Tiana Ohara is another one of our favorite neo-soul guitarists here at pickup.

Her playing always prioritizes the importance of musicality, locking into the groove, and injecting creativity into every inch of the performance. You won’t want to miss this one.

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This feel-good performance is full of originality, melodic development, and silky-smooth interplay between the instruments – all played by Tiana!

What makes miss you / flow a special performance?

As a multi-instrumentalist, Tiana has an amazing perspective on all 4 instruments in this performance and how they should interact with each other.

This medley incorporates both of her original songs and includes moments of pure joy as she floats over the top of the progressions on the acoustic guitar.

Step into Tiana’s world to learn how she does it:

1. Building dynamics

• There are lots of ways to draw your listener in when taking a solo and building dynamics is a great example.
• Tiana’s acoustic guitar solo starts towards the middle of the performance and exhibits some perfect examples of using volume dynamics and the range of the fretboard to build the intensity of a solo.

2. Trills create thrills

• Trills are a commonly used neo-soul guitar technique that have their roots in gospel, blues, motown, and R&B guitar.
• This subtle technique helps to decorate individual chords by adding moments of unexpected color and interest.
• Check out Tiana’s chordal playing when she is using the electric guitar to hear how she embellishes each chord in the progression.  

3. Open strings galore!

• Using open strings can be a great way to make chords sound fuller.
• Tiana’s combination of open string notes in her chord voicings creates a sustained, overinging effect that helps to blend the chords in the progression together.  
• This is also a fantastic example of Tiana’s squeaky-clean chordal technique.