Muse spend roughly ninety percent of "Madness" wobbling at you like a dubstep track that wandered into the wrong studio — and then Matt Bellamy strolls in with an actual, singing guitar solo, as if to remind you he still owns a guitar and hasn't sold it to a synthesizer. It's rude, really. It's also a goldmine.
This is Lick #36, where I work through that Madness solo note by note and shamelessly point out which bits are worth stealing. Spoiler: it's most of them. Bellamy builds the whole thing out of a handful of well-chosen notes and enormous, weepy bends, which is exactly the sort of thing you can lift and paste into your own playing without anyone filing a lawsuit.
How the Madness solo actually works
Here's the nerdy truth: this solo barely moves. Bellamy picks three or four target notes that sit sweetly over the chords, then connects them with wide, slow bends and a vibrato you could hang a hammock on. There's almost no fast picking — the drama comes from when he lands each note and how long he lets it hang there before wobbling it. That's phrasing, and it's the thing shredders skip and then wonder why nobody hums their solos. The takeaway you can actually use: pick a couple of chord tones as landing spots, approach them from a semitone or whole tone below with a bend, and add vibrato only at the end of the phrase, like a full stop. Suddenly your five pentatonic notes sound like a decision instead of a scale. If you want the same trick with more distortion and attitude, the Hysteria solo is Bellamy doing this angrier.
Once you've stolen a lick, the real move is to stop being a thief and become a forger — which is basically what lick creation is: taking someone's idea, changing three notes, and calling it yours. Bellamy did it to a hundred blues players before you; go and pay it forward.
So yes, I stole from Muse, and I'd do it again — steal along with me, and if these breakdowns save you from another aimless pentatonic run, consider tossing a coin to your guitar teacher on Patreon, where the Guitar Pro files and full videos live.