Lead Guitar
Lead Guitar
Learn To Play Lead Guitar With 6 Secret Tips
If you want to learn to play lead guitar then you already know it is a combination of theory, technique, and natural talent. Everyone wants to be the best lead guitarist they can be. Everyone knows that you have to address the basics such as reading music and listening to music but most don’t think about the really important things that will set you apart from other people who want to also learn.
There are six important tips that you will want to remember.
- Technique
- Position
- Hand Position
- Attitude
- Discipline
- Leadership Skills
Technique
Technique, of course, is one of the key elements you must address when you learn any instrument but especially the guitar. It is really important to get a good teacher to teach you the technique skills and to help you to perfect them. Many famous, and not so famous, lead guitarists will tell you they never stop learning, never stop practicing and never stop perfecting their style. Performing with a guitar is an expression of your talent, you need to practice and perfect your craft.
Position
Most people don’t realize that when you first start out learning it is helpful to practice sitting down. This gives you much more control over your instrument and allows you to concentrate on the actual music you are practicing. This might be difficult for some but whether you decide to sit or to remain standing you must always remember to have both feet flat on the ground and to sit with your back straight. This will help you to avoid back strain or injury.
Hand Position
When you are learning you will soon realize that one of the most important things you will learn is how to position your hands. If you start from the beginning with the correct hand positions you will find it much easier later to move through the different chords with ease. It also lets you react quickly if one of your fellow musicians has a problem and makes a mistake. At first it will seem very difficult especially if you have been using incorrect hand positions in the past. Stick with it, practice hand positions regularly, it will pay off in the end when you sound professional.
Attitude
Attitude, and by this we don’t mean having a bad attitude, is a very important thing to pay attention to. Attitude affects your body language and this is important. Attitude and body language go together to give you the confidence you will need to perform as a lead guitarist. Watch successful lead guitarists and see how they always look so much more confident than their back-up guitarists. That’s attitude!
Discipline
When you first learn to play lead guitar it is easy to be disciplined. Your initial enthusiasm makes it easy to be able to spend hours trying new music and techniques. As you improve it is easy to settle in to a level that is good but maybe not excellent. It takes discipline to maintain a level of practice that will constantly improve your skills. Discipline is what separates an average guitarist from a brilliant one. One good tip is to write out a program and set a schedule with small goals along the way to keep you motivated and on track.
Leadership skills
Leadership skills are important to have if you want to be the one playing the lead. You will be the one people look to for guidance, you will be responsible for all the musicians in the group. You need to be able to pay attention to what everyone is playing and be able to cover mistakes that may happen during a song. This may take a while to get really good at but you should always be training yourself. Try to listen while you are playing and you will improve. This skill will grow if you start right from the beginning when you learn to play lead guitar.
About the Author
Louise Nova has been involved in the music industy for many years. She pays particular attention to quality information and endorses the best in guitar training programs on her site at
Learn To Play Guitar Secrets
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Can I learn straight off the lead guitar instead of learning the acoustic first?
I’ve never really played the guitar in my life before, but I’m very keen to learn seeing as i’m a huge fan of 80s rock/prog rock. I’ve spoken to a few people at some music stores near by, and they recommended I learn the acoustic guitar before I even think about learning the lead guitar. Other people have told me it doesn’t really matter what I learn off first. What do I do and why? Thanks
Honestly, the electric should be easier to “start.” Strings are easier to push down easier to bend, slide, etc. Also, if you don’t want to blow the house away you don’t have to plug it in and you can play it quietly. ALso, a biggie, you HEAR YOUR MISTAKES ON AN ELECTRIC ALOT MORE THAN AN ACOUSTIC. So by playing an electric (plugged in) you will hear all your mistakes, compared to an acoustic, you don’t hear them quite as much. I wish I would have started with an electric. Also with an electric, you can go right to work playing power chords, which are easy and you can suound good in very little time with little overall knowledge. I highly advise an electric before an acoustic.
1.) Easier to push down on frets, won’t kill your finger tips
2.) Your mistakes will be minimized as you get better because they are magnified a thousand times through the amp. Which may sound bad, but it’s actually good because you’ll get better alot faster.
3.) You can get a Line 6 15 watt amp (awsome little starter amp) that will play any music you want (metal, blues, clean sound, crunch sound, anything) for $99. Also a decent electric (a Made in Mexico Stratocaster, $400). If you want a decent acoustic, minimum you will pay is $500, acoustics are just expensive to get a decent one.
With an electric like I said above you can play any music right off the bat (metal, alternative, blues, rock), anything. With an acoustic, you are sort of limited to the tone/type of music you can play.
Lead Guitar
How To Improve Your Lead Guitar Playing
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How to Play Lead Guitar
You probably already know the difference between rhythm and lead if you’ve spent any length of time searching for information on how to play lead guitar.
There is a wealth of free tutorials available on the Internet that will teach you basic ‘licks’ and ‘riffs.’However, many of these tutorials fail to explain how rhythm guitar and lead guitar differ not just in the skills required, but also in mindset.
It’s one thing to say that lead guitar focuses more on playing scales than chords, and quite another to say that playing lead guitar changes how you hear things within a song — but that’s exactly what it does.
Let’s look at an example using a simple I-V-VI-IV-I chord progression in the key of G-major.
If you have the necessary tools, go ahead and record yourself playing these chords (G-major to D-major to E-minor to C-major back to G-major) so that you have a backing track (a 4 measure progression in 4/4 time will do just fine).
Now, play the track back and think about how to make the progression more interesting from a lead guitar perspective. If these were the only chords in a song, and they were played in the same order the whole way through, it could get boring pretty quickly, right?
In your role as a lead guitarist, you could spend a good portion of your time making the progression less mundane by picking notes within those chords or adding other flourishes to help pull out a more complex melodic movement.
For example, you could move up the fretboard to a different ‘voicing’ of the chords and, instead of picking individual notes, use your fingers to ‘pluck’ the interval of root and fifth for each chord.
This demonstrates an important point: playing lead isn’t all about being ‘flashy’. You’ve got know when to ‘blend in’ and when to stand out. It is much better to do what is best for the song. Sometimes less is more for the sake of keeping a song ‘uncluttered’.
There are other times, though, when a song does call for a fancy, breathtaking solo that shows off your ‘guitar god’ skills. Many beginners, however, mistakenly equate great solos with ‘quantity’ and speed. They try to cram as many notes as possible into as short of a time as possible.
I’ll let you in on a secret, though: great guitar solos (even those lightning-fast ones) often don’t involve as many notes as you think they do. The fact is you can take just 4 or 5 notes and build a riff that sounds like you’re traveling all over the fretboard.
How?
First, start thinking of riffs as ‘building blocks’ that can be fit together. For example, you can pair up a 2 note riff with a 3 or 4 note riff to create a ‘larger’, 5 or 6 note riff. If you know your fretboard (and your music theory) well enough, you’ll see how each riff ‘centers’ around either the ‘tonic’ or the ‘dominant’ tonalities of the key.
This is important because your solo must follow the progression. If the progression is about to resolve back to the root (key center), then your riff needs to include the notes which “lead” most strongly back to that key center.
The concept of “leading” is actually a psychoacoustic phenomenon. In Western culture, our ears are trained to expect a ‘resolution’ to the key center of a musical progression whenever we hear the ‘Dominant’ (V) tone of the key.
However, the impact of this leading quality is also dependent on where the Dominant falls within the progression. If you have a Perfect Fourth (which is ‘D’ when in the key of A-major) inserted somewhere in between, you may expect either the root or Dominant tonality to follow.
So, imagine that you’re playing a two-note blues riff in the key of A by bending D up to E and back down again. You can play this riff over any part of the progression from A to D to E. However, the riff will sound different at each point in the progression relative to how ‘far’ your are from resolving to the tonic.
Let’s say you have a ‘collection’ of riffs. Some of them center around A, some around D and some around E. You can mix and match these riffs in different ways across your chord progression, so long as you’re emphasizing the appropriate ‘tonics’ at the appropriate time.
You can play them backwards and forwards. You can arpeggiate them. You can play one riff really quickly, insert a slow bend, and then another quick flurry of notes. You can even repeat a single riff across several measures until it comes time to ‘lead’ back towards the key center.
The effect of all this is that you can create a lot of ‘drama’ and movement without having to play every single note within the scale. You’ll sound like you’re totally shredding, but you’ll do it with only half the effort!
My recommendation to anyone who wants to grow as guitarist and all-around musician is to continue educating yourself on music theory, learn your fretboard and practice both your left and right hand techniques (finger-picking, bends, hammer-ons, pull-offs, etc.).
That’s the real secret to playing lead guitar.
About the Author
Andreas Wahlstedt is committed to learn ordinary people play guitar.
Get his free report and mails here:
http://www.learnguitarin48hours.com/
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Lead Guitar