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Guitar Lessons
Lead
Guitar Lessons
Develop
your own soloing style Anything
can be learned in time with practice, and with these lead
guitar lessons you'll
develop naturally, in your own time.
Lead
guitar isn't about playing as fast as possible so the notes become a
senseless blur, nor is it about showing off your neo-classical
composition skills (although that would indeed turn heads). It's about
expressing personal
emotion as though you're speaking
through the guitar.
Eric Clapton, love or hate his
music, never really played fast or
overly complex lead guitar, but he developed an individual style. He
mastered the art of personal expression. Same with
Hendrix, Brian May and AC/DC's Angus Young, to name but a few.
In a nutshell: Learn each of the essential lead
guitar techniques and theory, and then use this
as foundation knowledge to build your
ideas
upon and experiment with. It's all about knowing what creative options
you have...
Lead
Guitar Techniques
Alternate
Picking
Alternate picking simply
involves using up and down picking strokes
alternately. Not as easy as it sounds at first, so this lesson should
help you with accuracy and speed building.
String
Bending
String bending really does
liven up boring, flat
solos, and every lead guitarist should be confident with using bends.
Learn to bend with ease and precision with this introductory lesson.
Part 1 introduces the physical basics, before we move on to some staple bending techniques in part 2.
Part 1: Bending
Basics
Part 2: Bending Techniques
Hammer ons and pull
offs
When learning lead guitar,
hammer ons and pull offs
should be one of the first techniques you look at. It's basically just
another interesting texture to add to your soloing, just like string
bending, vibrato etc. In these lessons I'll introduce the basic hammer
on and pull off techniques, provide exercises to get all those fingers
involved and finally look at how they work together.
Part 1: Hammer Ons
Part 2: Pull Offs
Part 3: Working
them together effectively
String
Vibratos
Vibratos make your notes sing!
Punctuate your lead guitar phrases with
this "effect" and it can inject the warmth and emotion you need to make
that perfect solo expression. This lesson introduces the technique and
then guides you through to mastering the physical aspects.
Part 1: Vibrato
basics
Part 2: Working
vibratos into solos
Finger
Slides
Not to be confused with
"bottle-neck" sliding used in country music, this is a finger
technique which makes more use of single string lead guitar phrases.
Using slides allows you to glide over more of the fretboard and bridge
the gaps between the fixed scale shapes you learn over time. An
important guitar technique to learn - come inside!
Finger
Tapping
Get to grips with the physical
side of this technique and
your knowledge of scales will integrate naturally. If you follow both
lessons
below and take your time mastering various tapping rhythms and the
physical side
of it, it's actually not as difficult as it sounds!
Part 1: The
Basics
Part 2: More
complex patterns
Lead
Guitar Lessons - Useful Stuff
Get a free metronome!
Metronomes help you keep
rhythm and timing with your lead guitar. It's important to use some
kind of rhythm check on your playing from day 1, even though it is like
chinese water torture...
Free
Online Metronome
Alternatively, if you're
looking for something that was designed to
really help develop your playing speed and confidence, try what's known
as the
Ultimate
Metronome.
Warmup!
Try these finger warmup exercises to loosen
up your movement across the fretboard.
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