Learning Lead Guitar - Top 3 Tips for Soloing Success

Many of us start playing guitar for various reasons. Some want to sing along and impress girls and others want to be rock stars and party all the time. No matter what the reason, we all discover that learning lead guitar is what separates the wanna be guitar players from those who actually can play. Learning lead guitar takes a lot of dedication and practice. Below is an overview of the three most important steps to learning lead guitar.

First step to Learning Lead Guitar:

Practice as many scales and arpeggios as you can. These are the building blocks for all solo guitar work. Strive to learn them in as many different ways as you can. It is also important to play scales and arpeggios in as many different keys as you can.

Second step to Learning Lead Guitar:

Once you have mastered some scales and arpeggios try jamming along with a favorite song. Another really good practice method is to record your self playing rhythm guitar and then try to solo over it. When improvising it is important not concentrate on the notes and how they sound. I know it is tempting to play as fast as you can, but a wiser guitarist than me once said accuracy before speed. And you know what he was right. The sooner you can recognize how a scale will sound over a certain chord the easier it will be to rip through it and find a good ending point to make it sound fluid.

Third step to Learning Lead Guitar:

It is especially important in the beginning to practice exercises that will build finger dexterity and help synchronize the fret hand with the pick hand. They are not always the most fun to practice, but the pay offs in speed and agility are well worth the boredom. In fact as you mature as a player you will probably find that these exercises are very useful in warming up before performances.

Learning lead guitar is a demanding yet highly rewarding experience. The feeling you get from wailing out a hot guitar lick is one of the most exhilarating feelings in the world. I urge you to apply the techniques mentioned above for learning lead guitar. Memorize as many scales and arpeggios as you can. Improvise them to your own rhythms or jam with a CD or even better find other people to jam with.

John Hughes has been playing guitar for longer than he can remember. Aside from teaching guitar for the last three years he enjoys writing articles about learning lead guitar and other guitar related topics. If you are serious about mastering the building blocks for lead guitar you owe it to yourself to check out Guitar-Scale-Mastery.info