Lead Guitar Lessons
When it comes time to consider
lead guitar lessons, don't let the
name lead guitar fool you. Around 75% of most music arrangements is the vocal part and if you only learn to be
a great soloist, what are you going to play while the singer is singing? I've seen so many young guns spend
all their time mastering their solo chops and learning to take an awesome solo, only to never successfully get
in a good band because they couldn't play the rest of the song in any meaningful way. With the
Guitar Lesson Expert, you will learn
the appropriate balance between laying down the backdrop for the song and stepping up to shine during each and
every solo. You'll also learn so many techniques, that each solo will be unique and not a rehash of something
you just played.
Please understand that when I say laying down the backdrop, that can mean so many different
things about how you’ll play the song. Are you in a power trio? Do you have a rhythm guitarist in the band? Is
there a keyboard player? You’ve got to ask yourself tons of questions, like how much of the rhythmic fabric of this
song is my responsibility, or how much freedom do I have to play counterpoint and play a part that plays virtual
tag with the singer? Will you need to use upper partial chord voicings to lay in the feeling of strings or
orchestral parts, all the while keeping the groove going and making the song sound as interesting as possible?
Creating that level of interest in the rhythmic backing of the song is really the number 1 job of the lead
guitarist, while the solo is the frosting.
When you listen to major lead guitarists, and I’ll pick Jimmy Page of Led Zeppelin for this
example, you hear riff based rhythms, upper partial chunks of chords creating an interactive rhythm part, or power
chord partials in open fourths, fifths, or sixths. What you don’t typically hear is a guitarist simply strumming to
the beat. As a result, one of the most important parts of a lead guitarist’s repertoire is having the ability to
carve out and sculpt fragments of the chords in an interesting rhythm that dances with the bass and drums, while
weaving its way through the song as the co-star with the singer’s melody, equal parts counter melody and syncopated
rhythms or to pound out intoxicating riff-based rhythms in the style of the best of blues
music.
The lead guitarist is arguably the most
important non-singing musician on the stage from the standpoint of coordinating all of the musical elements much
like a football quarterback runs each play. Lost in the thinking process about becoming a lead guitar player, is
that you’ll usually need to be the most musically knowledgeable person in the band, other than possibly a keyboard
player, and as such you’ll need to direct rehearsals, develop the arrangements of the tunes, work out all the
transitions and modulations, and understand how to do any transpositions the singer might need to get the song in
the right key. For those of you looking to play this vital role in any band, it’s almost a must to take
lead guitar
lessons and you couldn’t be in better hands than to take them with the Guitar Lesson Expert.
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