Playing lead guitar seems like the next logical step to getting some skills in rhythm playing. You might need to focus more on the quality of your playing when you switch to single note solos and lead guitar licks. To start playing lead guitar you will need to be familiar with the notes on the guitar fretboard. This might seem like a big job but it only takes a few minutes a day of finding the notes and playing them in all positions.

You will need to add sessions of alternate picking using scales to your daily guitar practice. Your picking technique is the basis of your lead guitar playing but there are other techniques like string bending and skipping as well as hammer-ons, pull-offs and string tapping.

If you are a rock or blues guitarist you will need to know the minor pentatonic and the blues scale. The blues scale is only the minor pentatonic scale with an added flattened fifth. You can also add a flattened third or seventh.

If you can make or download a twelve bar blues backing track to play in front of, just play the notes of the scale in any order, experimenting with your blue notes. You will gradually get the feel of playing solos as you start to break free from the scale structure and use licks to make your guitar speak.

Another way of practicing playing lead guitar is to focus on the notes you find in the chords. Start by making sure you have the notes firmly in your head, and play them in any order with your backing track playing.

You could devote some time each day to discovering playing lead guitar using arpeggios. This simply involves fingering chord shapes and playing them as single notes. You simply hold the chord shape and play the strings up from the sixth and down from the first, then in random order.

If you have not already learnt to read guitar tabs, you should start now. It only takes half an hour to get the basic idea, and learning tab will allow you to tap into all the lead guitar solos that other guitarists have written in tab and shared on the internet. You can find tabs on tablature archive sites, and you could also check out forums to see if the members post tabs of their work. And don't forget that guitar magazines are still alive and well, so take a look at any regular tab features they might be running.

Do you want to learn to play the guitar? Learn How To Play A Guitar For Free is a constantly updated blog which contains all the resources you need for: learning to play solo guitar, how to learn guitar chords, how to learn to read and play easy acoustic guitar tabs, finding a free online guitar tuner, looking for free guitar lessons online, and how to learn guitar scales.

Article Source:http://www.articlesbase.com/music-articles/playing-lead-guitar-the-first-steps-1013732.html

Guitar Licks

Does anyone know any good guitar licks in cminor?

i am doing a solo for a song and its in c minor and i was hoping you can stay around the 8 to 16 fret range please

You may wish to experiment with the Cm, Fm, and G7 chords in the eighth fret by using your little finger and second finger to dance around in the chord while they pluck out individual notes within the chord you wish to use as a foundation to the melody.

Since you're on an electric guitar you can go as high up the fretboard as comfortable for you, but form your basic chord and pick in and around it to produce the tones you want.

You may not be able to retain a full chord while you're picking out melody notes, but that will be all right because you will be stabilized in a chord formation in the event you make a miswhack on a string.

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Blues Guitar Licks
Guitar slingers honor the Allman Brothers
The group was formed over two years ago by some of the area's finest musicians as a jam session that evolved into an Allman Brothers tribute band. They play most every Monday at Shady O'Grady's.
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Knowing your twelve bar blues chord progressions is one of the best ways to get a handle on playing guitar. Once you understand the basic principles of blues guitar, you can start to experiment with improvising within the chord progressions and to put your own mark on the music.

The twelve bar blues chord progression is very widely used in pop and rock music. If you have listened to and tried to play some blues songs, you will understand how popular this basic chord sequence is. In playing blues guitar you take the main chord of the song you are playing, which is called the "tonic", the fifth step of the scale - the "dominant", and the chord below the dominant, the "subdominant", or fourth step. So if you are playing a song in the key of E your tonic chord is E, the subdominant is A and the dominant is B. If you are playing in the key of A, your chords are A, D and E.

In musical notation your chord sequence is commonly written in Roman numerals. In the case of the twelve bar blues chord progression, it will be written as I IV V. Using this notation you can tell which chords you will be using in any key.

So let's look at how the twelve bar blues chord progression actually progresses. Well, the first four bars use the tonic chord, in the fifth and sixth you play the subdominant, in the seventh and eight you will play the tonic again, in bar nine it's the dominant, in bar ten it's the subdominant and in the eleventh and twelfth bars it's the tonic, or in this bar the dominant seventh chord is usually used to prepare for the tonic chord to begin the progression again.

The fact is that the seventh chord is used a lot in blues music rather than just the straight major chord. This will make the chord sequence in the key of E look like this:

E7 E7 E7 E7

A7 A7 E7 E7

B7 A7 E7 E7

Or you could just play the seventh chords in the fourth and twelfth bars like this:

E E E E7

A A E E

B A E E7

Or you could play all major chords except for the subdominant and the final bar:

E E E E

A7 A7 E E

B A7 E E7

So there you have a couple of variations in the twelve bar blues chord progression already. Once you have the feel of the progression using open chords, you can try experimenting with the barre chord and power chord versions of the basic chords.

Do you want to learn to play the guitar? Learn How To Play A Guitar For Free is a constantly updated blog which contains all the resources you need for: learning to play solo guitar, how to learn guitar chords, how to learn to read and play easy acoustic guitar tabs, finding a free online guitar tuner, looking for free guitar lessons online, and how to learn guitar scales.

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Guitar Licks Tab
has anyone watched good guitar video?

Can you guys reccomend your favorite guitar video?

So far I have seen albert lee vituoso licks video" I could nt really pick up much maybe if I had tabs.

I saw joe pass video and was ok I picked up a thing or two, but not too much.

What video have any of you watched and learned some good stuff from?

Check out Andy Aledort's DVD magazine,Guitar DVD,I think it comes out trimonthly but it has cool stuff for all levels.Plus It comes with the tablature of the lessons in order.

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To be a lead guitar player, you will need a knowledge of scales, arpeggios, riffs and licks. This short article is for the beginner guitar student who maybe knows some basic chords but wants to branch out to lead playing. Of course it is not always necessary for the lead guitar player to play solos. The lead and rhythm guitarists can work together to complement the singer's vocals. For instance the lead guitarist could play the same chords as the rhythm guitar only in a different position on the fretboard.

The most obvious and also the most freely available guitar teaching resource on the internet is guitar tablature. You can start reading guitar tab in a matter of minutes, and the more esoteric symbols used in tabs can be learnt over time as your guitar technique improves. The guitar student who aspires to being a lead guitarist should augment their tab collection with some time spent trying to work on learning material by ear. If you find picking up lead guitar solos by ear heavy going, then work on whatever you can pick up from tabs but keep plugging away at learning lead guitar by ear.

One thing you should search for in tab archives is guitar scale patterns. You can usually start with a scale in one position and work out where to play in other positions for yourself. Again, supplement your tab learning with developing your ear. Arpeggio patterns can also be found in tab form. The most important scales to learn for a beginning lead guitar player are the five shapes of the pentatonic scales. The pentatonic scales are easy to learn and guitarists find that audiences love listening to improvisations on the pentatonic scales. The favorite pentatonic scale shape is the minor pentatonic at the fifth fret on the guitar's neck:

Pattern One:

E---------------------------------------5--8----

B--------------------------------5--8-----------

G-------------------------5--7------------------

D-------------------5--7------------------------

A------------5--7-------------------------------

E-------5-8-------------------------------------

Not quite so easy to play is this one:

Pattern Two:

E-------------------------------------8---10----

B------------------------------8---10-----------

G-------------------------7--9------------------

D-------------------7--10-----------------------

A-------------7--10-----------------------------

E-------8--10-----------------------------------

But what you gain with this shape is the facility to move up the fretboard in a sneaky and guitaristic way.

The next three pentatonic shapes are a bit more challenging, but if you find yourself balking at the extra hard work remember how cool it looks playing way up the top of the neck.

Pattern Three:

E-------------------------------------10--12----

B------------------------------10--13-----------

G-------------------------9--12-----------------

D-------------------10--12----------------------

A-------------10--12----------------------------

E-------10--12----------------------------------

Pattern Four:

E-------------------------------------12--15----

B------------------------------13--15-----------

G------------------------12--14-----------------

D-------------------12--14----------------------

A-------------12--15----------------------------

E-------12--15----------------------------------

Pattern Five:

E-------------------------------------15--17----

B------------------------------15--17-----------

G------------------------14--17-----------------

D-------------------14--17----------------------

A-------------15--17----------------------------

E-------15--17----------------------------------

Some people find practicing lead guitar alone difficult because the presence of the other band members helps to get the creative juices flowing. Playing along with CDs is a great way to practice improvisation. You need to know when to put the metronome and scales away and do some good old bedroom grandstanding. You could also play along to drum machines. Or you could play along to some music that is not familiar to you. Take a moment to find what key you are playing in and start jamming. Practicing like this will help you stay out of the rut of playing the same material all the time.

Do you want to learn to play the guitar? Learn How To Play A Guitar For Free is a constantly updated blog which contains all the resources you need for: learning to play solo guitar, how to learn guitar chords, how to learn to read and play easy acoustic guitar tabs, finding a free online guitar tuner, looking for free guitar lessons online, and how to learn guitar scales.

Many thanks for reading our Guitar Licks Tab article