Lead guitar lessons - Which notes to play
When I first learned to play lead guitar, I basically taught myself. I had no lead guitar lessons to work from. My knowledge of music theory was very limited, and all I had as a starting point was a simple finger exercise in the key of C.
I don’t want to bore you here with my life story, so let’s just get on with the lead guitar lessons.
The first step to playing lead guitar - The major scale.
I know some people will say that to learn to play lead guitar, you should start out with the pentatonic scale. I never bothered to learn the pentatonic scale, mostly because I didn’t have any information on it.
I had just joined a band as the lead guitarist, and I wasn’t one - so that little major scale finger exercise was just going to have to do. There’s a page on my site titled Lead guitar lesson one that shows it, and gives you some tips on how to work out the entire scale all the way along the fretboard.
A good reason for working it all out yourself, is that it becomes firmly embedded in your mind. Unfortunately, or maybe fortunately for you, I needed to expand on the whole lead guitar lessons theme, for which I had to draw the entire C major scale with every position or pattern clearly marked out.
Best thing is to work it out yourself then check it with my Full Fretboard C Major Scale page.
Once you’ve really familiarized yourself with the different patterns, you’ll begin to recognize how various chord shapes fit into specific scale patterns. A good example of this is if you take the first pattern, you’ll see how an A minor open, a C open, an F open etc, all fit nicely in there.
I’ve tried to explain this using as little music theory as possible. I think for myself, playing lead guitar is very much a visual exercise. You don’t want to be thinking too much during a solo. If your fingers get used to the different patterns, and your ears guide you well - you can start playing really passionate lead guitar solos.
How I play blues guitar solo’s or rock n roll.
Here’s something that confused the Dickens out of me when I first started playing lead guitar. Many standard blues progressions, as also used in rock and roll songs, are just plain musically incorrect.
In a standard major key, you can’t have a seventh chord as your root chord, and then compound the problem by adding a seventh to both the 4th and 5th chords as well.
If you’re playing a blues number in the key of A, you can forget about trying to solo over it in the key of A major - It just doesn’t work.
Here’s a tip. Try playing to it in the key of G for the A7 and the D7, then switch to the key of A for the E7. It’s not perfect, but I’ve gotten away with it for years, and it makes an interesting solo. Now all that may sound complicated, but it’s really just a matter of moving the pattern up 2 frets for that extra chord.
The other alternative, which is what most people use, is called the blues scale. I’ve never learned the blues scale, although I play it all the time. It’s hidden inside the major scale and it’s also called the pentatonic scale. When I do play blues, I play a lot of other notes as well, but that’s because I’m following the chords and not just playing in a certain key.
Here’s the pentatonic lead guitar pattern for the key of A, at the fifth fret - where you’d play an A Bar chord. It looks very similar to the G major scale pattern at the 5th fret.
Here I added the extra notes in green for G ….. hmmm
Playing rock lead guitar over power chords.
When it comes to rock music, my approach is pretty much the same as my blues approach. But I generally don’t bother with changing keys for that extra chord. It’s a lot easier to figure out when you’re mostly dealing with root notes and fifths.
Two semitones back from what looks like the root chord of the song, and the patterns above work like a bomb. Don’t forget to keep your ears open though for any unexpected surprises.
Okay, confession time - I’m not one of those guys who can instantly solo over any song without first becoming familiar with it, and getting a good feel for what works best. You don’t have to be either.
I don’t think there are many of those people around anyway.
Just a short note to end off this guitar lessons blog post. You should look into learning the harmonic minor scale as well, cos someone’s going to play something with a Spanish progression, and you’ll need it.
Cheers for now - Keep rockin
