Help.my lead playing....please

[Swampy]

I've always been more of a rythym player, and I've been fine with that. I've had no trouble doing simple lead stuff in songs. But for the past year or so I've been working on more lead playing. I've got some song's leads down .......Simple Man, Highway to Hell, Hey Joe, and some others. Currently re-learning Fairies wear Boots.

My question is, what's your alls advice on getting better at lead playing? I've got the Pentatonic scale down, and one of the things I like to do is go on YouTube and to find different blues backing tracks, and play Pentatonic style lead stuff over them. Currently liking the Texas fast shuffle stuff. I am planning on getting another metronome, as mine mysteriously disappeared.

 

[B2D]

Re: Help.my lead playing....please

Everyone's got a different approach for lead styles - here's what's worked for me, at least what I can think of off the top of my head.

Know all of your major and minor scales - pentatonics and full Ionian/Aeolian as well. It wouldn't hurt to learn to learn a few modes as well - it will get you access to sounds and licks you wouldn't have been able to play otherwise.

Know where to find any root note instantly on the fretboard and start playing a scale around that. Learn to play a scale in all positions, not just a few.

If you hear a lick or a passage that you like, learn it and add it to your vocabulary. You should pull from MANY sources to develop a lead style, not just a few. You don't even have to listen to guitar players to do this - listen to horn players, string players, pianists, etc.

Learn how to articulate notes in different ways. Bends, vibrato, trills, ghost notes, slides, legato, the difference in technique and sound between alternate and economy picking, etc.

USE DYNAMICS. Learn how to play with a light and heavy attack and learn how to vary it to accent certain notes or lines.

Try to make your solos songs within songs - little melodies of their own - instead of just vomiting notes everywhere.

If you keep trying to get a certain technique down and just can't seem to crack it, try working on something else and just come back to it later. If you try it for a LONG time and just can't seem to get the hang of it - that's OK. Learn what your limitations are and don't beat yourself up about it. Try to play up your strengths instead. Sometimes limitations can force you to get creative.

Lastly... have fun with it.

 

[Swampy]

Re: Help.my lead playing....please

Thanks! I agree I need to focus on more scales/modes.
I've been playing since I was 13, on and off really. Self taught, always learned stuff by ear Or watching someone play something. That is one thing I've always had, a knack for quick learning. Practically everyone I've ever played/jammed with has said that......I learn quick. Where notes and sounds are on the neck comes naturally to me. When I was first starting out I always had my guitar with me around the house. While watching tv, I would copy jingles from commercials to soundtracks in shows/movies. I think I that's what helped me with that. What I'm really having trouble with is fast picking.....matching my picking with my fret hand. I'm not looking to be a shredder, just a little more proficient at licks and stuff.

Here's a couple videos I made. They can kind of show where I'm at.

The monkeys song I learned in about an hour to post on my sisters Facebook, she was a huge monkeys fan when I was little. Hey Joe , I heard one day and thought, " that might not be that hard", and learned it that night.

https://youtu.be/xBbe71lS7Lg


https://youtu.be/I8mL8DdgkOQ

 

[Securb]

Re: Help.my lead playing....please

Everyone's got a different approach for lead styles - here's what's worked for me, at least what I can think of off the top of my head. Know all of your major and minor scales - pentatonics and full Ionian/Aeolian as well.

Solid advice. Also know the relationships between the major and minor scales. C (Ionian) major is A (Aeolian) minor. The sixth note of your major scale is your relative minor both scales have all of the same notes. C major - C D E F G Am B C. Inversely the third tone of your minor scale is your relative major. A minor - A B Cmaj D E F G A. So bouncing between the relative major and minor scales will really open up your fretboard and give you more options.

So in practice if you are playing a Am blues you can do a run in C maj and it will sound fine.

 

[Phantasmagoria]

Re: Help.my lead playing....please

You bend stuff well & have a good vibrato/ear.. Maybe just try and get in some chromatic finger exercises everyday. Like a 15-30 min daily regimen. It will get those fingers flying in no time lol. (Starting slow & gradually speeding up, while keeping things kinda clean..). Other than that, playing to backing tracks or buying a loop pedal and jamming along are both great idea's. I personally also prefer a thicker pick, it made a world of difference to me when I went from skinny flip-flops to Jazz III's...my hands seemed to automatically co-ordinate better.

 

[Swampy]

Re: Help.my lead playing....please

Solid advice. Also know the relationships between the major and minor scales. C (Ionian) major is A (Aeolian) minor. The sixth note of your major scale is your relative minor both scales have all of the same notes. C major - C D E F G Am B C. Inversely the third tone of your minor scale is your relative major. A minor - A B Cmaj D E F G A. So bouncing between the relative major and minor scales will really open up your fretboard and give you more options.

So in practice if you are playing a Am blues you can do a run in C maj and it will sound fine.

I'm in the very beginning stages of understanding what you mean, and that's the things I'm needing to focus on and learn. Thanks!

 

[Swampy]

Re: Help.my lead playing....please

You bend stuff well & have a good vibrato/ear.. Maybe just try and get in some chromatic finger exercises everyday. Like a 15-30 min daily regimen. It will get those fingers flying in no time lol. (Starting slow & gradually speeding up, while keeping things kinda clean..). Other than that, playing to backing tracks or buying a loop pedal and jamming along are both great idea's. I personally also prefer a thicker pick, it made a world of difference to me when I went from skinny flip-flops to Jazz III's...my hands seemed to automatically co-ordinate better.

Chromatic exercises is something I need to push myself to do for many minutes at a time. I do them for a short time then I get distracted on a certain pattern than comes up and I start building on it, instead of sticking with the exercise. Damn ADD....haha. A thicker pick makes sense. I've used the orange Dunlops for years, not sure of the gauge/thickness, but they do flex a little when digging in while trying to pick fast.

 

[Securb]

Re: Help.my lead playing....please

I'm in the very beginning stages of understanding what you mean, and that's the things I'm needing to focus on and learn. Thanks!

It is pretty simple. When you are playing a blues minor pentatonic scale that second note is your relative major (there is no 2 or B in the Am Pentatonic). So that second note (C - third scale tone) can be your launch point for your C major scale.

 

[Swampy]

Re: Help.my lead playing....please

So that second note is the root note of the major scale?

 

[Securb]

Re: Help.my lead playing....please

So that second note is the root note of the major scale?

Exactly. So from there you can do a run in C major.

 

[Funkfingers]

Re: Help.my lead playing....please

Tip stolen from an old Allan Holdsworth magazine interview.

Practice your hammer-on and pull-off techniques until they sound as loudly as each other and any notes played with your picking hand.

 

[Archer250]

Re: Help.my lead playing....please

Memorising patterns helps. When you warm up, try to play all the notes of the C Major scale up and down the neck. This can help you memorise patterns which can be used in various ways (including further understanding).

 

[Funkfingers]

Re: Help.my lead playing....please

This …

I've always been more of a rhythm player.

… is called pigeon-holing yourself. Stop doing it now.

My question is, what's your alls advice on getting better at lead playing?

Think outside the box. (Several boxes, in fact!) Listen to musical styles other than Rock and Blues. Listen to instruments other than guitar. Learn to carry simple melodies assertively. Go beyond basic Pentatonic "box" fingerings.

 

[Progbusters]

Re: Help.my lead playing....please

think of it and hum it out in your head, then play it. start simple. remember to keep time and stay in same scale.

 

[guitarSQUIRELL]

Re: Help.my lead playing....please

Swampy, dont feel bad. I mainly use the Pentatonic scale pattern for everything since I play worship music...It does what I need it to do....Our bass player is a die hard music theory person and will tell me fret the 5th and I dont understand that at all...Been that way for almost 8 years in the worship environment....I love using the backing tracks i find on YouTube as a way to practice combining the major and minor pentatonic patterns together....

 

[Matt42]

Re: Help.my lead playing....please

There's been some really good advice given regarding scales/modes/keys. Learn them forwards and backwards, in any position on any string. Knowing that will give you a huge leg up on a lot of people that call themselves lead guitarists.

One thing that I've been working on a lot lately that will help you is the use of triads, both for rhythm and lead. Triads are chords in their most simple forms. Since each chord contains three notes (1, 3, 5 for major or 1, b3, 5 for minor), a triad is simply those three notes. For example, the G major triad is G B D. So anywhere you can play a G B D together is a G major chord. My favorite is xx978x. Move that back two frets and you have an F major. Move it up two and it's an A Major. The other guitar player in my band does lots of open chords and low string barre chords, so I compliment him by playing lots of closed position, high string chords, usually up in the 7-12 fret range. It fills out the sound nicely, plus it opens up some really cool fill licks in a lot of songs. I learned about triad chords up and down the neck a few years ago and it really opened up a whole other level of playing to me. I also realized that a TON of pro players use these chords ALL THE TIME!

I recently started taking pedal steel lessons, pedal steel is largely triad based, and in the process of teaching me some pedal steel scales based around triads, my teacher had me pick up a 6-string guitar and we did some "hexatonic" scales, which are just adding two triads together to make a 6 note scale. You use two adjacent chords, G major and Amin for example, and create a scale from that. G A B C D E. You can move that around based on what chords are being played in the song and it gives the solo a really cool vibe.


I'd work on the triads as you are working on standard Major/Minor Ionian/Aeolian stuff. It will increase your chord vocabulary and you'll start to see where they fit into the scales you are playing. Once you've got those down really well, hexatonics are the next step (IMO, anyway).

And, as everyone has said, make sure you are having fun with it!

 

[Chickenwings]

Re: Help.my lead playing....please

Learn all your chords and their arpeggios in all the keys and all the positions.
Learn all your scales in all the keys and all positions.
Do that, and the rest will look after itself.

That is the easy part.
The hard part is putting in the time to do it.

 

[Swampy]

Re: Help.my lead playing....please

So, my nightly regiment is about 15 minutes of chromatic excercises (both ascending and decending), 15 minutes or so on position 2 of the A minor scale, a few minutes on position 3. Want to get pos. 2 drilled in before spending too much time on pos. 3. When it's time to drill in 3, it'll be 15 or so minutes on 3 then a few minutes on 4, and so on.

I notice that learning position 2 has really expanded my playing when jamming over backing tracks. Can't wait 'til I get all these positions down........ and then move on to the major scale...WATCH OUT!! lol

Seriously, I wish I would've "learned" this instrument when I started "playing" many years ago.

Thanks all for your input!

 

[El Dunco]

Re: Help.my lead playing....please

In addition to the advice others have given, I say that great rhythm playing lends itself to lead playing nicely. I've heard so many solos that technically have great chops but in reality are little more than noodling, not going anywhere and not saying much musically. See if you can flex your creativity and imagine what a cool lead would sound like in terms of dynamics, texture, phrasing, catchy melodies and then either work out how to play it or write it out with tabs or notation. This will also help you improvise. If you're in a rut, slow everything down and start again.

 

[DrNewcenstein]

Re: Help.my lead playing....please

One thing that wil expand your vocabulary is phrasing - where you place emphasis in a scale, as well as what meter you play the scale.

Believe it or don't, merely adjusting the tempo at which you play any series of notes (at least 2 in sequence up to the remainder) alters the feel, so merely walking a scale across the board can become a melodic passage.

As an exercise, think of a "Jazz/Swing" rhythm/beat, like the intro to the Pink Panther, and walk the aforementioned A Minor Pentatonic scale across the board from lowest note to highest, then back down in a rhythmic meter that combines triplets, quarter, and whole notes, and any others you can think of, including rests.

Also work with string-skipping, starting with the two notes on the 6th string, then jump to the 2 notes on the 1st string, then back to the 5th string, then the 2nd string, the 4th string, the 2nd, then the 3rd string.

Another exercise is to take the above scale picture with the black, yellow, and white indicators and play the black notes in an ascending order, then the yellow notes in a descending order, then the white notes also in a descending order.

You can get many miles from one scale by mixing up the phrasing and tempo.