Ever seen concerts where the lead guitarist mesmerizes the entire crowd with his powerful performance doing a guitar solo? To be on center stage and own it for a moment in time – yes – this is a dream of most, if not all aspiring guitarists.  Here are some tips to help that dream become a reality:

Guitar solos are used in many different styles of music – rock, blues, jazz, even classical.  Most of the time, solos come about through a lot of improvisation.  Playing guitar solos can be a wonderful and memorable experience if one is really prepared and up for the challenge.  Aside from that it also helps in intensifying the connection between the music and the listener.

Studying some of the basics could greatly help one learn guitar solo correctly.  First, practice the different scales, blues, pentatonic, major, minor, etc. The more comfortable you are with these scales the better your chances are of successfully doing a solo.  Incorporate scales to solos.   Most solos are merely basic scales that are manipulated and combined with other scales.  Practice the scale forwards and backwards, using alternate picking.  Expand horizons by trying different ways of playing the scales.

Inject new life and emotion to it by using techniques like vibrato.  Although most guitarists apply vibrato immediately to a note, one could also delay it a little bit by playing the note naturally on the guitar before applying vibrato. Bending also adds a significant quality to guitar solos. Play arpeggios and scales with the double-picking style for a little uniqueness.

As the saying goes, “It’s not what you play but how you play it.”  To learn guitar solo, improvisation comes in handy too.  There are ways to approach improvisation: the vertical approach and the horizontal approach.

In the vertical approach, the guitar player does a solo following or according to the current chord while in the horizontal approach, the player solos according to the current scale.

Having and maintaining daily practice and by learning as many licks as one can in every practice is also essential to one who wants to learn guitar solo. Include renowned tabs played by guitar masters for they could help in improving one’s guitar playing skills.  Continuously improve by listening to other solos and studying their styles and thinking of other ways to improve quality.  Use a melodic solo in the song.  Using modes including the Aeolian, Mixolydian and Dorian are helpful too.  These modes have different starting notes, but contain the same notes as the key signature; the result is a great sound, as all of the notes fit into the song melodically.

A lead guitar is said to be the guitar part that plays the melody, creates instrumental fill passages and guitar solos within a song.  Though it is often associated with heavy metal music, it is also present in jazz, blues, pop and some other musical genres.

Guitar players, mostly beginners, at some point take on some sort of a lead guitar lesson.  This mostly focuses on the essential roles that the lead guitarist takes on.  One of which is to play the melody lines of the song (melodic playing) and at the same time adorn it as melodic playing enabling the guitarist to play more smoothly as compared to linear playing.

Oftentimes lead guitar and rhythm guitar are easily confused with each other -especially when the lead guitarist starts to add in chords and double-stops to their riffs. It is best to remember that lead guitar focuses mainly on giving the melody, the lead guitarist incorporating more single-string playing and soloing, while the rhythm guitar is characterized mostly by playing chords in patterns.

Some important techniques found in lead guitar lessons are bending, vibrato and slides. These provide the basic means of emphasizing notes, and allow for greater expression in the melody.

Bending happens when the guitarist bends the guitar string to the side by pushing it towards the sixth string, or by pulling it towards the first string. The first three strings are normally pushed while the others are normally pulled. Whether the string is pushed or pulled, the note will be raised in pitch.

Vibrato adds feeling and emotion to the notes.  It can be done by either rapidly bending the guitar’s string back and forth or by applying pressure parallel to the string towards the guitar’s neck then towards the bridge repeatedly.  One helpful lead guitar lesson or tip for the vibrato is that the action should come from the wrist not from the fingers.

Slides (or sliding) are one of the simplest but most effective guitar techniques in creating a wailing sound on the guitar.  There are two kinds of slides, the legato slides and the shift slides. Legato (connected tones) slides are done by plucking the first note and sliding up or down to the second note. In the shift side, a note is fretted then the fretting fingers slide up or down to a different fret.

Another useful lead guitar lesson revolves around creating lead guitar lines.  This is done by using scales, modes, arpeggios, licks, riffs, and fills.  It is best to use these together with a variety of other techniques.  Learn the blues scale then the pentatonic scales as this provide a good foundation for creating solos—a classic element for the lead guitar player.  Arpeggios add depth, and the progression of the solo often mirrors the underlying rhythm guitar part.  Licks give short improvised solos and while the solo puts the guitarist in the spotlight for a minute or two, riffs and fills supply a series of notes for improvised backing.

With all the scales, chords, combinations, and variations available, there are thousands of ways to improve one’s lead guitar skills.  Imagination plus creativity combined can create a wonder, that’s a lead guitar lesson everyone should learn.