Learn How To Play Amazing Lead Guitar Slides That Sound Expressive & Unique
Want to play lead guitar slides that make people stop whatever they are doing and pay attention?
This is actually not that hard to do!
All it takes is learning a creative phrasing approach to use while playing lead guitar slides.
You're not just limited to playing short slides that quickly move up a few frets.
Using slides an octave or more apart adds incredibly intensity and expression into every lead guitar lick you play.
Let me show you just how easy it is to make your licks sound amazing using creative guitar slides.
Make your lead guitar playing sound amazing using the simple technique in this video:
Click on the video to begin watching it.
Quick Tip For Playing Fast, Top-Quality Lead Guitar Licks With Slide
1. Use neck pick up when you play frets that are higher up the fretboard. This means set the pickup selector so that it is all the way facing the top.
This gives the notes a more warm timbre that sounds great.
Using your bridge pick up is excellent for times when you are playing rhythm guitar in a lower pitch range, but it makes higher notes sound thin and dull.
2. Keep your rhythmic timing tight.
It’s typical for guitarists to play on the beat a decent amount of the time but then ahead of the beat other times.
How do you fix this?:
Pay close attention to your timing whenever you play. Divide up your awareness between playing the notes correctly and preparing for when the next beat of the metronome is coming so you play on time. Use recording software to spot your mistakes more easily.
3. Don’t use your time to practice random chromatic exercises.
Why? Isn't this a staple for all guitar players?
These types of guitar playing exercises have little musical value and most people become bored playing them over and over (in other words, they don't get much out of it anyway).
You never really need to play long chromatic licks like this in musical situations, so it doesn't really help you express yourself musically either.
Instead, practice more productively by working on things that use multiple skills at once or have strong relevance to your other practice routine items and overall musical goals.
4. Develop great string muting technique.
To make your muting more consistent, use your fretting hand index finger to mute the strings that are higher than the one you are playing.
So, if you are playing the low A string, have the index finger covering the D and G string to keep them from making noise. Then use your picking hand thumb to mute any lower strings (below the one you are playing on).
How To Smoothly Play Across The Fretboard During Lead Guitar Solos
Ever feel like your solos start to wander or you just keep coming back to the same ideas?
Here is what to do to fix this problem:
Start learning to visualize what scale shape you are going to move into before you begin using your fingers to move there.
To improve your skills, practice using scale shapes that are in close positions to one another.
For example, practice improvising a lick a 3 note per string G# minor scale beginning on the 11th fret of the A string within a single octave. Do this for a minute.
Then practice playing a 3 note per string F# Mixolydian scale beginning on the 9th fret of the A string within a single octave (F# Mixolydian uses the same notes as G minor, just starting on F# instead of G). Do this for another minute.
For the next minute, mix both patterns together.
Over time, begin to expand your fretboard coverage by adding more notes and/or scale patterns.
About Getting Better At Lead Guitar:
You make incredible advancements in your lead guitar playing by taking lessons with an experienced guitar teacher who teaches lessons in your specific guitar style.
Why does working with a guitar teacher make becoming a better guitarist so much more easy than learning it all by yourself?
It's like this:
Taking lessons with a guitar teacher gets rid of all the guesswork you have to do on your own. This makes the whole process of learning simple and fun.
Not sure what to work on to get better at playing creative lick guitar solos? Wondering why you are unable to make your vibrato feel as intense as that of your favorite player? Can't play with as much guitar speed as you want?
Your guitar teacher helps you learn these things by guiding you throughout the process. No more long periods of stagnant progress.
Plus, a great guitar teacher helps you improve your playing in nuanced ways you just never would've thought about by yourself (or come across online) because of their expansive knowledge and experienced problem-solving know-how. This means you learn ways to overcome bad playing habits quickly while also discovering creative new ways to play and reach your goals.
Don't wait to begin taking guitar lessons.
The longer you wait, the more time you add to how long it takes to reach your musical goals and become the guitarist you want to be.
Begin today and make a breakthrough in your guitar playing like never before.
Here is what my students have to say about taking guitar lessons with me:
“I found Tom Hess on the net through articles, and I read quite a few of those before I went to Tom’s website. Even though I’m not a metal player at all, and Tom is obviously a metal player, I could still see that his ideas and way of teaching could really benefit me. So I pretty much signed up for online guitar lessons with Tom straight away once I’d gone through the website, and it’s just been a real eye opener with the way he teaches…”
... the integration of concepts that he’ll give you and having a really structured strategy… not just week to week lessons, but things that - you can see from one lesson to the next - really develop and continue to work on your technique and your theory and aural skills and those types of things. So I’d played a long time… 20 years before I really caught onto Tom, and I’d had a lot of lessons, and I’d taught and played but I can really see improvements in my technique, sweeping, and picking which weren’t strong parts of my playing.
I feel like Tom has a good gauge of where you’re at as a guitar player and what you need, and there just seemed to be so much more stuff in the lessons week to week than what you’d ever get in an hour or so in a one on one lesson… way more. So yeah I think that and the forum. I think, I’d pay the money just for the forum. That alone would be fine… I wouldn’t have a problem with that at all. So that alone is massive!
The price for the lessons, that’s nothing... nothing. You know, I think it’s, pretty cheap to be honest. I don’t mean that in a bad way, cheap. Cheap is not a good word, but I just think it’s great value… awesome value. I mean, you know, you could pay that for one-to-one lessons and you just don’t get the same results and support of the forum and the content and the strategies.
Other teachers I’ve had have been good players, and some have become good friends too. But when I’ve started lessons with Tom I’ve got something to compare that to and a lot of it is just sort of teaching songs from week to week… a lot of the lesson will be left up to you… you’ll go to your lesson and they’ll be like what do you want to do today? At the time I said, oh do this song or that song, but with Tom you start to realize that you know, there’s more to it… the goals and you know he’s sort of more in contact with what you want to be able to do as a player, because he’s asking you the questions and then setting up the strategies, so I find that really good.
Yeah I can see more results in 18 months in a lot of areas in my playing than you know 20 years. So it’s sort of, you know, would’ve been great 20 years ago to have met Tom.
Simon Candy, Melbourne, Australia
When I started learning from Tom, the main thing that made him different from other teachers was that he was showing me how to excel in all aspects of my guitar playing by applying the skills that I already knew together with the new material that I was learning from him.
He made me aware of both strengths and weaknesses in my playing that I did not even know I had. From there he gave me the knowledge, tools and guidance to literally transform my guitar playing by enabling me to overcome things that were preventing me from becoming a truly creative and self-expressive guitar player. These were the kinds of things that none of my previous guitar teachers and books I studied were able to do for me.
After Tom made me aware of all the things I was missing in my guitar playing and provided me with the strategy and tools for solving them, I began to make very fast progress in all areas of my guitar playing.
I can now write my own music and can create lead guitar solos that I am happy and fulfilled with. I also have the technical skills to confidently and easily play anything that I want to express. I have overcome all of the lead guitar challenges that I struggled with before, and increased my guitar speed to virtuoso levels. More importantly, I have the knowledge and understanding of how to continually improve my guitar playing and musical skills to higher and higher levels to continue expressing myself with my music. Overall, I have definitely transformed in a huge way as a musician and as a person through my lessons with Tom Hess. I am grateful to him for guiding me towards becoming the guitarist I always wanted to be!"
Mike Philippov, Indiana, USA
“When I first heard about Tom Hess, I saw that he was a teacher that was very dedicated and serious about it, and that drew me in immediately. That this is a guy that has a plan, has a goal and really if you’re serious about learning guitar, this guy is equally as serious in a way. So it resonated with me straight away.”
I started out just learning by myself and as many others I got stuck. I had a few issues I wanted to get by, but when I met Tom and talked with him and started lessons with him, he opened up a whole new world of possibilities of what guitar playing can be.
I feel very grateful that I found lessons from Tom since I then did what worked from the very beginning. Many guitarists I see that played way longer than I did, they have build up many bad habits. That from the very start, there was clear instruction of how to practice correctly. You build the ability for high speed and whatever you want from the very beginning and you don’t waste time doing inefficient things. So I’m very grateful that I did that, and now I really feel I am able to reach whatever level I want.
The reasons why I think I feel so motivated all the time is because I know that the thing I’m working on is relevant for me and it’s exactly the direct thing I need to get.
The forum just kicks ass. The people in the forum - it’s just like unconditional help all the time. They love to help out, and you also get very inspired by seeing someone just really getting speed really quick and then you say if he can do it, I can do it. It works on the mental side of being a guitarist and that of course that’s the most important thing. Just being around other musicians like that, is just you learn so much faster, is so much less frustration when you can see that all the people are having the same issues that you do, not anything special or anything. It’s just part of learning process, so it kicks ass.
Magnus Gautestad, Norway
Think you are ready to learn more about playing great lead guitar licks and solos? Let me teach you all about playing creatively on guitar. Get started with online guitar lessons with a great guitar teacher: