The Secret To Adding Fire And
Emotion To Any Guitar Lick
Want to add life to all your guitar licks by making notes sustain as long as you want?
No, this doesn't require buying super special gear or equipment.
Just your guitar, an amp and the gain turned up.
Thing is:
Vibrato is the key to great sustain.
Find out how to create infinite sustain in your guitar notes using vibrato by watching this video:
Click on the video to begin watching it.
Now you've learned a very cool way to make your guitar playing more expressive.
However, this is just the beginning!
Want to learn more methods for making your lead guitar playing sound better, smoother and more expressive?
A good first step is learning about common lead guitar mistakes and how/why to avoid them.
Read below to discover the most common mistakes guitar players make that cause their solos sound less interesting:
Mistake # 1. Devoting Time Into Memorizing Lots Of Scale Patterns
It's a typical misconception that learning a lot of new scale patterns makes you a more expressive lead guitar player. You're much more likely to become hung up and discouraged by doing this.
Learning scales is completely different than figuring out how to play creatively. Adding increasingly more scales to your knowledge does not instantly give you an understanding of how to use them to play things that actually sound good.
It's a whole lot more beneficial to learn how to play what you already know as creatively as you can. When you know how to play creatively with the fretboard patterns you already know, you can use this knowledge with everything else you learn.
Mistake # 2. Not Trying To Create Specific Emotions While Playing
Lots of guitarists merely play solos using the appropriate scale to match the key of the chords they are soloing over.
You make your guitar solos intensely expressive by learning the distinct emotions that certain notes create while used over certain chords.
For instance: the root of a B minor chord (B) feels relaxed, but playing a minor 3rd (D) above it creates a strong feeling of loneliness.
Mistake # 3. Vibrato Isn't Being Used Very Much Or At All
Vibrato technique is important for giving your guitar playing the expressive timbre of a human voice.
Getting better at this technique is part of becoming a much more musically expressive lead guitar player.
The following are some tips to develop your vibrato and use it to express yourself while playing lead guitar licks and solos:
- Check your vibrato is kept in tune by always bending up to the exact pitch you want to target and releasing the bend back to the pitch of the initial note. Don't let it sit in between the notes.
- Keep your vibrato controlled by mastering it using a metronome. Bend the string up on the first beat and release it on the second beat. Carry on this pattern to make certain your vibrato is consistent and not fast one moment, slow another.
- While playing lead guitar licks or solos, concentrate on using various types of vibrato such as using wide versus narrow or fast versus slow. Some vibrato feels more extreme (for example, vibrato that is 1 whole step and fluctuates fast between pitches)- use it during the most intense moment of your guitar licks and solos.
Mistake # 4. Spending Lots Of Time Studying Licks By Other Guitar Players
At first look, this appears to be a great approach. Quite a lot of guitarists think this is the most productive way to practice to play as artistically as their favorite guitar player. However, memorizing a load of guitar licks by your favorite players accomplishes very little in reality.
You are more likely to rely on repeating the same licks over and over instead of proactively thinking in a creative manner while improvising or creating your own lead guitar ideas. This stops you from learning how to be more effective at expressing emotions in music.
Mistake # 5. Not Improving The Quality Of Their Note Choices
It's a (typical) mistake to think that playing excellent lead guitar licks is just about remembering a bunch of neat ideas, using licks from your favorite, memorizing new patterns or working on your technique continuously.
These things mostly emphasize what notes to play, but excellent guitar soloing means understanding how to play notes with more musical emotion.
This fundamental idea is referred to as phrasing.
When you strengthen your guitar phrasing, your licks sound more like expressive music rather than just random licks stuck together, scale exercises or robotic patterns.
Begin strengthening your phrasing by thinking of a short lick of just a few notes and playing it over a backing track.
Try to create 25 different ways you can play the phrase without altering the initial pitch of the notes (for example, using vibrato, bends, legato, etc.).
Mistake # 6. Learning Music Theory Or Guitar Techniques Without Integrating Them Never Integrating Skills Together
A number of guitarists focus all their energy into learning how music theory functions or cultivating the absolute best technique. It's typical for these types of people to neglect practicing integrating their skills collectively.
When you overlook this, you are not able to creatively use the skills you've taken so long to develop in your solos and licks.
For instance, lots of guitar players have exceptional technical playing abilities but a total inability to play interesting guitar licks or solos of their own. This kind of thing is incredibly discouraging because you've worked so much to develop your guitar playing but can't play anything you really want to because you lack the creative skill-set to do so.
Now you know some of the things not to do, learn a few actions you can take to make your lead guitar playing sound better.
Creative lead guitarists have the ability to take any note and make it feel expressive and emotional.
This gives them the power to think of awesome phrasing ideas without the limitation of having to constantly create new licks every single second in a solo.
Here are some of the ways great guitar players create awesome phrases in their solos:
Emphasizing The Rhythm Of The Notes
You do not need to frequently play a wide range of pitches while soloing. Excellent guitar players recognize this and do not get trapped thinking about what notes to play (like the majority of guitar players do).
Focusing on how you play the notes you have in your head is a huge element for the quality of your lead guitar ideas.
Changing the rhythm of the notes you are playing throughout a pattern lets you repeat the exact same collection of notes and make things sound expressive and intriguing.
These are just a few methods excellent guitar players use to improvise impressive licks and solos. Your improvisation abilities go to a new dimension when you understand how to use these ideas in your guitar playing.
Using Sequences To Make Scale Patterns Feel Like Music
Your scales become boring and mindless when you play them up and down like practice routines and not like expressive guitar licks. Scales become more expressive when you use sequencing to create musical ideas and memorable licks that stand out to whoever is around.
Great guitarists use sequences to create memorable guitar licks, solos and improvisations.
Understand That Creativity Doesn't Just Originate From Having Talent
It's typical for guitarists to excuse their lack of musical creativity by saying they simply do not have "natural talent".
No!
Musical creativity does not rely on being born with tons of expressive and creative talent - it is something you practice and strengthen. Thinking that it only comes from pre-possessed talent holds you back because if you think you don't have it, you just quit and forget about it.
This common misconception stops tons of guitar players from finding out how to play expressive guitar solos, put together creative music, improvise and lots of other things.
Some individuals abandoned guitar altogether. Taking lessons with a knowledgeable guitar teacher is the optimal way to learn about how to train yourself to play with better musical creativity.
Phrasing With Musical Ornaments
Any guitar lick can be made to sound more intriguing when you use different guitar techniques to embellish it.
Guitarists with exceptional improvising abilities have the power to add salt and pepper the most uninspired phrase by adding a hammer-on, slide, bend or double stop to the end of a melody or solo phrase.
Recognize That Musical Creativity Is Not A Single Skill
It's not just one skill - it's a combination of mastering various skills that make being creative possible. Not recognizing this frequently causes guitarists to avoid combining all their skills together.
For instance, some guitar players learn a bunch about music theory and a lot about guitar technique, but neglect to integrate them both into their guitar phrases during solos or licks. This leads to not being able to play lead guitar ideas in a very creative manner.
This feels discouraging since you have a great deal of skill in some ways, but no idea how to use them in a way that puts them to good use with your instrument.
Practicing integration as part of your guitar practice helps you integrate various skills together in order to become more balanced as a musician + creative as a guitarist.
Some of the most crucial skills to integrate together for superior soloing and creative use include: fretboard visualization, music theory, aural skills, and phrasing.
How To Practice Correctly To Improve At Lead Guitar Fast
The greatest lead guitarists practice effectively and productively to get quick results.
How precisely do they do this?
By steering clear of from the following practice mistakes:
Mistake # 1: Not Paying Attention To The Smaller Details
Getting the most effective results from guitar practice calls for using serious focus.
A lot of guitar players do not practice with a centered mind because they aren't sure what to pay attention to or they think that effective practice means playing technique exercises frequently.
Practicing guitar in a brainless manner like this is detrimental and only crystallizes your mistakes. Excellent guitar players emphasize the right things, in the right order and in the right way.
This helps them accomplish particular goals every practice session.
Mistake # 2: Practicing Guitar Without Meaning
To make progress on guitar, every practice session needs to help you achieve a greater goal.
Doing so helps you become the guitarist you want to be by maintaining your focus on your ultimate goals at all times. Good guitar players practice with meaning to get to their goals a lot faster than most other guitarists ever would dream of.
To practice with meaning and make progress whenever you grab your guitar, do the following:
Do the following to make your guitar practice more efficient, so progress happens even faster:
Final Note: Determine Why Your Current Practice Approach Isn't Doing The Trick To Get Better Fast
There are lots of reasons why your current guitar practice strategy may not be obtaining results. Recognizing them helps you make your practice more effective so you get better quickly. Here are a few things to keep an eye out for:
Plan Your Guitar Practice In Advance
Planning your guitar practice ahead of time is crucial for achieving your musical goals.
Don't make the usual mistake of considering what to practice just before you start. Doing so raises the chances of thoughtless practice that doesn't help you get any closer to the things you want to achieve on guitar. Plan multiple guitar practice sessions in advance so no time is lost.
Consider how every minute of your practice helps you achieve a certain goal or correct a mistake that prevents you from achieving your goals.
Now you know how to play notes on guitar with crazy amounts of sustain and express yourself more with lead guitar. Now it's time to go to the highest level for lead guitar. Work together with me as your guitar teacher to do it by taking interactive guitar lessons.