by Tom Hess
Want your lead guitar solos and licks to flow from one idea to the next like a well-told story?
This is what so many great pro-level guitarists do and why their solos sound so captivating and memorable.
Good news is:
Anyone can get good at this.
Want to do it for yourself?
Put an end to this common, but bad playing habit:
Playing lead guitar phrases purely based off of memorized licks stuck together in an attempt to fill out a solo or “find” cool notes.
Sure, it can be fun to play like this sometimes.
However:
Relying on this makes it nearly impossible to play truly amazing lead guitar ideas because doing so requires thinking creatively.
How can you practice becoming more creative? There are many ways, but here is one thing you can start right now to get great results:
Work on guitar phrasing every day (even if it’s just a little bit).
How?
Try this:
Check out this video to see an example of how to practice like this to improve your lead guitar playing fast:
It’s true:
Practicing for just a few minutes every day improves your guitar phrasing surprisingly fast in order to make your solos and licks sound better than ever.
Question: "Tom Hess, how do I really know when my lead guitar playing is improving at all?
Answer: I’ll give you one method that many of my students use.
Once you are done practicing guitar phrasing for the day, put a score on your licks or overall session.
For instance, a 95/100 or 5 stars.
Rate yourself using a consistent metric. It doesn’t matter how you rate yourself as long as you are consistent.
This simple approach helps you quickly gauge whether you are improving or not. The more you do this, the more refined you get until you are seeing subtle improvements to very specific aspects of your playing.
This is actually really fun too.
Not only do you get to see yourself getting better at guitar in general, but you enjoy the process of evaluating your practice sessions and seeing your phrases, licks and solos get better and better as time goes on.
Want to discover even more ways to make your lead guitar licks sound amazing?
You’ve got it!
Learn how to make your lead guitar playing even more creative and expressive using these guitar bending tips.