Learn How To Improvise Your Own Guitar Licks Using An Easy & Fun Practice Approach

Learn Your Guitar Fretboard Inside And Out

True mastery of lead guitar soloing requires mastery of your guitar neck. 

And mastering your guitar neck goes much deeper than simply being identifying every note on guitar. 

To really know your way around the guitar, you need to be able to play all the scales and chords used in your style of music everywhere on the neck, and be able to combine these shapes fluently.  Guitar players - from Eric Clapton and Jimi Hendrix to Yngwie Malmsteen and Steve Vai - all have/had this exceptional awareness of scales and chord shapes on the fretboard.  

This skill enabled them to improvise great guitar solos effortlessly in any key without “getting lost”. 

In contrast, guitarists who don’t know their way around the fretboard struggle to make their solos sound like music.

Instead, they are stuck soloing using the same 1-2 safe guitar scale positions every time they play lead guitar. 

Master Aural Skills (Train Your Ear To The Fullest)

Most guitar players do not have a clear understanding of what it really means to "have a good ear for music".  

Most think ear training is about "being able to identify any interval, chord, or scale" after hearing it.

This is only a small part of what it means to have a good ear. 

At the highest level, aural skills are "the link" between all your musical skills (guitar technique, music theory knowledge, phrasing, mastery of scales and chords and more).

A well-developed ear helps your skills work together and enables you to create expressive guitar solos (from the sounds you hear in your head). 

Master musicians imagine the music they want to hear and direct their hands to produce that sound on guitar.

But guess what?

Without good aural skills, this is impossible. 

Create Music With Your Mind Instead Of Your Hands

Most guitarists think of soloing (or improvising) as "playing scales over chords".  

They hear a chord progression and start running through familiar scale shapes and licks.  

If you do this, it means: your mind goes on autopilot and all of the "creating" happens from your hands.

This is NOT what you want!

The best guitar players do this:

1. Iimagine the sounds they want to hear. They do this before trying to play a single note on guitar!
    
2. Then their ear (and musical mind) translates the sounds into the notes they need to play on guitar. 
    
3. Their hands find the notes and play them (cleanly, accurately and at the speed they want).
    
4. Their hands add the right phrasing to squeeze maximum emotion from the notes they played.
    

I don't know about you, but this method sounds way better to me!

Here is what happens next:

Your ears and mind “evaluate” the sound you just played. And then you ask yourself a very important question:

“What Do I Want To Hear Next?”

Then you repeat the steps above. Start with hearing the new sounds in your head, find the notes and play them. 

When you master this process, you’ll run through these steps without thinking.

But when you are first learning?

You need to give your brain the time to go as slowly as it takes to go through the steps.

It’s the same as the process you’d use to slow down the notes when working on guitar technique & speed. 

The most important thing I want you to notice is that most of what actually "creates" a great guitar solo needs to be done with your mind and your ears.  

This is totally different from the thinking process of inexperienced guitarists, whose guitar solos are merely an attempt to “fill up space/silence with notes”.


Continuously Work On Your Guitar Phrasing

Many lead guitar players continuously search for "notes to play".

The problem with this?

They neglect looking for better ways of HOW to play (phrase) those notes.  

Good guitar phrasing involves much more than applying an occasional bend or vibrato to a note.  

When I train my students how to master guitar phrasing, I show them how this skill consists of "macro" and "micro" level components.  

"Macro" level phrasing refers to how each phrase fits into the big picture of the lead guitar solo and the song itself (much like phrases flow in a conversation).  

"Micro" level phrasing deals with ornamentation applied to individual pitches of the phrase.  

It is important to understand the difference between the two components and to have effective strategies for training both of these areas of phrasing.  

If you want to find out more about what goes into great guitar phrasing and get some ideas on how to practice this skill on a "micro" level, check out these guitar phrasing resources.
 

Get Regular Feedback On Your Lead Guitar Soloing From More Experienced Guitarists Or From A Guitar Teacher

The #1 challenge with improving your guitar soloing is…

… it’s not something you can measure (like you track your speed with a metronome).

That means: 

1. It is not easy to know what exactly to work on to make your solos sound better. 
    
2. It is also hard to tell when/if/how your guitar solos are actually sounding better from week to week.

The solution? 

Get an expert guitar teacher to listen to your solos, give you unbiased feedback and implement his advice. This might just be the fastest, easiest and most direct way to become the lead guitarist you want to be.

And on that note: 

If you want me to help you transform your lead guitar playing, I can do that for you in my Breakthrough Guitar Lessons.

Here is how it works:

1. You tell me about your guitar playing strengths & weaknesses, as well as your musical background and goals.
    
2. I create a personalized guitar lesson strategy and your lesson materials.
    
3. You practice (with my support every step of the way) to help you transform your playing and reach your goals. 

Here is what some of my guitar students are saying: