How To Make Lead Guitar Playing Easier

Want to play cool lead guitar licks and solos without waiting many years to have the skills you need to do it?

Good news:

You can play excellent lead guitar ideas fast, regardless of your current skill level. However, there is one way you can move the process along much faster.

What is it?

Answer:

Give yourself more time to think while you are playing lead guitar ideas.

Sounds like a very basic concept (which it is), but it is also very effective for helping you to start think more creatively while playing.

This is how you begin making better note choices while playing lead guitar with musical and emotional expression. Much better than just repeating memorized licks, right?

Try this:

Create a basic guitar phrase of no more than a handful of notes.

Improvise with this phrase over any backing track for a few minutes by thinking of tons of variations in how you play it.

For example:

Occasionally holding one note longer than the rest or repeating notes. During this process, think about what you want to hear next. Then try to play it.

As time goes forward, you get better at being able to to play the notes in your head perfectly and creating cool guitar licks becomes second nature. The more you work on developing this skill, the more you are able to think in advance during lead guitar solos.

Result: Your lead guitar playing becomes smoother as notes flow together in a meaningful and expressive manner.

Here are some more tips to get more results from this type of lead guitar exercise:

Don’t Be Afraid To Repeat Notes

Common lead guitar mistake: Playing too many notes.

You don't always need to move onto another note once you play it. Sometimes you can squeeze tons of expression from one note by repeating it with double picking, tremolo picking or simply by emphasizing it using vibrato.

Focus On Variety In Your Guitar Playing

It’s common for guitar players to repeat the same ideas over and over on lead guitar because they like them and they feel good. However, this also causes them to rely on the same musical ideas rather than thinking creatively.

Break yourself out of this habit by purposefully playing guitar licks and solos using different rhythmic patterns, note sequences, techniques or anything else to constantly keep yourself on your toes.

Constantly Integrate What You Learn

Every time you learn something new on guitar, implement it as soon as you can into your lead guitar licks and solos. This helps you not only learn it faster, but actually apply it into your playing musically.

Don’t Worry About Natural Talent

It’s common for guitar players to give up too soon on reaching their musical goals because they feel they aren’t naturally talented enough.

Don't make this same mistake!

Being creative on guitar is just like training any other aspect of your playing. Even the most talented players were once where you are at with your skill level.

Note: If you aren’t sure what to practice, look for an experienced guitar teacher to help you save tons of time trying to figure it out on your own.