PG Music Home Forums General Discussion Off-Topic Want to learn lead guitar?

I want to learn lead guitar mainly country but other styles as well. I know quite a few scales but the problem is playing the right notes in the right place at the right time

What I do try to do is play the notes of whatever chord it is in the melody, usually on the downbeat of the song, which I think sounds not too bad for major scales, but I don't know what notes of the blues scale should fit certain chords?

The guitar window in bandn a box and a few of the realtrack guitar soloists like Brent Mason seem a good way to pick up a few licks. Has anyone tried this or other good ways to learn rather than just listening to songs?

thanks for any advice.

Musiclover

I'm a pretty mediocre player myself, so take this with a large grain of salt. But...

There are no right notes when playing lead guitar. Unless you're doing jazz, lead guitar is more about feel than playing the "right" notes.

The simplest approach is often the most effective one. Pentatonic scales are God's gift to guitar players. An easy way to think about pentatonic playing is to think of a pentatonic scale as a major scale (say, C Major):

C D E F G A B C

with any possible "clashing" notes removed. Specifically, there's half-step clash between the E and F and the B and C. To "fix" this problem, one of the two clashing notes are removed from the scale. With the E and F, the F is removed, because the E is more important (it's a member of the C Major chord). With the B and C, the B is removed (the C is also a member of the C Major scale, and the main note of the scale). That leaves a "gapped" scale with no half step clashes:

C D E (gap) G A (gap) C

The really cool thing is that every note of this scale is going to sound good over any of the triads in the scale of C Major, because you've gotten rid of the half-step dissonances. Some notes will sound better than others (depending on context), but you don't have to worry about hitting a "wrong" note. So you can wail over the chord changes and concentrate on the feel of the solo.

Pentatonic scales are great on the guitar, for a number of reasons:

• There are only 5 notes, so there are 5 different patterns (each starting on a different degree of the scale), so they are easy to learn.
  
• Each of the different shapes corresponds to an "open" guitar chord shape, so that helps make then easy to memorize.
  
• The scales are easy to play, because they work out to an easy fingering of two notes per string.
  
• Since these are two note per string scales, the "bottom" notes of one scale form the "top" notes of the next scale. These shape are easy to memorize.

Google for the "CAGED" system (called that because of the notes in the C Major pentatonic scale) and you should be able to find lots of information.

If you check out the circle of fifths, you'll note that on the "flat" side of C Major is F Major, and on the "sharp" side is G Major. (These are also the IV and V chords of C Major).

The F Major scale differs only from the C Major scale by a single note - Bb instead of B. The scale G Major also only differs from the C Major by a single note - F# instead of F. Note that these notes are conveniently the same two notes dropped from the pentatonic major scale:


F Major Pentatonic: F G A C D F F = IV chord in C Major
C Major Pentatonic: C D E G A C C = I chord in C Major
G Major Pentatonic: G A B D E G G = V chord in C Major

Notice that they're all diatonic to C Major!

That is, the notes in the pentatonic scale are common to the major scales to the immediate left and right on the circle of fifths, which (conveniently) happen to be the IV and V chords.

More simply said: you can play the pentatonic scales of the IV and V chords, and they'll be diatonic to the I chord's major scale.

Even more simply said: you can't play a wrong note using these scales, either.

So if you get bored playing the same C Major pentatonic scale over the changes, you can also play the appropriate pentatonic scale over the major chords, and not have to worry about playing a wrong note: the notes will match the chords, as well as being diatonic.

For example, if in C Major the chord changes to F Major, then use the F Major pentatonic scale instead. Or use is with the C Major pentatonic scale. They both have the same "shape" on the guitar, they just start in different positions.

And if, in C Major, the chord changes to G Major, you can choose to use the G Major pentatonic scale instead of the C Major pentatonic scale. Again, you're guaranteed that you won't hit a "wrong" note.

You can play the relative major scales over the minor chords. That is, C Major pentatonic over Am, F Major pentatonic over Dm and G Major pentatonic over Em. These are "relative minors" of the major scales, and they fit hand in glove.

Or you can just stick with playing the C Major pentatonic over everything (assuming you're in C Major), and it'll all sound good.

That's good for country music, which uses a major tonality. But what about rock and blues?

The good news is that pentatonic scales work great there, too!

For blues, you can use the same shapes but shifted up three frets. For example, if you're playing a chord progression in the key of E, instead of playing an E Major pentatonic scale over it, play an E minor pentatonic scale.

E minor is the relative minor of G Major. And in the same way that the G Major scale has the same notes as the E minor scale:

G Major: G A B C D E F# G
E minor: E F# G A B C D E

the G Major pentatonic scale has the same notes in as the E minor pentatonic scale:

G Major pentatonic: G A B D E G
E minor pentatonic: E G A B D E

Equally conveniently, you can play the E minor pentatonic scale by shifting the E Major pentatonic scale three frets up. Same shape, different sound. Congratulations - you're now playing the "blues scale" over the changes.

And since you're using a pentatonic scale, you can't hit a wrong note.

Well, although a lot of people call this minor pentatonic scale the "blues scale", it really isn't. It's more the "rock" scale, because it's used so much in rock solos.

The "real" blues scale is a hexatonic (6 note) scale, not pentatonic (5 notes). It adds a raised fourth to the scale. But I think it's easiest to think of it as a pentatonic minor scale with an added scale degree.

You'll find the pentatonic minor scales are often referred to as "blues boxes", with the G Major pentatonic shape being the workhorse for many, many rock solos, often only adding a few notes from the E Major pentatonic scale that sits on top of that.

There's one other point that I should mention, and you've touched on them: using "guide tones" in your solo. It's basically Schenkerian Analysis in reverse. The core idea is that you can break down a melodic line into "important" and "less important" notes. As you "strip away" the "less important" notes, you're left with the "primary" melodic line.

You can do this in reverse when you build your solo, by selecting chordal notes (typically the 3rd or 7th of the scale, since they're harmonically important) as the "main" tones to "guide" the direction of your melody. This helps give your solo focus by keeping it harmonically grounded, and from wandering aimlessly.

But I'd really concentrate on using pentatonic scales. It takes the focus off playing the "right" note, and gets you working on the feel of the solo, which is where the expressiveness and soul of the solo lies. Guitar solos aren't about which note you choose, but how you play it.

Did that make sense?

I love to visit music stores and ask the guitar people to show me a, "Lead Guitar" and then show me a "Rhythm Guitar"...

Then I try to show them why they are all just "Guitars" - and the difference lies in what the player has learned how to do with it.

It is an interesting phenomena to me.

I mean, nobody uses the term, "Rhythm Piano" or "Lead Vibraphone" - although among certain horn players there is the distinction of the "Lead Player" every once in awhile.

Carry on,


--Mac

"Youtube, Youtube, Youtube."

and/or

"Arlen Roth Hot Licks, Arlen Roth Hot Licks, Arlen Roth Hot Licks."

What Mac says about transcribing? Absolutely correct. You have to listen to and learn what the good guys are doing. Only in that way can you develop and educate your own "feel". "Feel" is cool, but if all you can feel is "See Dick run. Run Dick run", then it will probably benefit you to listen. And listen a lot.

Youtube is a great resource. You can actually find some pretty helpful lessons there. And Arlen Roth's videos are great. Two of the most important lessons I've ever taken were from Larry Coryell's and Emily Remler's videos.

Enjoy the journey.

Thanks very much to everyone for all the good advice, It is true as Mac says about lead and rhythm guitars, but at the same time you hear of people who play chords for years and are not too interested in playing melodic or lead lines, whereas I once even read that BB KIng wasn't that interested in playing rhythm or didn't consider himself very good at it. My own personal view is, that a person isn't a good guitarist unless he plays good lead, wrong I know but its hearing nice lead lines, not chords thast rock my boat!

Usually I have tried to play some simple lead guitar by just playing the molody and adding a few extra notes, but have reached the conclusion this is not very effective, well for me anyways, its better to improvise around the chords and melody.

Dcuny thanks for the nice long post, some very good advice there that I will have to work through and take on board.

musiclover.

Dcuny says in his post
"C D E (gap) G A (gap) C

The really cool thing is that every note of this scale is going to sound good over any of the triads in the scale of C Major, because you've gotten rid of the half-step dissonances. Some notes will sound better than others (depending on context), but you don't have to worry about hitting a "wrong" note. So you can wail over the chord changes and concentrate on the feel of the solo"

Say we take a country song in key of c major and one of the changes is C maj to F maj, is it ok then to play say a D note on the downbeat where the harmony is an Fmaj chord
in the song, or is it generally thought of as sounding better to have notes like D or G just as passing notes on the upbeat?

Thanks
Musiclover

Musiclover, regarding hearing leads not chords rock your boat, I suggest you have a listen to Joe Pass-jazz player, and Scotty Anderson-country player. You dont have to like it, but it may give you an idea just what is achievable by excellent players. I also think transcribing is a good way to start as well, as it forces you to listen. After a while you will hear the changes more easily and with more work you will accurately anticipate them. If you get stuck listen to the bass line. DennisD

Wow, some good suggestions here. David never ceases to amaze me with his very thorough explanation of "whatever" he's 'splainin.

All I can really add is to steal "licks" from any guitar player you can find that's willin' to show you, you'd be amazed at how many would be glad to show you something they're doing that you admire.

Oh and one cardinal rule of lead guitar... If you hit a bad note, just bend it!

Practice makes Improvement! ROCK ON

Greg

Don't sell rhythm short! Here's a great video of Danny Gatton playing both. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NHSvWrendeE&feature=related (on a rhythm guitar no less!) he's generally a tele man. BTW he had a video in the Arlen Roth Hot Licks Series.

---

Ah don't get me wrong. Rhythm is great and in a sense is the basis of guitar playing being able to back your own and everyone's songs (in my case if I know the right chords to play as I know quite a few of basic ones and practice them often) Its just that a good lead player will stand out. If a person only plays chords and is not a gret singer he/she will sometimes find themselves in a situation where someone says "play us a song" and will find himself stuck. I think to a lot of non musicians chords don't mean anything, they will just say "ah that sounds very nice but now play us something we know"

musiclover

dcuny, thanks for the excellent tutorial. Very clear and well organized!

Wow DCuny! talk about a crash course!! good 'xplainin' though.

Excellent posts, I've learned a lot just lurking and reading. If I can add one thing that has really helped me in my solo work is to practice playing scales and arpeggios with a metronome Play clean so that the effects like distortion will not hide your mistakes. When I get it down, I ramp the BPM up and relearn. Muscle memory helps me tremendously and the metronome helps me to keep time, etc.

Lead can make you sick.

Can't put it in paint anymore. They took out all the lead pipes going into houses too.

If you play a lead guitar that's some heavy metal. Kinda dull though.