Seven Lead Guitar Secrets

You hear lots of great guitar playing, and you have a desire to emulate some of the famous guitarists you have heard and seen. You know you have to be able to read tabs and/or musical notes, and you know you need to develop your ear for picking up a melody and playing it, and then changing it and making it your creation. How do you begin?

The Secret Of Technique
In your musical career you will watch guitarists trying to play musical passages faster than their muscles are able to smoothly execute the many small movements involved. To fight this problem some guitar teachers will encourage you to closely analyze the music and the way you play it. This can lead to your practice becoming a chore if you are not careful. Cultivating the ability to listen is time and effort well spent. Basically your aim is to be able to hear your playing AS IT IS rather than how you wish it to be, and to make the effort to relax and play smoothly even if the noise coming out of your guitar sounds awful. Work on trying to practice in this way for a short time each day until you can prove to yourself whether it works or not.

The Secret Of How To Hold The Guitar
You need to pay attention to how you hold the guitar for one simple reason: if you let your various muscle groups run free to fight with each other, you are going to seriously mistreat your body. Do some Googling on muscular tension, read some books, talk to a doctor or a chiropractor - get a handle on how you should be treating your body while you train it to make music on the guitar.

The Secret To Using The Left Hand
Anybody who wants to learn how to play lead guitar needs to be clear about the fact that his hands are connected to his shoulders via his arms. This connection allows his intention to make music to be put into practice. The message is that from the inside you should be always checking that you're not inflicting pain on your arms and shoulders. These muscles are more or less under your control. The small muscles of the hand aren't, and when you start getting searing pain in your hands and wrists, you're going to need to look for outside help.

The Secret Of Presentation
Or bearing. If you hunch over your guitar when you practice, making little gestures and grunts every time you make a mistake, you are not laying a great foundation for a favorable - let alone exciting - stage presence. If you behave as if your mistakes don't matter, or even as if they're not mistakes, you will find that you start to have a new attitude to your playing: you make fewer mistakes, and take the ones you DO make in your stride.

The Secret Of Regular Practice
Begin your musical study with a timetable. You may feel excited at the beginning, and be more than willing to put in alot of hours on the guitar. Whether all these hours you practice are effective or not is another question, but a timetable helps to keep up a regular, consistent practice regime.

The Secret To Being A Lead Guitarist
As lead guitarist you are not only responsible for creating the guitar solos, but you will acquire the musical know-how to be able to support the other members of your band. If the drummer drops his sticks, if the rhythm guitarist or bass player forget where they are, the lead guitarist needs to have the presence to be able to ride out the consequences of other's mistakes. If the lead guitar player keeps playing, the others can pick up the music again.

The Secret Of Relaxation
Take a break five minutes AFTER you decide you really need one. Your resting periods during practice sessions should have the effect of recharging your batteries. Taking a break every time you feel frustrated or tired is not the way to go. Even relaxation needs some discipline.