Musical Expression On The Guitar

Eric Clapton is a blues guitar player who took up the guitar in his teens and learnt guitar from listening to and playing with blues guitarists. John Williams is a classical guitarist who learnt musical theory, guitar playing and reading music in childhood. Paco De Lucia is a flamenco guitarist who never learnt to read music till he reached adulthood, but acquired his v technical virtuosity as a child by practicing for many hours a day and absorbing flamenco muisc from the people around him.
Each of these guitarists has the ability to express himself through the guitar, even though they each have a very different approach to the guitar, each guitarist's understanding of music is different, each has a different knowledge of musical theory, and each uses different muscle groups to play their music.
Yet they are all "lead guitarists".

So what do they have in common? What do all solo musicians have in common?
Their different musical backgrounds have given each of them a technical ability to squeeze some kind of "music" from their instrument, a knowledge of the notes which can be found on the neck of the guitar, and they also have the ability to see musical opportunities and put them into practice according to the requirements of the music they are playing.

So I guess it can be said that, given the opportunity to learn music and where to find it on the fretboard, any of us can be a lead guitarist. The difference is in degree.

If we give a certain amount of time to the guitar each day we will naturally begin to get some technical ability. We do not necessarily need to play fast but we need to put our ideas into action. And these musical ideas we have will be quite simple right at the start of our careers.
Knowledge of the fretboard needn't be the nightmare it may seem at first.

There are lots of approaches to learning the notes on the fretboard, but basically you need to take it slowly, and learn only what you can put into practice. You can learn the fretboard by memory in the same way that you learn the Times Table, but it's better if you just learn to play a pentatonic scale in one or two positions at first.

The ability to translate your ideas into music comes with doing it. And a little hint here - try to forget your theory or whatever "head knowledge" you have for a while just try to play, and let your "successes" and "failures" stand together.