Lead Electric Guitar, Where Do I Start?
What a great lead guitar question:
Question: I have been playing acoustic guitar for about 5 years now and would like to start playing lead electric guitar. I fill in lead music for church, and am very comfortable playing and singing. I can play most acoustic songs on the radio, but I lack music theory. I have several electric guitars and amps so equipment is not the problem.
Where do I start? Scales, Modes, Pentatonic Scales??? No idea. I know the minor pentatonic scale. I see lessons on ultimate guitar, I have learned from them before, but what do I need to learn?
Thanks!
Answer: Start with soloing licks. Since you already know the minor pentatonic scales, learn licks in that scale. Some good licks can be found in solos of led Zeppelin and guns n roses. Once you get a good library of licks, you can put them together to jam to a song. In this case, solo to a song. Once you get the pentatonics down, go to the modes. An example of a couple of solos done in the modes include: knocking on heavens door by guns n’ roses as well as November rain, also by guns n roses. You will notice that all soloing is performed in some way or form, in the modes. The pentatonics come from the modes, soloing to metal music is using the modes in a minor way. For example, soloing to metal using the modes is just using them at a different interval from the key that the song is in. If a metal song is in G, you won’t use the G modes to solo, you would use the harmonic minor of G which is E minor to solo to metal in the key of G. The harmonic minor is always 4 frets down like G to E. In all, you need to learn the pentatonics good, and licks in the pentatonics for soloing. You need to know what key the song is in, and you need to put those licks together to improvise a solo right away. The same goes for the modes.
Hey man,
That’s awesome that you want to embark on the journey of learning theory. It can be extremely tedious, but also extremely rewarding in terms of composition and understanding music as a whole. Here is a link to a book that may help you out tremendously (as it did for me)!
http://www.amazon.com/Complete-Idiots-Guide-Music-Theory/dp/1592574378/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1314674614&sr=8-1
It’s cheap, simple, and develops a solid foundation for understanding and applying music theory. Definitely worth taking a look at.
Hope this helps!
if you can play like brian head welch ill listen to you any time