Lambodar Sahu

Many guitarists dream of becoming a virtuoso soloist. Here are a few easy tips that will help you improve your lead guitar skills.

1. Scale Practice Is Vital

Everyone knows that scales are important, but many people avoid practising them because they’re perceived as being boring. But if you want to become a great lead guitarist, you need to practice your scales every day. They not only increase your theoretical knowledge and make it easier to memorise the fretboard, but also help you increase your finger dexterity.

To make things more interesting, practice a wide variety of scale types, and make sure you use a metronome to keep your playing even and in time. Start off slowly, and increase your speed as your skills develop.

2. Learn To Pick Notes More Quickly

Being able to race up and down the fretboard is lots of fun, so if you want to be able to play fast guitar solos, you need to be able to pick quickly and accurately. It sounds ironic, but the best way to learn to play guitar quickly, is to practice at very slow speeds, and increase the tempo gradually. This will help you not only to develop speed, but accuracy as well – after all, it’s kind of pointless to be able to play fast solos if they’re full of wrong notes!

As with scale practice, you should practice solo playing using a metronome, and just increase it by one or two beats per minute at a time as you become more skilled. It’s important to be patient here, and to resist the temptation to try to play fast solos right away. By taking a slow and steady approach, your finger agility and strength will increase at a natural, sustainable rate, and your playing speed will improve naturally as a result. Try to force things along, and you’ll just end up feeling frustrated, and will put yourself at increased risk of injury too.

3. Use Backing Tracks For Improvisation Practice

Improvisation is another vital skill for lead guitarists. While there’s nothing wrong with planning out your guitar solos, you should be able to improvise fluently as well. To do this, you need to have well developed ear skills, a thorough knowledge of the various scales, and modes and chords, a good rhythmic sense, and a good ear for melody. All of these will come with practice, and the process is made easier if you practice improvising over jam tracks (of course, jamming with a live band is even better in many ways, but it’s not always practical).

There are lots of backing tracks available online, with both free and paid options, so whatever style of music you’re playing, you’re sure to find jam tracks that you can work with. There’s also software available that will generate tracks according to the parameters – key, musical styles etc – that you set.

Put these tips into practice, and you’ll become a better guitar solo player. Professional guitar instruction can also be beneficial for most people (to read about my experience with one such course, read my Jamorama review). Whichever path you decide to take, make sure you keep practising, and your skills are guaranteed to improve.