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lead guitar

3,418 views · Published 11 March 2016 · 7:28 · Indexed 16 October 2026

Channel: New Secret Guitar Teacher · 2016 · Music

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Lead guitar for beginners. How to play lead guitar in a band. The role of the Lead Guitaritst. Overview of playing the lead guitar role in a band.

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Video script:

The roles played by the lead guitarist in a band vary of course depending on the type of band and the type of music being played. For example, in a guitar-based instrumental band, the lead guitar carries the melody from start to finish.

In music of all kinds, the lead guitar is often responsible for carrying off the song's signature intro.The intro of a song can often be of prime importance, but once the first verse or chorus gets underway, in most cases the lead guitar player's role is a lot less obvious and perhaps less well-defined.

More often than not, the lead guitarist will sit back and play in a way that supports the Rhythm guitarist. And this requires a good knowledge of chord voicings and inversions - alternative ways of playing the same chords, but normally making them sound higher or thinner than the chords being played by the rhythm guitar.

So while the rhythm guitarist may be strumming open chords down this end of the guitar...the lead guitar might lightly embellish these, with three- string versions of the same chords, played high up the neck on the top strings...here and at different stages of the song, they might choose to play those as solid chords or more delicately picked arpeggios.

Instead of chords themselves, the lead guitarist has the option of using carefully selected scale-based phrases maybe something like this ...
or, as the song builds to its full level of energy they might throw in some chord-based licks something like this.

But, the number one skill that great lead guitarists must have, is that of being a good listener. It takes careful listening and great musical judgement to know exactly how much to play and how much musical space to leave for the rhythm section, the vocalist or other lead instruments to shine through.
Less is almost always more in this case!

The popular perception of the lead guitarist may be that he or she is the show-off guitar player, the star performer in the band...but, in actual fact, what makes a truly great lead guitarist is being a good team player. 

Knowing exactly how to play in a way that brings the best out of the song itself; the vocalist's interpretation of the lyrics and the contributions made by other lead instruments, sax or keyboards for example. All this at the same time as complimenting the structural foundations laid down by the rhythm section.

You can perhaps appreciate why I say: developing good listening skills is the most important part of becoming a lead guitar player!

So what should you be concentrating your own practice on if your aim is to become a professional lead guitarist? Well the traditional advice is to start by learning your scale patterns - particularly pentatonic scales and blues scales. And whilst I do recommend that approach, I think I would add that you should not neglect to learn your chords as well. Too often would-be lead players think of chords as more the province of the rhythm guitarist. 

But, to be a professional lead player, you not only need to learn to play a great many chord shapes, you also need to understand how to create alternative voicings and inversions of chords when needed. And this brings us on to the subject of music theory - yes you can learn to wing it - and I would be the first to add the skills of being able to Improvise to the list of requirements - but to have a practical ability to work with chords and chord-  based riffs and licks, the smart way forward is to study guitar music theory.

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