Halen Signature
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Learning To Play Lead Guitar Fast and Easy - How To Shred On The Lead Guitar Fast
Learn To Play Lead Guitar - The Only Secrets You Need To Know
Please excuse me if my introduction to this article seemed a bit brash and cocky. If it seems that way it's because I am a good lead guitar soloist and I really hate seeing so many of the bogus banners on guitar sites saying things like 'learn to play lead guitar like Joe Satriani in two weeks'.
Your first lead guitar lesson - I'm sorry but that just isn't going to happen! Joe Satriani couldn't even play guitar like Joe Satriani after two weeks. But don't let that discourage you that is actually good news. Why? because if it was that easy to learn lead guitar every schmo in the world would be doing it and you would never get to be special then would you?
I can tell you you don't have to play guitar for thirty something years to get good. Although I have been playing lead guitar for more than 30 years my playing has not been consistent. in fact during those 30 years there have been several years at a time where I didn't play at all.
If you dedicate yourself consistently without taking big breaks you should be a good enough guitarist to impress most people in guitar stores and shops after only a year if you learn the right way and listen to my advice about learning lead guitar solo.
Here is your second lead guitar lesson - the fastest way that you will grow as a lead guitarist is by learning the lead guitar solos of guitarists you admire, in my case that being Steve Vai, Joe Satriani, and Ynwie Malmsteen.
There are many reasons for this...
- By learning the lead guitar solos of hot guitarists whom you admire you remain motivated. I can tell you from my years of experience there is no greater joy or greater high in the world than to be able to pick up an electric guitar and shred off a lead guitar solo, one of your favorite lead guitar solos, at blazing speed. The rush you get from this is better than anything. It is better than any drug. It is better than sex. In fact when you really become proficient it is almost as if the guitar becomes one with you and God is playing through you. Striving for that feeling alone makes all the hours of practice to become a great lead guitarist worth it!
- By learning the lead guitar solos of hot guitarists whom you admire you learn new guitar licks. When I say guitar lick what I am referring to is the concept of when you listen to a lead guitar solo from a song and you hear the lead guitar make a sound and you say to yourself 'wow that sounded really cool how does he do that?'. When you learn new lead guitar licks these become new tools that you can use when creating your own guitar solos. Of course the ideal goal here is not just a play other guitarists stuff but to play other guitarists lead guitar solos because it will rapidly allow you to expand and improve as a lead guitar solos so you can more fully and more satisfactorily express yourself on the guitar. After all the ultimate goal with learning lead guitar, and least as far as I am concerned, is to get it as close as possible so the guitar and your mind are one. What I mean by that is the limiting factor in playing lead guitar is the body. How fast your fingers can move, coordinating your right hand and your left hand. What your mind wants to do with the guitar is always being held back by the limitations of a physical body. Narrowing that dissident gap so that you one day you have the ability, to almost instantly, lay down on the fret board what your mind thinks up is as close to heaven as you will ever get.
- By learning the lead guitar solos of hot guitarists whom you admire you will actually automatically incorporate their style of guitar playing, their signature, if you will, into your own style of playing. So for example no matter how you sound on the guitar right now if you dedicated yourself to a full month of several hours a day doing nothing but mastering Steve Vai guitar solos for the rest of your life you are going to sound a little bit more like Steve Vai when you play guitar without even trying.
The key to success of learning lead guitar this way (learning other guitarists solos) and being proficient on the fretboard as rapidly as possible requires that you follow any few simple rules:
- When taking the lead guitar solo from another guitar artist that you want to learn take a lead guitar solo that is currently beyond your capabilities but only by a little bit. The idea here is to grow and improve as a guitarist but if you set your goals too high too soon you will become discouraged and frustrated. So for an example let's say on the guitar proficiency scale of 1 to 10 lets say Steve Vai is a 10 (he really is a 1,010 but for sake of argument we will say 10) and Ace Frehley of Kiss is a 1, right now in your mind think of where you are on that scale. Let's say as far as your abilities as a lead guitarist you consider yourself a three. Take lead guitar solos to learn that are at a four or five.
- As best as you can try to learn the guitar solo exact, note for note.
- First learn to play the guitar solo slowly enough so you don't make mistakes. As you improve with the solo increase the speed of it as long as you can play it properly without tripping. Another way you can handle this when learning guitar solos you will find that there are parts of that guitar solo you can handle without a problem and then there are parts of it that make you choke. What you can do is concentrate on just the parts that make you choke. Keep playing those parts over and over and over again until you have mastered them. You will then be able to play the entire solo smoothly. You will know you have truly mastered that guitar solo when while playing it you throw a little bit of your own creativity and style into it. This is your ultimate goal: improve your technical ability and increase your creativity at the same time.
- Oddly enough one thing I have found is that learning lead guitar solos is a lot like working out with weights. If you play every single day you actually won't make as good a gain as if you play hard-core day 1, take day 2 off, play hardcore day 3, take day 4 off, etc. Now when I say play hard core I mean to really dedicate yourself, non stop, for a least a couple of hours. The more hours you can put in on your hard-core day the faster you will learn lead guitar solos. This will literally force what you are learning to be burned into your brain. Then when you take the next day off, on the following day when you play hard-core again, if you put enough of your self time wise and intensity wise into the day you played hard-core, the following day when you pick up the guitar you will be amazed at how much you improved from two days prior. If you don't notice an improvement from a hard-core day two days prior then it means you did not put enough of your self either time wise or intensity wise or both into your playing day.
Now one thing that trips a lot of people up is they will say 'so how do learn these lead guitar solos note for note'?
I am sure you have heard a guitar tabs or guitar tablature? In case you haven't guitar tabs is when some other genius puts down in a book each of the notes that make up that guitar solo. One of the best pieces of advice I can offer you is avoid guitar tabs like the plague. Why? Guitar tabs completely take the personality and soul out of the guitar solo. Guitar is an instrument of the ears and the heart. Guitar tabs makes that lead guitar solo flat, lacking of any soul or personality. Thus your lead guitar playing will become flat, and empty of personality as well.
One piece of equipment/software they have these days that makes learning guitar solos note for note exactly pretty easy and effortless are programs like Riff Master Pro. Riff master Pro is a pretty new piece of software technology for learning guitar solos. Riff Master is a software program that allows you to load an MP3 into it (the song with the guitar solo you want to learn in it) and then slow down that song to a virtual crawl if you want so you can hear every single note of that guitar solo crisply and clearly. They didn't have that when I was playing eight hours a day. In order to learn a Steve Vai guitar solo note for note I literally had to sit there for hours playing small pieces of his solos over and over and over again on the CD until my brain finally got it. If I had Riff Master Pro I could have learned the guitar solos in about 1/10 the time.
Another great feature of riff Master Pro is not only can you slow down a song and its guitar solo as slowly as you wish you can do so without the pitch of the song being altered one bit. this means you don't have to re-tune your guitar to learn the solo.
However another great feature of riff Master Pro - lets say your guitar is out of tune with the song you can re-tune the guitar so it is in tune with the song (that is a real pain in the neck) but with Riff Master Pro all you do is move a slider to adjust the pitch and re tune the song to your guitar! much faster and easier!
If you want to get an idea of what riff Master Pro does and how it works then visit this webpage which is Eddie Van Halen's (another fine lead guitarist) Eruption guitar solo slowed down with riff Master Pro. Now keep in mind the sound quality is nowhere near as good listening to it on the webpage as it would when you actually own and use Riff Master Pro because in order to conserve disk space the song file must be compressed.
On that website there are also pictures of riff Master Pro software. You will notice another one of its features is in 8 band graphic equalizer which is very useful in making the lead guitar solo even more crisp and clear. The way I use it is I slide down the bass and the high treble sliders while moving up the middle pitches. This really makes the guitar solo much clearer and more prominent.
And one last piece of advice I'd like to share with you in my desires to help you become a great lead guitarist as quickly as possible is -avoid taking guitar lessons- That may sound like crazy advice but trust me I know what I am talking about. The reason you want to avoid guitar lessons is most guitar teachers are not qualified. Just because they may be better than you right now still does not make them qualified to teach. You see the problem that I have found with my own personal experience anyway is that guitar teachers tend to want to impose rules upon you about what you can and can't do with the guitar. My friend there is no such thing as can't when it comes to the guitar. There are no rules. And thinking there are because a teacher tells you there are will only hold back your creativity and the musical genius that lies within you. (The exception to the rule is if you can get Steve Vai or Joe Satriani for a teacher)
Do you really think Steve Vai, or Jeff Beck, or Eddie Van Halen would sound anything like they do today if they took guitar lessons? They may have all taken guitar lessons in the beginning, their first six months or one year of playing, but I can assure you they quickly outgrew their teacher and doing so was the best thing they could have done to become a guitar greats they are today; not as good as me but I guess they now have goals to don't they? 
About the Author
Visit http://www.slowdownthatleadguitarsolo.com for dozens of lead guitar solos slowed way down with Riff Master Pro. again how one to make sure you are clear in knowing that the quality of the sound of the guitar solos slow down is nowhere near as good as when you actually own riff master and play MP3s (guitar solos slowed down) with it on your own computer.
What would be a good neck pickup to put in my guitar?
Im putting the Eddie Van Halen Signature pickup on the bridge and im looking for a nice neck pickup for the guitar.
Well, my favorite neck pickup is the DiMarzio PAF 100 or 101.
The Gibson 490 (not to be confused with the 496r) is also a good pickup.
Ludwig 6.5 x 14 Alex Van Halen Signature Snare Drum 022409A