Lead Guitar Lessons: Vital To Becoming A Guitar Virtuoso
Steve Vai first heard “Heartbreaker” from Led Zeppelin when his sister brought the album to his house. That was it. “When I heard “Heartbreaker” and that solo…I knew I wanted to play guitar!”. Oh yeah!. He plays alright! But did he take lessons? I have no idea, but I can assure you of this… at the minimum, he taught himself lessons!
How important is it to learn from someone and learn lead guitar lessons? Well, let me ask you another question. How motivated are you? Many of the greatest lead guitarists had little or no formal schooling in music education. If you take George Harrison, for example, he didn’t get any formal lessons. He just listened to, analyzed and then imitated the styles of his idols such as Buddy Holly and Carl Perkins. However, for most people who would like to become lead guitarists, taking formal lessons is pretty much where they need to start. Its important. Its actually not necessary to go through the time consuming process of trial and error. And having a teacher alongside of you, to critique your playing.. well, it can motivate you to play better. And you might gain a few cool tricks as you learn along the way What else can I say!? You have nothing to lose and have everything to gain by taking lessons.
So what are the key things you want to learn from lead guitar lessons? Well, lets start with scales. When you’ve gotten and mastered the notes on the scales, then you can play just about any guitar piece. At that point you can improvise on your own with Carlos Santana, Eric Clapton or anyone else. The scales you’ll want to learn will be the major and minor Pentatonic Scale and the Blues Scale. The Pentatonic has five notes and the Blues Scale has the same notes with an extra note to give it a bluesey sound.
Now it may seem painfully boring to practice scales when you’re wanting so badly to play entire songs and terrifying solos. But taking your lessons will help you become a truly good musician. Once mastering the scales is in place, you can begin taking on different techniques to make your solo playing sound better. These include slides, where you slide notes by sliding your finger from one fret to the next, vibratos which involve wiggling or bending the string just a bit to cause the pitch of the note you’re playing to flutter slightly and finally string bending, where you make the note rise in pitch by pushing or pulling the guitar string.
A good teacher along with good lead guitar lessons can help shape you into the guitar virtuoso you’ve always dreamed of becoming. When I first learned guitar, I took lessons, but I didn’t want to go. Wasn’t motivated. But I still went ahead. And it was the best thing in the world for me.
Learn more about Lead Guitar Lessons. Stop by Soudai Kunai’s site where you can find out all about guitar lessons and what it can do for you.
