Playing lead

[rick413]

I am 70 yrs old have been playing for six years now, I am fairly proficient at most chords and half decent at fingerpicking. I have played several open mics and felt really good and comfortable playing and singing. I am fortunate that I have several other retired guys such as myself who I play with once or twice a week, however they are much more accomplished than I am and are able play lead. I can play a couple of scales but have no idea what I’m doing when it comes to trying to play lead so as they take turns doing the interesting stuff, I sit there playing chords. I would like to put my toe in the water to try to learn play lead but not sure how to begin. Any advice would be appreciated .

[Wade Hampton]

Rick, there are plenty of books and guitar teachers who can show the basics; what's more, nowadays you can get the information for free and learn it at your own pace looking at YouTube videos.

That's not a habit I'm in, given my stubborn insistence on figuring out stuff for myself, but I'm sure others on this forum can make some excellent suggestions as to which videos they've found to be the most helpful.


whm

[arwhite]

Why not get one of your picking partners to teach you some lead playing? If you are fortunate enough to have such a resource at your disposal, use it!

[viccortes285]

Rick I would go learning a few pentatonic scales unless you can play a mix in any key, then move to a Dorian. As was mentioned many a good YouTube video's and most here can help. I am 68 so can relate in many aspects, any questions just ask.

[Goodallboy]

There is a nice instruction book that taught me a lot, called Scales over Chords., by Wilbur Savidge. It clears up a lot of the confusion. It comes with a CD as well.

I see it offered on Amazon for $21.81.

[Russ C]

Assuming you mean impro, I say there are 2 parts to this challenge .. and how much of each of them you want to tackle is only your call.

I've been playing that role most of my 66 years and while far from the best someone can be, I've never perceived a better way (for me) than having part of my brain "hear" a phrase and another part say "yeah that'll work" or "no, go here instead" in brief ... which of course requires enough theory (or practical theory I like to call it) to make those calls in an instant.

Where ideas come from is nearly always a memory bank of other people's music but sometimes inspiration seems genuine - that part I don't understand but it's a great place to be.

I taught teenage kid's classes for many years and with captive students like that it's possible to establish training that most private students wouldn't tolerate.
With their instruments I taught them gradually to see "allowable" notes coming as chords changed and to make theoretical choices in advance - which gradually became musical choices.
It's stuff I wish I had been taught to do young but at our age you'd need to find it rewarding or you're not gonna do it.

The scale approach is great for blues or styles that don't make a big deal of harmony changes.
So, depending on the music you like there will be different approaches that work best. An appropriate teacher is a good person to find. Good for the brain.

[DukeX]

Originally Posted by arwhite

Why not get one of your picking partners to teach you some lead playing? If you are fortunate enough to have such a resource at your disposal, use it!

This would be the best approach IMO.

[Dog Shape Cloud]

I'll offer an alternative idea, which though non-theoretical is actually pretty traditional--

Think of some songs with very simple, repeating vocal lines (e.g. blues, traditional folk tunes, stuff with a groove but not too many layers), and practice singing them, using the guitar instead of your voice.

Sure, you have to fumble around some to find the notes at first, but I'm just talking about teaching your fingers a few basic patterns you already have in your head. The theoretical approach shouldn't be ignored, but you don't need to "understand" a simple melody to play it--and if you're working with blues and folk tunes, there are so many recurring motifs and minor variations that before long you should be able to hear when a pattern you've learned is going to work, and even make tiny modifications on the fly. Mistakes are part of the process.

For anything more complicated, this method runs into a wall pretty soon--but it's a good way to have fun.

[varmonter]

Ok I like to spend your money .. if you have an amp or a pa buy looper.
Then loop a progression and practice lead over your loop.

[GrooveKing]

Playing leads can seem daunting. My best advice for a novice is to, by ear, pick out the melody note by note and have fun from there. The ear likes the familiar.

[Mr. Jelly]

This time I'll suggest learning the G/Em pentatonic scale in first position. This would be the G major pentatonic scale and the Em minor pentatonic scale. The same notes and pattern. This scale can be used on G country songs and E blues songs. But remember that pentatonic scales mimic the tones of human speech. So the trick is to accent the playing of the scales as though a person is speaking. Otherwise it sounds strange.

[TJE]

Originally Posted by GrooveKing

Playing leads can seem daunting. My best advice for a novice is to, by ear, pick out the melody note by note and have fun from there. The ear likes the familiar.

This is how I learned to play lead! Then I started improvising slowly!

[DupleMeter]

There's a lot of good advice here.

In my 21 years of teaching people to play here's what I've found most helpful:

Start with the Pentatonic scales. Learn the forms and how to "anchor" them so you're in the right key. Once you can go up and down the scales without getting lost, get your friends to play some chords for you to start playing over.

The beauty of the Pentatonic scales (both major & minor) is that they remove the pesky half-steps from the scale. Those missing notes are the hardest notes to place well.

The only way to get good at anything is to do it. Just get to it and make your mistakes. They'll become fewer and fewer as you do more lead playing. Use your ears to guide you (even if your fingers don't follow at first) & have fun with it.

Enjoy the journey.

[tonyo]

I'm just over ten years younger, have been playing rhythm for nearly six years and earlier this year started to learn to play lead / improv. Been doing it mostly with the major scale, also with the pentatonic. I didn't start trying to do any improv until I could play the major scale without error with my eyes closed at 120 bpm in the metronome, didn't want to rush into it. Breakthrough for me was playing improv over a major scale backing track several months back.

Can't say it felt like much of a breakthrough. I enjoyed it, but it sounded quite pedestrian compared to the others I know that can do lead breaks seemingly at the drop of a hat. My wife, who's normally my fiercest critic said it sounded good.

Now I'm working on several things. Learning more songs with recognized lead breaks so my quiver has more arrows to work with. Doing more of my playing along to the backing track. My dexterity over the scale needs to be faster. Planning to use my looper to do lead along to songs I know and play regularly with rhythm. Also doing other research / learning on chord tones.

Am interested in hearing about particular songs that have good lead breaks from others who've gone down this path. Wishing you were here is one I'm planning to learn.

The difficulty in learning to play lead hasn't diminished my interest it it. So far with every new song / technique (I play mostly fingerstyle), I've been able to put a hard effort into learning it, say a month or so, and then it's burned in my memory and becomes just another part of what I do. The learning lead is certainly much harder than that, for me anyway.

[Bob Womack]

I've written up a philosophical guide to playing solos on my website, over HERE.

Bob