Help me jump start my lead playing

[ssjk]

I’m kind of in a rut. My latest (fifth?) attempt to work with alternate tunings ain’t singing to me again. So I have resolved to learn to play some rudimentary leads. Won’t be my first attempt at that either.

Background: 60 years or so playing. Use a pick when playing with others, usually finger style at home. Self taught.

Lots of suggestions on line about how to get going, and I’ve fooled around with all of them. So I’d like your opinion.

1 it’s scales, baby
2 really learn all of the notes on the fretboard
3 play the melody and move on from there
4 do the CAGE thing
5 practice patterns within boxes
6 make/get some backing tracks and play along with them

Yeah, I know I should do 2 or 3 of these things, but I’d like to focus at first on the one thing that will kick start the effort. Assume that I will spend 1/2 to 1 hour per day for the next 4 weeks doing this one thing alone. After that I’ll add other approaches.

So please just pick only one. If I left out some obvious first thing, let me know.

Thanks.

[Nymuso]

Start with lead on the original recording of Amie by Pure Prairie League. It’s all boxes, easy to hear and easy to replicate. It’ll get your fingers moving.

[12barBill]

You didn't list arpeggios in the poll, and while not being a one size fits all approach to lead playing, arpeggios played up the neck with the chord progression make good lead fills.

[Robin, Wales]

I don't know scales.

I don't know my fretboard.

I don't practice within the boxes (whatever that is!).

I don't do the CAGED thing (??????).

I don't play along with backing tracks.


I do play the melody from within the open chord shapes. And that's basically how I produce my instrumental breaks. Old style Carter stuff really. Lots of hammer-ons, pull-off and double stops to make it interesting, filled in with the odd strum across the open chord shape to fill out the sound.

Pretty straightforward really. Hold down the open chord or partial chord....find the melody while holding down the chord....add some twiddley bits.....job done!

[Charlie Bernstein]

One method you didn't mention: learning other people's riffs. If you like B.B., put on some B.B., play along, and cop some licks. If you like Jerry, use him. If you like Doc Watson, use him. if you like Taj, use him.

All the best guitarists I know started that way. But we're all different. What's right for me doesn't have to be right for you. The only mistake you can make is to not play.

[Deliberate1]

Originally Posted by Charlie Bernstein

One method you didn't mention: learning other people's riffs.

This is how I learned jazz improvisation, more than 40 years ago, as a clarinet and sax player. I trained as a classical clarinetist, reading and playing the notes, in concert band and orchestral settings. It is my greatest musical regret that I never learned, or was encouraged to learn, music theory. No need. Just play the notes in front of me.

In college, I connected with more jazz, and wanted to play it. I put on records of my musical heroes - Brubeck, Paul Desmond, Bill Evans, and the Crusaders, EW&F, and others. And I played along. Just listening and playing what sounded right. Like adding my voice, clumsy as it was, to the musical conversation. Over time, I became more fluent, as happens with a new language once deployed and practiced.

And that is how I learned to improvise. By ear. It is how I learned my instruments as well - how to intuitively select a note, just as I would select the right word, subconsciously. That skill now allows me to fit into all kinds of musical settings, just like vocal conversations.

I am five years into the guitar. I am finally learning some theory. But it is, at this stage, more intellectual than practical. So, I have started to do, on the guitar, what I did 40 plus years ago with my horns - playing melodic lines over changes just by aural feel. Now, I have YT backing tracks to play with, too. Ater a lifetime of music, I have the vocabulary. Now, I just have to figure out where the fingers go.

David

[Bob Womack]

I've written an article about soloing, approaching it from the standpoint of composition. You can find it over HERE.

Bob

[hubcapsc]

All of the above. Scales, pentatonic, chord shapes, arpeggios, CAGED. It is
all the same thing. If they seem different, look to find how they are the same
thing.

-Mike

[Gordon Currie]

If one knows nothing about lead playing, then melody is the best place to start.

Depending on the style of music you play, that's also where you might end
No shame in that if it fulfills your musical goals.

However, if you desire to move past simple melody-based leads, you will need ALL of those other approaches.

Consider what is widely considered to be one of the top electric guitar solos of all time - Comfortably Numb by Pink Floyd.
The solo is melodic, but does not follow from the actual sung melody. Instead it is a little mini-composition of its own.
You won't get there by playing sung melodies.

[JonPR]

You should have allowed more than one option . The two critical ones are:

1 play the melody and move on from there
2 really learn all of the notes on the fretboard

CAGED (the chord shape system, more than the scale system) will help with #2, of course, but it's just a means to an end.

Another crucial thing you didn't mention at all is "learn to play lots of melodies". I.e., not just the melody of the song you're improvising on, but lots of others too.

That's because improvisation is inventing new melodies as you go. So you need a melodic language. And the way you learn the language is by listening and copying. Not by learning scales! (That's only like learning the alphabet.)

When we learn to speak, we do it by listening and copying. We don't learn the alphabet (reading and writing) till later, and grammar (theory) comes later still. Music is learned the same way - a language of sound, by listening and copying.

Of course, the difference from speech is we have to learn to play an instrument - to understand how to get the right sounds out of it (and avoid the wrong ones)! But that's technique. Likewise, learning note names, chord names and so on, is the useful basics of musical "grammar", but improvisers are in the business of "telling stories" or "offering opinions" (on the piece of music). Just as people can speak perfectly well without being able to read or write, so musicians can become highly skilled without learning any theory or notation even (note names) - but they can't do it without listening and copying.

IOW, you have to learn to play a whole lot of actual music - songs of various kinds, and their melodies, riffs, licks and so on, not just the chords. That's where the "language" is; not in scales, box posiitions and so on.

Obviously you need to develop skill on the instrument (via shapes, patterns, exercises), but that's just technique and you don't need a high level of skill! You can always improvise musically within your current skill level, if you have a sense of melody and rhythm. You don't have to be flashy or clever, or to be able to explain what you are doing theoretically.

The more technical skills you develop (knowing your scales and patterns), the faster you can noodle away aimlessly and pointlessly. But the more music you learn to play (actual songs and tunes), the more you cn improvise meaningfully.

Oh, and singing helps too! Melody, of course, is usually what a singer sings, and if your voice is not good, you should at least imagine singing as you play.

[Silly Moustache]

1 it’s scales, baby
2 really learn all of the notes on the fretboard
3 play the melody and move on from there
4 do the CAGE thing
5 practice patterns within boxes
6 make/get some backing tracks and play along with them

1. Well, pretty much but you can mix it up with pentatonics etc.

2. Not for me, but I can identify all notes.

3. This is mostly what I do -melodies are within the chord progressions anyway.

4. Yup, I used CAGED because it's REALLY Useful

5. what ?

6. Huh? Nope.

[Charlie Bernstein]

Originally Posted by Silly Moustache

. . . 5. what ? . . .

A lot of us were taught to see the fretboard as linked boxes. For instance, the ninth-fret A-major pentatonic box is:

first (high E) string: 9 12
second string: 10 12
third string: 9 11
fourth string 9 11
fifth string: 9 12
sixth string: 9 12

Every box — pentatonics, octave scales, majors, minors, blues — has complementary boxes to its left and right, and every box can be moved up and down the neck to change keys or modes.

So a teacher might say, "Go to your third-fret G-major box."

It's not total fretboard knowledge, but it's a practical navigation tool for non-jazz and non-classical players.

It's where I happened to start, but I doubt there is a best place. We're all wired differently. So my advice was: Start anywhere. The only mistake is to not start.

[Woolbury]

I think it really depends on the music you're playing. I can comfortably play leads over chords as an accompaniment, but I find that type of playing is a bit hollow when playing solo. Most of the leads I do involve thumping the base note while playing simple riffs below. Often those riffs are 2 note intervals or double stops, the end result is a lead which is half way between a single note lead and partial chords. If you're interested in this type of approach, I encourage you to check out some of David Hamburgers' Youtube lessons, he really helps develop this lead over a steady base approach.

[ghostnote]

The good lead players I know personally all were playing melodies on their guitar before they learned anything else. Hear a song, learn to play the melody, over and over. By the time they got more music education - chord structure, scales, etc - they quickly saw how all those melodies fit into those things. Sometimes I wish I’d done it that way. I always loved rhythm and singing, so I learned chords first so I could play whole songs; but I didn’t know any chord theory for a long time. And that didn’t happen until I started messing around on a piano, where all the notes are right in front of you in a straight line and it’s easy to see what you’re actually doing.

[J Patrick]

It’s all important but it all comes in time. Try to do more with less and concentrate on rhythm. I often challenge someone who is starting to explore soloing to take just four notes and find out how much you can get out of them. The rhythmic variations and how you apply them is the foundation of great soloing…..otherwise they’re just notes.