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A Great Way To Hone Your Lead Guitar Skills
One difficulty you will encounter is that it is hard to get experience playing lead guitar with a band when you are still learning. Bands are almost always looking for a lead guitarist who can already play. Fortunately there are several solutions to this problem. The first easy solution is to record yourself playing the chord progressions and songs you want to solo with. You can record yourself with a tape recorder or a more modern digital recorder. You can even use your PC. You'll need a cable to connect your electric guitar to the PCs line-in connection. Alternatively you can use a microphone with your acoustic guitar. This solution also gives you plenty of opportunity to practice playing your chord progressions. You'll need recordings several minutes long to give you room to practice and try out different scales and licks. You might find recording complete backing tracks like this gets tedious after a while. If this is the case then you might want to get yourself a sampler/looper. A sampler/looper allows you to record a short passage, the sample, and then play it over and over again in a loop. With a sampler/looper you need record only one verse or even only one measure of the chord progression or song you want to play over. You then let the looper play this sample for as long as you want while you practice your scales, licks and solos. The two solutions described above are both very flexible, you can record any backing you want. However, at some point you will want to practice with a fuller band sound to back you up. This helps you to get used to listening to and following the drums, bass and other instruments. You can also learn how your licks and solos sound in the full band context. Backing tracks, also known as jam tracks, are an excellent tool for this. You can find many high quality whole band backing tracks for you to play solo guitar over. You can buy backing tracks in many musical styles. Some popular backing tracks series are the "Play Guitar With..." series from Wise Publications, or Band In The Pocket from Five Feathers Music. These come in book and CD format and you can use them easily with your home stereo. You can also find many web sites where you can download backing track audio files. There you have three ways to develop your lead guitar skills with backing music. Use them to build your note choice and timing skills and one day you will be ready to take the lead in a real live rock band. Article Directory: http://www.articledashboard.com ----- |
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