Can someone offer me some guitar practice ideas?

Question

I am an eager amateur guitarist of two years. I am good at chords, including standard, bar, and power. So now I would like to move more into lead guitar style. I picked up a version of Canon in D minor which has helped a great deal, however it is still centered around chords. I am looking more for fairly quick soloing style.

I don't want rock solos, unless they are quite easy yet good for practice. I'm looking for flamenco ballads or jazz solo styles, since those are my favorite types of music. Song and artist, or even better, a direct link to a page, would be fantastic. Thank you!

Answer 1

I started by leaning the pentatonic (blues) scale in every position on the neck. You can play a complete solo in just the first position. I was playing lead guitar in a band within a year of learning this. You can start soloing over the blues very quickly with this approach.

However, if you want to play jazz, a complete understanding of more complex chords is essential. You need to know which scales and arpeggios relate to the chords you are playing over and make the changes. I would suggest you go on to learn the major chord scale, and the related modes (scales) of the major scale, the same with the melodic and harmonic minor. Try soloing over some jazz standards like 'Georgia' or 'Autumn Leaves'.

Listen to the great guitarists: I recommend Django Rheinhardt, Charlie Christian, Wes Montgomery and Kenny Burrell (to name a very few). Transcribing solos and learning their signature licks then incorporating the ideas into your own playing is a good way to go. There are plenty of books with cds that will help you learn licks.

Try my website for some material on these forms. (non profit educational site)

Also, if you join our yahoo group, we'll be happy to post any further material you might need. There are also links here to good guitar sites.

Answer 2

Well from my experience, It's a combination of things, that helps you really develop playing lead guitar! One way is to just sit and listen to a record, and try to figure out the notes, they are playing, but what helped me more was to go see live guitar players and actually see "how" they were playing, and I could acutally see how easy they played, the difficult notes I was trying to learn off the record! I Learned from both methods, and this helped me a lot! And I also made friends with a lot of guitar players, and exchanged a lot of techniques! I also, acquired a learning cassette tape of a guitar instructor , that had 250 guitar solos on it, country,blues, and rock licks, and bluegrass solos! I used to sit and try to figure out these solos until eventually I could do some of them, and learned a lot of guitar playing in the process! Hope some of these ideas will help you, they helped me be the guitar player I am today!

Answer 3

All of the above....Barring is a real pain in more ways than one, but the more you do it, the easier it will become. My friend (who was a musician) would say, if you want to learn a particular song, riff, progression, etc, do it until you think if you ever hear it again, you'll kill yourself...Then do it some more! As far as your folks go, "write" (make up) your own song, something pretty or meaningful, and play it for them when they're at their most receptive (or vulnerable-heh, heh, heh). Then explain why you need lessons to progress and how much this means to you>>>.. Good luck, and keep playing! :)

Answer 4

try...
www.chordie.com
www.e-chords.com