Rock
5 Common Mistakes Beginner and Intermediate Lead Guitar Players Always Make!
Common Guitar Mistakes Beginner and Intermediate Guitar Players Make
Learn how to avoid and how to fix some of the most common mistakes beginner and intermediate guitar players make when it comes to learning to solo. Overcome these and you really can supercharge your progress, improve faster on guitar and stop getting held up.
Common Guitar Mistake 1- Weak Finger Independence and Accuracy
This can cause you to press down on the strings too hard making notes sound out of tune. Poor finger accuracy can also lead to lifting up the fingers after playing a note., slowing you down and making it hard to play smoothly.
Common Guitar Mistake 2 – Picking Problems
Don’t use too much pick when you play. It’s way harder to get good controlled picking. Just use the very tip of the pick. And make sure your picking hand stays close to the strings when you play. If your picking hand is too far away you may never develop awesome picking!
Common Guitar Mistake 3 – Weak Pull Offs!
To get strong sounding pull offs ‘flick’ your finger off the side of the string. If you pull the string out of tune as you pull off it’s probably due to poor finger independence. Follow the simple trick in the lesson to fix this.
Common Guitar Mistake 4 – Bending Mistakes!
Here you’ll learn how to control and ‘cut off’ bends before you let it down. To do this we use left and right hand muting techniques. Practice these techniques: they will tidy up your bending.
Common Guitar Mistake 5 – Bad String Muting Technique (here’s how to fix string noise!)
String noise can be a big problem on guitar. Muting or ‘string damping’ technique is how to fix this. The picking hand wants to rest lightly on any unplayed strings to keep them quiet and the fretting fingers need to lie slightly flat across the strings. The fingertips can also help by muting neighboring strings. This also helps control unwanted string noise.
Good luck fixing up these common guitar problems, you’ll definitely find they make a massive difference to how your playing sounds. Good luck!
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Alternate Picking Rock Licks (for Speed Building!)
Alternate Picking Rock Licks (for Speed Building!)
In this guitar lesson you’ll discover 3 alternate picking licks for building speed and using in your solos in the styles of players like Paul Gilbert, Gary Moore, Yngwie Malmsteen, Zakk Wylde and others.
All 3 licks are in the key of A minor using a mixture of different minor and blues scales.
Alternate picking lick 1 is in the style of Gary Moore and Randy Rhoads. Not only is it a great alternate picking lick to use in your solos, but it’s also an awesome exercise to build you picking speed and chops!
Alternate picking lick 2 is in the style of Yngwie Malmsteen and uses the A harmonic minor scale. Check out the scale pattern, then jump into this challenging alternate picking lick, it’s an amazing speed building workout!
Alternate picking lick 3 uses string skipping, the A blues scale and some notes from the A Dorian mode. It’s the kind of alternate picking lick you hear Paul Gilbert play in his solos.
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How to Stop Playing the Same Old Pentatonic Licks
How to Stop Playing the Same Old Pentatonic Licks.
Sick of the same overused pentatonic rock licks? Did you know you can easily transform them using the blues scale and dorian mode? In this lesson learn how to breath new life into common pentatonic rock licks to create awesome repeating licks, double stop licks, stretch licks and more.
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Fast Rock Licks (3 Must Know Fast Licks!)
Fast Rock Licks (3 Must Know Fast Licks!)
Learn 3 fast rock licks in the style of Michael Schenker, Tony Iommi, and Angus Young and discover how to make up fast rock guitar licks of your own to use in your rock solos.
Having a few fast rock licks for your rock solos can really help your solos stand out. In this guitar lesson I’ll show you how to play 3 fast licks in the styles of big-name rockers like Tony Iommi, Michael Schenker and Angus Young.
Lick 1 is similar to a lick that Tony Iommi plays in his solo on Blasck Sabbath’s ‘Paranoid’
Lick 2 shows you a cool fast lick like Angus Young plays on his ‘Back In Black’ solo
Lick 3 shows you a cool fast rock lick mixing a Michael Schenker style repeating lick with some Iommi style double stops.
Have fun with these fast rock guitar licks: remember to take them apart and recycle them to create some wicked licks of your own!
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David Gilmour Quick Licks
David Gilmour Quick Licks.
This David Gilmour guitar lesson will teach you step by step how to play 3 famous David Gilmour guitar licks. They come from two of Gilmour’s greatest solos with Pink Floyd: ‘Comfortably Numb’ and ‘Another Brick In the Wall’ and demonstrate important aspects of the David Gilmour guitar style.
-Lick 1 is in the key of B minor and is taken from the outro solo on Comfortably Numb. Notice how Gilmour adds the 9th to his minor pentatonic scale for a more interesting sound.
-Lick 2 is also taken from the outro Comfortably Numb solo.
-Lick 3 comes from the David Gilmour solo on Another Brick in the Wall. It’s the lick that starts the solo and is in the key of D minor.
Once you know the licks shown in this guitar lesson, you should take them and use them to make up your own David Gilmour style guitar licks!
I started my channel to you the kind of ‘BS free’ and no nonsense guitar lessons I think you want. So if you want to understand ‘how to play’…rather than just learn ‘what to play’ then subscribe and look out for all my regular weekly (mostly!) lessons.
Dig in, have fun…and thanks for watching!
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Blues Guitar Lesson High Energy British Blues Licks Eric Clapton, Peter Green, Mick Taylor Style!
Check out my premium Blues Guitar Training in my Total Guitar Lab academy! Learn more HERE.
Blues Guitar Lesson High Energy British Blues Licks Eric Clapton, Peter Green, Mick Taylor Style!
Check out this blues guitar lesson and discover how to play powerful British style blues licks in the styles of groundbreaking blues guitar players like Eric Clapton, Peter Green and Mick Taylor. These short but powerful blues licks are the kind of thing all the blues guitar legends use…so grab ’em and get them in your blues guitar solos now!
In this blues guitar lesson you’ll learn:
- Eric Clapton style ‘double stop’ licks
- Peter Green style ‘blues curls’
- Essential blues guitar bends
- ‘Repicked’ bending licks
- and more…
And with on screen guitar tab you can quickly learn and be using these blues guitar licks in your blues solos for more high impact playing.
Dig in and have fun!
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Carlos Santana Quick Licks
Carlos Santana Quick Licks.
In this Santana licks lesson you learn how to play 3 awesome Carlos Santana licks step-by-step as heard in Black Magic Woman., This is one of Santana’s most famous recordings and showcases the Santana guitar style perfectly! Black Magic Woman is essentially a minor blues in the key of D minor and all three of these Carlos Santana licks are using the D minor pentatonic and blues scale patterns up around the 10th fret.
To get that Carlos Santana guitar tone use the neck pickup on your guitar with a small amount of distortion. Backing off the tone control on your guitar a touch will also help make these Santana licks sound authentic.
Let’s get started with the Santana quick licks lesson!
Carlos Santana Lick #1 – this is the lick Santana uses to kick off his intro solo on Black Magic Woman.
Carlos Santana Lick #2 – This lick shows you how Carlos ends the intro solo on Black Magic Woman.
Carlos Santana Lick #3 – Carlos uses this lick in one of the later Black Magic Woman solos. Notice his cool phrasing and use of rhythm at the end of the lick!
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Guitar Soloing Tip: Only To Be Used for Kick Ass Solos!
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Guitar Soloing Tip: It’s weird…but will get you kicking butt when you solo!
In this guitar lesson you’ll learn a super powerful way to master using a scale by ‘zooming in’ on each pair of strings. With a little practice you’ll see a big difference to how you use the scale and the sound of your rock solos. Try it – it really works!
Rock Guitar Solo Tip (guitar lesson breakdown)
0:05 Random, rambling guitar solos a problem? Not sure what to play when you step for a solo? Just feel like you’re mindlessly ‘running up and down scales’?
0:15 In this short lesson I’ll show you how you can start to change this…and it works every time.
0:40 I’m going to demo the exercise using the A blues scale at the 5th fret.
0:55 Instead of using the whole scale shape ‘zoom in’ on a pair of strings and practice playing a solo only using these 2 strings. Weird? Maybe…but it’ll help you kick butt with your solos!
1:00 Why practice this way…because you wouldn’t perform a solo at a gig like this? Sure… you wouldn’t. But think how much better you’ll know the scale after doing this for a bit. You’ll have explore every little part of it and you’re soloing vocabulary will expand massively over time.
1:45 I’ll demo this now over a rock backing track in A minor. I’m only soloing on the D and G strings of the guitar.
2:05 Work on the other pairs of string as well. Here I’ll demo it on the G and B strings.
3:00 This works for any guitar scale…even those ‘weird’ jazz scales! In fact I got this from studying jazz guitarists and some of the exercises they work on to improve their knowledge of the guitar neck. So use it in your practice and you’ll see some results if you’re consistent.
Have fun!
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Guitar Soloing: Create Hundreds of Your Own Licks…
Right Now!
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In this guitar lesson you’ll learn a super powerful way to use the ‘clues’ in the guitar licks you learn to make up hundreds of your own ideas. Finding and using these ‘clues’ is the key to building an awesome sounding rock guitar soloing style…you can literally ‘breed’ hundreds of licks with a bit of practice. Let’s jump in!
Guitar Soloing – Breed Guitar Licks Like Rabbits! (guitar lesson breakdown)
0:05 Random, rambling guitar solos a problem? Not sure what to play when you step for a solo? Just feel like you’re mindlessly ‘running up and down scales’? The key is to find the clues in the licks we learn.
0:38 We can ‘harvest’ these clues from all the licks we learn from the great players..and use them to build hundreds (or more!) great sounding licks of our own.
0:45 Let’s look at some examples from the A blues scale down at the 5th fret. Check out this lick I’m going to use for the lesson.
1:20 Often guitarists learn a lick and try to duplicate it the exact same way every time they play a solo. Trouble is…they often can’t remember it (I’ve certainly been there…and you probably have too!)
1:40 But what if we forgot about playing the whole lick and focused on just stripping out the good bits? If I break this lick into chunks I can take each ‘chunk’ and try to rework it into ideas of my own.
2:02 Hear me demo reworking the first part of the lick over a backing jam. I’m trying to recycle it into all sorts of similar but new ideas instead of repeating the same thing round and round.
2:43 Let’s take the next part of the lick: the common bend on the G string. Hear me demo messing with this as I jam over the backing track!
3:45 So what kinds of results can you expect from doing this? Well, you could see instant change…I’ve seen it in my students many times.
What you’ll find is that you’ll be much less likely to just ‘run up and down’ a scale shape when you play because you’ll have some ‘clues’ about what to play.
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Guitar Solo Tip: What Nobody Ever Tells You
(and makes or breaks your solos!)
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Here’s What Nobody Ever Tells You About Playing a Great Solo!
Until now…ready?
0:24 Rhythm is the most important thing to nail when we play a solo.
How do we know? Because every great sounding player has a strong rhythmic groove! The fact is the right notes with a boring rhythmic feel will always sound boring…but ‘weird’ notes with amazing rhythm- can sound amazing (John Coltrane, Scott Henderson, Allan Holdsworth anyone?)
0:40 So in this guitar lesson I want to show you a simple way you can practice developing your rhythm. It’s easy to do and is even fun to do…
0:55 Try thinking like a drummer. You don’t need to go out and buy a chest wig and a tank top (only joking..)
Instead put most of your focus on nailing the groove…instead of thinking so hard about the notes you’re playing! Hammer out the rhythm of your solo phrases and licks with gusto and passion. This will give your phrases rhythmic life and expression.
1:50 I’m going to demo this for you now over a backing track. I’m really trying to ‘lock in’ with the drums and bass, and the groove of the music as a whole – instead of just ‘playing in time’.
2:06 Imagine someone walked into your practice session as you were soloing without backing. Would they hear where the beat was just by listening to you solo? They should be able to!
2:25 So what kinds of results can you expect from doing this? Well, you could see instant change…I’ve seen it in my students many times.
It’s a fast way to improve the sound of your soloing…and you don’t really need to learn anything new – you just play what you already play with more groove!
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