Lead Guitar and Lead Training |
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If you are a professional lead guitar player, then, you may not need to read this. But if you are still learning and need some ideas, please go on reading. Ear training is a powerful and often overlooked skill that can really boost your ability to play lead guitar and to improvise in general. Many guitar players focus on learning scales and practicing technique to become better lead players. While it is necessary and helpful to do these things it is extremely important that you train your ear as well. Often when people neglect ear training their playing can become stale and mechanical. If you focus only on technique and scales while you are practicing then your playing will reflect that. However, if you train your ear to recognize the melodies you hear in your head and then train your fingers to play those melodies you will find that you improvisation becomes more fluid and much more pleasurable to listen to. To make use of this skill you need to do two main things:
1. Think in terms of intervals within scales rather than just scales So what is an interval? It is just the distance between two notes. For example, suppose you play a note on the first fret, first string and then a note on the fourth fret of the same string. The interval between these two notes is three frets (also called a minor third). Melodies are composed of all types of different intervals so you need to learn how to play them all. After you learn how to play different intervals on the guitar you need to be able to recognize them by ear. A great way to do this is to associate each interval with the first two notes of a song that you are familiar with. For example, if you listen to the minor third interval from the example above you might recognize that it sounds like the first two notes of Iron Man. If you master the above skills then you will be able to play any interval you hear in your head on in solos that you are trying to copy. With practice you will be able to recognize entire phrases and be able to play them the first time through without "noodling" on the guitar to figure it out. It's a great feeling to be able to transfer the music in your head directly to your instrument. I hope that after reading this article you will be motivated to improve your ear training and your playing as a whole. If you have any questions please feel free to visit me at my website and post in the forums. I'll do my best to help you out. Best of luck! |
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