What to practice and learn on the guitar if I want to become a lead guitarist, read music sheet and cover popular Japanese rock and city pop, but also improvise when playing in my band. My goal is to play in a gig with my bandmate once every month, perform our own song and cover popular city pop song or even just play in a party or special occasion.
Start with Grade 1 module 0.
This is a structured programme which will help you to get solid foundation and you can then decide how to specialise.
You need to learn to walk before you start to run. Anyway, there are no lead guitarists who can’t play open chords.
I see this is the first time you post. You can introduce yourself here.
Sorry! cause I forgot to mention that I’m already at the end of Grade 3 for Beginner, I’ve got down the basic of music theory and can play basic chords and barre chord to play them up the fretboard using the CAGED system, memorize the basic pentatonic scale shapes and can decently playing legato, currently practicing vibrato and doing ear training stuff, but still, I want a more specific path to minimize my time and achieve my goal before coming into the Intermediate course. Thanks for reading and helping me on my post tho
I missed that you posted in Grade 3/Modul 17, so it is all on me.
I think roughly we are in a similar position on our guitar journeys. My take is we have to build decent skills with the core techniques for lead guitar and then we can further refine them in a particular type of music. I currently work on picking accuracy (both alternate and economy picking) and speed. I use the exercises from “A modern method for guitar” by William Leavitt. Some very difficult stuff there and not the most user-friendly book, but some of the exercises are incredible. You will have to learn to read proper notation for this. It will take a long time just to go through the open position, so not a lot of notes to learn/memorize on the fretboard! Recently on this forum, @sclay recommended “Alternate picking guitar technique” and “137 Guitar speed & coordination exercises”. I got both books and started working on the first one. Very nice exercises that will help with both speed and left / right hand coordination. For something more fun, I like to find a song where there are nice parts to train skills. Vaya Con Dios - Nah Neh Nah full lead guitar part is an amazing picking exercise on its own. At full speed it is a proper shredding at times. You can find the lessons here:
Intro: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6D618z9jask
Solo: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vzo647spB1I
For other lead techniques, I used Justin’s lessons. You just go forward if necessary and watch (several times) lessons about bending, vibratos, hammer ons/flick offs, slides. Then you can practice them through licks or solos. You can also practice legato through scales, slides work nicely in connecting scale shapes.
There is a Blues immersion course coming soon. It is not completely lead guitar, but it sounds like there will be a lot of lead guitar there.
Thanks a lot for the advice as well as these recommendations, I will add these exercises for my next practice routine and make sure try out the song too!