Learn to Play Country Bluegrass Lead Guitar

We like to touch upon many different musical styles when learning guitar. This will help you to have a more rounded understanding of the instrument and have more under your belt.

Here is a great lesson on playing country bluegrass lead. Learn a great bluegrass-style lick and see the similarities to playing blues lead guitar.

Keep practicing and don't forget to leave a comment by clicking on the comment link or entering them in the form below!

How to Play Lead Electric Blues Guitar

How to the lead blues guitarists do it, they make it look so easy!? -- Here's how.

This is an excellent video tutorial on soloing the blues in the style of BB King on the electric guitar. Blues soloing is comprised of various blues chords (which he demonstrates) and rhythms along with fills and solo licks made over those chords.

What I mean by "solo licks made over those chords" is positioning your hand as if you were to play a chord and then hitting notes which are a part of the pentatonic scale which makes up the chord. Put more simply, you just hit notes which sound appropriate to the chord (typically one or two frets up from the fret you are basing the bar of the chord on). This will take some practice to learn which notes sound right for the chord and which do not if you are unfamiliar with music theory.

Practice the different chord shapes and blues licks that he employs and then begin adding in some vibrato, hammer-ons, pull-offs and exaggerated bending. After you begin to feel more comfortable, start creating your own licks over chord patterns and see what you can come up with. This will help you to develop a more "improvisational" ear which is key to blues soloing.

Keep practicing and don't forget to leave a comment by clicking on the comment link or entering them in the form below!

How to Play Guitar Sheet Music on the Piano

Here's a little lesson for any guitarist aspiring to play their music on the piano or the pianist who desires to take music specifically arranged for the guitar to the piano. The translation process is actually much easier than you'd expect (that is, if you have already memorized the specific chords on the piano -- see String Theory: Guitar and Piano Chords in Parallel).

Guitar lead sheets are typically arranged and written so that each chord change (or rhythm chord) is represented by the chord letter name above the musical staff while the leading notes (or soloing notes) are specifed in the staff notation. See the example sheet music snippet below (disregard the TAB notation, this is for guitarist use only):

In this example, notice the G-D-G-D-GC rhythm guitar chords above the staff lines. Typically a rhythm guitarist would play these chords along with the lead guitarist who is playing the melody line in the staff notation. In the same way, a piansist can play the rhythm chords with the left hand while the right hand carries the melody line!

How to Play a Line of Guitar Music on the Piano

1. In the example above the pianist would play the G Major chord (G B D) at the same time they strike the upper G and D notes with the right hand.


2. Next he or she would finish off that bar of the melody line until the D Major chord change.


3. Playing the D Major chord (D F# A) again with the left hand along with the upper D and A using the right hand they can then finish out the melody line for this bar and so on...


4. One can continue this throughout the song using the left hand to keep the beat and the right hand to play out the melody.

Keep practicing, if you are new to the piano, it will undoubtedly take some time. Before you know it though, you will begin to develop the coordination and the sense of awareness to recognize the tune of a song coming through!