Vibrato Pedal
What more do i need to do to be a lead guitar player????
Ive been playing guitar solidly for about 2 and half years. ive got heaps off things down. i can alternate pick fast, i can hammer-on, pull-off, bends, vibratos, i can improvise solos on the pentatonic scales and in different modes (lydian, phyrgian ETC....), i have a Gibson Flying V, and a Marshall AVt50x. i don't have any pedals so i was planning to master the wah wah.
THe only thing i have problems with is speed and some times strength on my fret hand. for example the chorus/second intro riff from Pantera's Cowboys From Hell is too quick for my hands to cope.. as is Guns N' Roses paradise city Solo when the song goes into double time.
What exercises should i do to build speed, and what else is it essential that i learn to do to become a half decent lead guitarist.?????
if you know the basics and theory, which it sounds like you do, you need to develop your own feel/technique. that being said, if you cant play exactly what Dimebag Darrell or Slash plays then that doesnt mean you wont be any good as a lead player. ive been playing 5 years and i answered this post because funny enough you said paradise city is a hard one for you, i only got it nailed down in the last few weeks, after 5 years! (i didnt work at it every day but, as youve already found im sure from learning hard licks, it takes a while for you to train your fingers to play what youre reading/hearing AND get into the flow of playing exactly as other guitarists play it.)
it sounds like you and I have similar tastes in music so I'll use Gunners and Pantera as references to what i'm explaining.
You said your problems are with speed and fret-hand strength. youve probably already made a good start with trying to mimic Dimebags stuff because he had massive thumb-pinky stretch and had the strength to perform bends and vibratos etc at the same time. Keep that up. Cowboys from Hell is a good example. Sweet Child o' Mine solo has timeless classic blues scale licks and bends in it so you can't go wrong there. A lot of Kirk Hammett licks such as them from Master of Puppets or Seek and Destroy, and, obviously, One, are excellent examples of double picking and tapping but great for fret-hand speed build-up too, he's not a super talented guitarist but his fretting hand is like lightning. that being said, he put some great bending techniques down on the Black Album in Enter Sandman and My Friend of Misery, and that album will also be a bit of help for when you invest in a wah pedal. Still, do not overlook Jimi Hendrix on the wah pedal, the blues minor petatonic and the twang-bar. He was God.
To sum it up, id have to repeat what i said at the top, youve got to adopt your own feel/flow of playing to be a lead guitarist, and obviously be skilled enough to write music. you can be as fast a guitarist as you want but if you sit down and try to nail paradise city or cowboys from hell in one day you probably couldnt, because youd not only have to learn the solos, youd have to teach yourself Slashs or Dimebags feel/flow.
Learning other guitarists material is not just for the sake of playing their stuff but learning their licks and feels and combining it can help you create your own style.
It can also help, in learning other guitarists material, to play the song in a music/splitting studio. that way you can slow the song down and/or break it up to learn small parts of it individually.
It can also help actually watching people who can play the solo/song so you can visually see what your fingers need to learn. You tube can help you there.
Paradise City solo:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ic3YSw_cWyo
Mixing Studio:
http://www.code-it.com/wave_mp3_editor.htm
I know my opinion might clash with others who reply but this is just what has worked for me. Good Luck!
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