Learning Lead

Surprised no-one's answered this yet....I don't know much about the progressive lead guitar book, but I do know a few people on here have had nice things to say in the past about "Blues You Can Use."

My favourite way of learning lead lines, though, has always been the same....put a CD on and try and play along with it. It can be frustrating, but it really developes your ear for music, and it's very rewarding when you finally manage something that sounds good!

:D :D :D

Vic

LOL - I went back to the Q&A index after submitting, and there it was just a few posts down....

http://forums.guitarnoise.com/viewtopic.php?t=33530

:D :D :D

Vic

Hi,

I've got quite a few of the books in the 'Progressive' series and I've found them to be very good. I'm not sure which Lead one you're looking at, as they do several on lead. I've got their jumbo 232 page version for playing Rhythm and it's been great. Most of their books are less than half that size though, and concentrate on a smaller range - say, Beginner to Intermediate or whatever.

All their books seem to have big clear print, are well laid out and are also easy to follow. I've recently started on their Jazz Lead Guitar and so far it seems as good as the others I have. Like BYCU it's just under 100 pages. If you want to start right from the basics and work up, they seem very good. They also do some from Intermediate upwards but they will quickly get very tough if you really aren't Intermediate standard yet.

Blues You Can Use is also very good. It's not quite as easy to read in terms of layout (just smaller print basically), and does seem to expect a certain level of previous knowledge and skill. At the start of the book, when describing who it's for, it says "You have at least a beginning level of experience on the guitar; you know some chords and songs." The information and work is very good but I'd agree that it's not an ideal first book. The songs you learn use a mixture of barre chords and lead lines (with some being only lead).

I don't think you'd go far wrong with either, but I bought various Progressive series books first and BYCU later, and that is working well for me.

Cheers,

Chris

Ok here are some pros and cons:

Progressive Lead Guitar:
Pros
When I looked through it the first thing I saw was 12 bar blues in A, which I have been playing with my brother using chords for a while now.
I have actually looked through it. )BYCU was not in the shop)
Cons
Haven't heard much about it.

BYCU
Pros
This forum raves about it. (which does influence me alot)
Cons
I have never looked through it
I may not be at that level yet.

Thanks

I just picked up BYCU last Friday after hearing the reviews here and I'm always a sucker for books. I skipped through the beginning few lessons because I already know that stuff and the little songs were pretty straight forward.

I guess you could use this book to help with learning some leads but they'll pretty much be limited to blues.

I would think there are better books that deal more with soloing than that one though.

i'm pretty happy about troy stetina's lead guitar books, took me about a year to get through the first book. It seems very effective and with the 2nd book (wich is more about theory), things slowly all seem to come together.

don't know if anyone else had any experience with them

I used a bunch of books of the 'progressive' series, including the blues, jazz and rock lead ones. Well worth it, helped me tons. Their massive 'bass-guitar' one is great aswell. Their beginner piano one is decent but nothing spectacular.

what do you want to lead over?
i knew the blues scales etc but when trying to play that over something like general acoustic or rock it sounds terrible, im in the middle of learning the diatonic progressions, which are quite a lot harder than the blues i learnt but sound way better, so maybe if you decide what music you want to play lead to you can find what youll need to learn?

One of the first guitar books I ever got was the Progressive Lead Guitar book. It took me along time to even grasp what I was learning. I also have the Progressive Guitar Chords which I try to use when studying theory.

I've also been using a book called Step One: Playing Guitar Complete that I got at Borders a few years ago. The CDs that came with it don't really help me though.

i'm pretty happy about troy stetina's lead guitar books, took me about a year to get through the first book. It seems very effective and with the 2nd book (wich is more about theory), things slowly all seem to come together.

don't know if anyone else had any experience with them

I'm going through the Troy Stetina Lead Guitar book now... 'bout halfway through... it seems OK, although I'm not a big fan of his solos.

what do you want to lead over?
i knew the blues scales etc but when trying to play that over something like general acoustic or rock it sounds terrible, im in the middle of learning the diatonic progressions, which are quite a lot harder than the blues i learnt but sound way better, so maybe if you decide what music you want to play lead to you can find what youll need to learn?

Aha. So that's why Jimi Hendrix, Jimmy Page, Slash and all those other rock guitarists use the blues/pentatonic scale 99% of the time?

but that kind of rock also has things like Bdim flat 5ths and stuff in it, im thinking on my level of playing...which includes simple things like pete murray and sick puppies, songs that make do with simple slightly distorted Am F C G progressions...the tempo and style of that type of music makes the diatonic (which is based on the pentatonic scale anyways) more effective, from what iv found anyways, all i know is using the blues scale i learnt and the diatonic scale, the diatonic sounds a lot better in this case...

bands like powderfinger use the blues scales over there progressions though and it sounds fine, i think the thing is to know them all (wouldnt we all love to) and then determine which would be the best for a certain song were playing...

If you can't play a pentatonic over it ....... it aint worth playing. :? :lol: Well, maybe not, but it works for me.

Triple C said he was playing the 12 bar blues...So I guess it is blues music he's looking to play lead over.

In any case, the pentatonics work against almost anything, be it Beatles, Hendrix, Clapton, the Stones, the Who...Mastering the pentatonics is a great way to start.