I can still remember a time a while ago when I was really starting to be convinced that the electric guitar was breathing its last breaths. Do you still remember when pop music was playing in over the radio day and night? Instead of wanting to learn to play electric guitar, it appeared to me that becoming the next Westlife by-product was the coolest thing ever, at least if you listened to the pop world puppet masters.

Well, thank all that is good and holy, the days of the electric guitar has risen again. A handful of bands played an extremely important part in saving rock as we know and love it today, and that means that more people than has ever been the case before are burning to learn to play electric guitar. A couple excellent reasons why you should definitely give this instrument a shot is:

1) It's flexible! One of the most distinguished features of the electric guitar is its sheer versatility. A lot of aspiring musicians who just started to learn to play electric guitar starts out with good old rock music, but there are lots of genres to choose from. Some of the world's best electric guitar players are found in jazz and blues, and there is certainly also place for electric guitars in pop, country, metal and every other school of music you can think of.

2) You can get a immense range of sound! You get a couple extraordinary guitar players who can get almost any sound out of their guitars that they want to. You can get yourself effects pedals or you can tweak your own setup to produce some particular sounds. The best musicians out there have used both these techniques to great effect.

3) You'll look cool! Even though acoustic and classical guitars are excellent, there's just something about remarkably playing on an electric that just exclaims cool. It's no surprize that so many guys want to learn to play the electric guitar, look at how comfortably the rockstars get the girls!

How can you learn to play?

There are of ways that you can learn to play electric guitar. These include:

1) Take classes: Having an lecturer giving lessons in person is great and you will surely see some accumulation towards your ultimate goal.

2) Teach yourself: There are some that have the self-discipline to sit down and learn to play electric guitar all alone. Just note that if you want to play with other musicians like in a band it is useful if everybody has some theory framework.

3) Take internet lessons: With the digital times that we're living in it means that many things have been brought into the comfort of your own bedroom, including learning to play guitar. There are websites offering lessons online and for download to your computer.

Before you begin, you definitely need to make sure you have all the compulsory equipment. Get yourself a guitar and amplifier that is not too fancy so that you wouldn't have spent too much if you choose to stop playing for a while.

Don't forget, the best way to learn to play electric guitar is to ask any and all questions that you can think of. You will come across a lot of guitarists in your adventure and when something sounds wonderful, ask them to show you how they did it. Never stop learning and practicing, and in no time you will be wowing the fans like a rockstar!

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Beginners should try to choose simple and easy songs to learn. Such songs will help the beginner to grasp the fundamentals of playing the guitar, and help to build confidence.

So how do you spot an easy song to learn? The simplest songs will consist of two or three chords. The slower love songs are generally the easiest to play. Some songs will only consist of the three basic chords - A major, C major, and D. When students have mastered the easier songs they can advance their skills by moving on to more difficult songs.

Learning easy songs will help you to learn the fundamentals of guitar playing faster than merely learning the individual chords in isolation. When choosing your easy guitar songs, it is a good idea to listen to a recording of the song while reading the sheet music. This will give you a good idea of how the piece should sound, and will help with your ear skills.

When choosing an easy song there are two main criteria to consider: the number of chords, and familiarity with the song. As I have already highlighted, the easiest songs only require you to be familiar with two or three chords. It goes without saying that it is much easier to learn a song that you know well, as you know how it should sound when played correctly. It also helps if you like the song - if you choose one of your favourite songs this will motivate you to practice it until you get it right.

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You probably already know the difference between rhythm and lead if you've spent any length of time searching for information on how to play lead guitar.

There is a wealth of free tutorials available on the Internet that will teach you basic 'licks' and 'riffs.'However, many of these tutorials fail to explain how rhythm guitar and lead guitar differ not just in the skills required, but also in mindset.

It's one thing to say that lead guitar focuses more on playing scales than chords, and quite another to say that playing lead guitar changes how you hear things within a song -- but that's exactly what it does.

Let's look at an example using a simple I-V-VI-IV-I chord progression in the key of G-major.

If you have the necessary tools, go ahead and record yourself playing these chords (G-major to D-major to E-minor to C-major back to G-major) so that you have a backing track (a 4 measure progression in 4/4 time will do just fine).

Now, play the track back and think about how to make the progression more interesting from a lead guitar perspective. If these were the only chords in a song, and they were played in the same order the whole way through, it could get boring pretty quickly, right?

In your role as a lead guitarist, you could spend a good portion of your time making the progression less mundane by picking notes within those chords or adding other flourishes to help pull out a more complex melodic movement.

For example, you could move up the fretboard to a different 'voicing' of the chords and, instead of picking individual notes, use your fingers to 'pluck' the interval of root and fifth for each chord.

This demonstrates an important point: playing lead isn't all about being 'flashy'. You've got know when to 'blend in' and when to stand out. It is much better to do what is best for the song. Sometimes less is more for the sake of keeping a song 'uncluttered'.

There are other times, though, when a song does call for a fancy, breathtaking solo that shows off your 'guitar god' skills. Many beginners, however, mistakenly equate great solos with 'quantity' and speed. They try to cram as many notes as possible into as short of a time as possible.

I'll let you in on a secret, though: great guitar solos (even those lightning-fast ones) often don't involve as many notes as you think they do. The fact is you can take just 4 or 5 notes and build a riff that sounds like you're traveling all over the fretboard.

How?

First, start thinking of riffs as 'building blocks' that can be fit together. For example, you can pair up a 2 note riff with a 3 or 4 note riff to create a 'larger', 5 or 6 note riff. If you know your fretboard (and your music theory) well enough, you'll see how each riff 'centers' around either the 'tonic' or the 'dominant' tonalities of the key.

This is important because your solo must follow the progression. If the progression is about to resolve back to the root (key center), then your riff needs to include the notes which “lead” most strongly back to that key center.

The concept of “leading” is actually a psychoacoustic phenomenon. In Western culture, our ears are trained to expect a 'resolution' to the key center of a musical progression whenever we hear the 'Dominant' (V) tone of the key.

However, the impact of this leading quality is also dependent on where the Dominant falls within the progression. If you have a Perfect Fourth (which is 'D' when in the key of A-major) inserted somewhere in between, you may expect either the root or Dominant tonality to follow.

So, imagine that you're playing a two-note blues riff in the key of A by bending D up to E and back down again. You can play this riff over any part of the progression from A to D to E. However, the riff will sound different at each point in the progression relative to how 'far' your are from resolving to the tonic.

Let's say you have a 'collection' of riffs. Some of them center around A, some around D and some around E. You can mix and match these riffs in different ways across your chord progression, so long as you're emphasizing the appropriate 'tonics' at the appropriate time.

You can play them backwards and forwards. You can arpeggiate them. You can play one riff really quickly, insert a slow bend, and then another quick flurry of notes. You can even repeat a single riff across several measures until it comes time to 'lead' back towards the key center.

The effect of all this is that you can create a lot of 'drama' and movement without having to play every single note within the scale. You'll sound like you're totally shredding, but you'll do it with only half the effort!

My recommendation to anyone who wants to grow as guitarist and all-around musician is to continue educating yourself on music theory, learn your fretboard and practice both your left and right hand techniques (finger-picking, bends, hammer-ons, pull-offs, etc.).

That's the real secret to playing lead guitar.

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