If you’re just learning guitar, getting started with playing solos might seem daunting. It’s a big change to go from strumming chords to your favorite songs, to playing lead lines. The best thing is to start out easy, but not too easy. The more you challenge yourself, the better a guitarist you’ll become. Just remember to take everything in bite size chunks as you’re learning. To help you get started with solos, I’m recommending a couple that I’d learn if I was just getting started - one from three different genres. The feeling of learning and playing lead is amazing. Let’s get into it.
I’ve observed hundreds of guitarists over the years from all different skill levels, and the ones who are making a lot of progress often share a lot of the same traits - they have a plan when they sit down to practice, they know the people to go to when they’re facing a hurdle in their playing, and they’re endlessly curious about guitar and music in general.
But outside of all of that, there’s one habit I’ve seen that all of my favorite guitarists have - they practice active listening.
It’s cliche, but everyone has a mini recording studio in their pocket with them at all times. Not only is it stupidly simple to record your audio ideas, you can record yourself via video as well and see everything you were working on at the time, to truly pinpoint issues in your playing. But that’s not the only reason you should record.
Let's dive into three ways guitarists can use recording to see huge improvements in their playing.
There’s a certain joy I feel when I open an app for the first time, and I notice that the developer has hit it out of the park in regards to design and user interface. This is the feeling I had years ago when first trying Thomas Grapperon’s app Chord! I’m happy to say that I received a similar feeling when beta testing Grapperon’s new songwriting app, SongKit.
If you're just starting out on guitar, or even if you've played guitar for years, you should check out Play Guitar Hits if you want to learn songs.. It's an app from the makers of the excellent transcription software Guitar Pro. It has big starting catalog of over 50 songs, lots of customization options, and is a great practice tool on the iPhone or iPad.
