How To Teach Lead Guitar
What is Lead Guitar?
Once your students can comfortably move between the eight guitar chords that any beginner needs to learn first it can make sense to introduce them to the concepts that underpin what is lazily referred to as "Lead Guitar" playing.
In the early and intermediate stages of guitar playing teachers tend to concentrate their activities around pentatonic minor scales and Major scales
Pentatonic minor scales
Guitar teachers normally introduce the pentatonic minor scale to students as an effective "way in" to playing solos and single note passages because it is relatively easy to play and more importantly because it is possible to sound good using the notes of the scale without having to have a huge level of technical proficiency on the guitar
Five notes (two of which are great for bending) that fall conveniently under the fingers and which from the get go produce a convincing blues or rock noise
Whats not to like?
If you look at the illustration above you will see some of our student handouts designed to introduce and develop the ideas that lie behind lead and single note guitar styles
The Handouts In Action
The handout on the left of the picture shows a single octave of the A pentatonic minor scale with the "good" notes to bend highlighted
The one in the middle has the same scale in another position on the neck I use this one to introduce slides and slurs rather than bends as this version of the scale is a little too near the nut for beginners to feel as comfortable bending notes as they do higher up the neck
The handout to the right is one that is useful when encouraging students to move between positions when soloing so that they develop confidence and capability all over the neck of the guitar
This teaching aid also features several lines of blank TAB so that a teacher can illustrate and work on individual phrases or licks during a lesson
The materials on this page are great on their own but are even more effective when used alongside the 35 Guitar Teacher's Backing Tracks that form (just) part of our "Deluxe Download"
Using blank guitar neck and tab sheets along with backing tracks, tab sheets and chord grids to help your students to solo
You could use the backing track below (which is just a single chord of A played repeatedly with a standard rock feel) to work with a student helping to make them familiar with the single note possibilities of a (A pentatonic minor?) scale Illustrate the scale on the blank guitar neck and then go on to demonstrate and write down a series of single note patterns drawn from it at the end of the lesson your student has a backing track to play along with (you can even email it to them!) and a detailed graphic reminder of the material discussed in the lesson
We also have 20 more sheets that do not feature blank necks but which present various combinations of chord,staff and tab grids designed to ensure that you are covered for almost any guitar teaching situation
Below you can see three sheets that feature chord grids and guitar tab I find them very useful for communicating to students the way in which many single note guitar riffs and figures are really just based upon chord shapes (something that can often be missed when dealing with tab only or notation come to think of it) All I do is (if you look at the sheet to the left of the picture) fill in the chord on the left and tab out the single note phrase or figure on the tab immediately to the right of the chord grid making the connection between the two clear and obvious
Above you can see some of our range of materials originated with children in mind. Kids love them. You can see more of our resources aimed at younger guitar slingers by going to our page which features Kids guitar teaching resources and FREE lesson plans to download now
The Deluxe Package:
Download every resource that you can see on this site for just
$25.00
You will be able to download ............
The Guitar Teacher's Toolkit
100 printable sheets covering Open Chords-Bar Chords-Scales- Modes- Blank Fretboard and Chord Grids Teaching Diary and Business Card Designs
The Backing Tracks and Handouts Package
35 Backing Tracks and over 80 Handouts to go with them. An invaluable aid designed to help you to teach both rhythm and lead guitar." If they can't play in time then they can't play?"
The Kids Guitar Teaching Resources
A whole load of resources especially prepared for younger guitar students. Some of the materials feature one finger chords to get kids off to a flying start on guitar
Plus 100 Giant (letter sized) Chord Grids
laminate them in order to help you to teach group guitar lessons, distribute them to your students or just stick on your teaching studio wall? The "Coolest Wallpaper on the planet?"
The Bass Teacher's Toolkit
A freebie featuring Over 60 Bass teaching Handouts covering Scales, Chords, Fingering Exercises etc