How To Play Creative Lead Guitar Licks Fast Using Short & Simple Mini-Licks

What’s the #1 lead guitar playing trap that guitarists fall
into?

Answer: Wasting tons of notes while trying to play as fast as possible.

You play better sounding guitar licks (without needing to sacrifice all your speed) by focusing on getting most expressive value out of
your note choices. The more you train this over time, the more melodic and amazing your lead playing sounds.

Focusing on no more than just a couple of notes is a great way to train yourself to play cool-sounding lead guitar licks. Use these
tips to do it and play lead guitar more creatively than ever before:

Play High Quality Solos With Top-Tier Phrasing Training

If you can play one note well, you can play an entire solo well. Practice to get the most expression you can from one note is a building
block to lead guitar mastery.

Here is how to play high quality solos:

Select any note on the fretboard.
Choose some chords to solo over and improvise using only that ONE note for 2 minutes!
Squeeze out as much expression as possible from the note to make it sound awesome by using a variety of guitar techniques.
For example:
Use different kinds of vibrato and bending (such as pre-bends that fall down to the note) or slides or tremolo picking.

The next step is to make a short lick with two notes.

Use the same general process from above, except this time focus on thinking of 25-50 different rhythmic variations. Try to create a memorable phrase, except with just these two notes.

Note: This may sound impossible, but many songs have created memorable ideas with just a couple of notes.

Practicing using this style of training makes it easier to create cool lead guitar phrases when you have much more notes, because you know how to express yourself in a very limited musical situation.

Want to see an example of how important rhythm is for making your guitar licks sound awesome? Watch this video about sweep picking to see how a simple rest makes all the difference:

How To Keep Fast Guitar Solos From Becoming Boring/Repetitive

Tip: Make sure to improvise at a variety of speeds with the notes you play, not only fast.

This general approach helps you to play more melodically with the focus on getting more creative ideas out of a single phrase or group of notes.

Do this effectively by using vibrato, bends, slides or legato rather than adding more notes (as many people tend to do).

Note: There is nothing wrong with playing fast (and it’s good to have technical ability for sure) but consider the point of speed to combine faster notes together with other elements of phrasing.

Avoid Wasting Notes To Make Your Guitar Notes More Expressive

One of the biggest problems guitarists run into while thinking of lead guitar licks is feeling overwhelmed by too many potential note choices.

Your guitar solos become better when you start with a few notes and slowly add new ones.

This practice method removes the problem of “feeling overwhelmed”, so thinking of new phrases feels fun and easy.

Use the process in the previous section to solo over a backing track with just one note. After a minute, add one more. Then continue like this until you have added the entire scale.

While improvising with this process, take the time to create short, phrases by thinking of small melodies early on.

For example, when you are soloing with two notes, create a rhythm that will repeat from time to time.

This gives you a short phrase that is easy to remember.

Now, think of two more licks and play all three in a row.

By doing this, you give yourself time to think of new phrases in advance while playing the old ones. Being able to think in advance helps you solo more creatively without having to constantly stop and think about “what’s next?”.

Start With Memorized Licks To Create Expressive Variations

Training yourself to create lead guitar licks note-by-note isn’t the only way to improve.

Another great approach is to begin with a pre-made lick and make many variations of it. This trains you to focus on squeezing as much expression as you can from a single phrase (versus a single note).

Create a short, 3 note mini-phrases using a variety of note rhythms.

Then do the following:

Put together fifteen variations based on the phrase.
Improvise with this phrase for 5 minutes over a backing track.

This trains your to play with killer lead guitar phrasing to help you become very expressive with your instrument.

Good news: This is just the beginning for becoming an amazing lead guitar player. Learn more ways to freely express yourself while soloing using this lead guitar guide.