How To Play Fast Lead Guitar Solos Cleanly Using Practice Techniques That Make Tough Notes Feel Easy

Learning how to play fast lead guitar solos feels like a struggle when you never overcome the key problems that cause sloppy playing. Most guitarists end up avoiding these problems (because it feels frustrating to make mistakes) and make very slow progress, if any at all.

A better approach is to exaggerate the problems that slow you down in order to get used to them. This programs your mind to adjust so that un-exaggerated versions of your mistakes feel easier so playing fast and clean lead guitar solos becomes second nature.

Here are 4 ways to exaggerate the problems in your guitar playing to make playing fast solos become effortless:

Fix Tough Notes Within Specific Licks By Creatively Emphasizing Them

Exaggerating the difficult notes within a given exercise/lick makes the problem feel much easier to fix. This results in you gaining confidence in yourself and overcoming the plateau you are stuck on to correct the issue.

For example:

Struggling to play the notes of a scale when the pattern forces you to shift positions on guitar.

This common problem causes many guitarists to lose control and get sloppy while playing a fast run.

This keeps you from playing fast lead guitar solos that sound smooth and flow effortlessly from one ideas to the next.

Here are a few ways to exaggerate the difficulty of a position shift during a scale:

·         Instead of trying to power through the position change (and avoid it), emphasize it.

·         Isolate this section of the scale by repeating it many more times than the other sections.

·         Play the notes using extra heavy picking power.

·         Use alternate, less efficient fingering.

·         Step outside of the scale to make the position shift even larger. For example, if the shift requires moving up by a fret, move up two or three and play the same scale pattern (only out of key)

All of these approaches make the original position shift feel easier, and make it easier to fix in less time. Practice with each one (and think of your own too) for several minutes before practicing as normal.

Turn Up The Speed To Raise Your Mental Processing Level

Another great way to make any challenge feel easier is to play it MUCH faster than what you’re used to. This speeds up your mental processing so your mind can fix the mistake at the original tempo much more easily.

This is easy to apply to any guitar solo, lick or exercise you struggle with.

For example:

Many guitarists never think to do this, but practicing improvisation at very fast speeds (in small doses) has the potential to help you think more creatively at slower speeds. How? Improvising fast guitar solos at high tempos gives you much less time to process patterns, techniques and creative ideas.

After practicing at a high tempo, slowing down suddenly gives you much more time to process everything and think about what you want to play next.

Improvise at a fast tempo (such as 150bpm+) for a few minutes to help you warm up before improvising at normal speeds. Note: you don’t need to play as fast as possible at these speeds, simply solo like usual at the new tempo.

Get better at using fast guitar playing during solos by learning how to increase your usable guitar speed.

Clean Up Sloppy Playing By Supplementing In Acoustic Guitar Practice

Playing guitar with distortion settings often masks fundamental problems in your technique that cause frustration and mistakes.

You’ve likely noticed this by how much more difficult it is to play fast scales or sweep picking patterns on acoustic than electric. Playing on acoustic guitar not only means playing with heavier strings that are higher away from the fretboard… it also means you must have both hands in perfect sync to play notes cleanly.

Adding just a few minutes of acoustic guitar practice (using the same things you practice on electric) per day helps you find places within fretboard patterns where your hands fall out of sync.

Take note of this and focus on correcting the problems you find once you switch back to electric guitar again. This has the effect of cleaning up your playing for guitar soloing with just a small amount of highly focused practice.

Improve Your Muting Technique By Skipping Strings

When you are struggling to prevent unwanted strings from ringing out, it is because you do not mute them properly.

This issue is very common and can be improved in many ways. One way is to practice whatever you are struggling with using string skipping. String skipping makes muting even more difficult, so that playing normally becomes much easier.

Take any guitar lick and add just one note to it that requires skipping over a string to play. Then practice moving back and forth between this note and several other notes within the lick while paying close attention to how you are muting in both hands.