Lead guitar
Encyclopedia
Lead guitar is a guitar
part which plays melody
lines, instrumental fill passages
, guitar solo
s, and occasionally, some riffs within a song
structure. The lead is the featured guitar, which usually plays single-note-based lines or double-stops.
In rock
, heavy metal
, blues
, jazz
, punk
, fusion
, some pop
, and other music styles, lead guitar lines are usually supported by a second guitarist who plays rhythm guitar
, which consists of accompaniment chords
and riff
s.
, modes, arpeggio
s, lick
s, and riff
s that are performed using a variety of techniques. In rock, heavy metal, blues, jazz and fusion bands and some pop contexts as well as others, lead guitar lines often employ alternate picking
, sweep picking, economy picking
and legato
(e.g., hammer ons, pull offs), which are used to maximize the speed of their solos or riffs. Such "tricks" can employ the picking hand used in the fret area (such as tapping
), and even be augmented and embellished with devices such as bows
, or separate electronic devices such as an EBow (electronic bow).
Some even like to play with their teeth or feet or other bodily appendages or the like, this is normally used as a performance technique in order to impress spectators. In a blues
context, as well as others, lead guitar lines are created using call and response
-style riffs that are embellished with string bending, vibrato
, and slides.
ists integrate the basic building blocks of scales and arpeggio patterns into balanced rhythmic and melodic phrases that make up a cohesive solo. Jazz guitarists often try to imbue their melodic phrasing with the sense of natural breathing and legato phrasing used by horn players such as saxophone players. As well, a jazz guitarists' solo improvisations have to have a rhythmic drive and "timefeel" that creates a sense of "swing" and "groove." The most experienced jazz guitarists learn to play with different "timefeels" such as playing "ahead of the beat" or "behind the beat," to create or release tension.
Another aspect of the jazz guitar style is the use of stylistically appropriate ornaments, such as grace notes, slides, and muted notes. Each sub-genre or era of jazz has different ornaments that are part of the style of that sub-genre or era. Jazz guitarists usually learn the appropriate ornamenting styles by listening to prominent recordings from a given style or jazz era. Some jazz guitarists also borrow ornamentation techniques from other jazz instruments, such as Wes Montgomery
's borrowing of playing melodies in parallel octaves, which is a jazz piano technique. Jazz guitarists also have to learn how to add in passing tones, use "guide tones" and chord tones from the chord progression to structure their improvisations.
In the 1970s and 1980s, with jazz-rock fusion guitar playing, jazz guitarists incorporated rock guitar solo
ing approaches, such as riff
-based soloing and usage of pentatonic and blues scale
patterns. Some guitarists used Jimi Hendrix
-influenced distortion and wah-wah effects to get a sustained, heavy tone, or even used rapid-fire guitar shredding techniques, such as tapping
and tremolo bar bending. Guitarist Al Di Meola
, who started his career with Return to Forever
in 1974, was one of the first guitarists to perform in a "shred
" style, a technique later used in rock and heavy metal playing. Di Meola used alternate-picking to perform very rapid sequences of notes in his solos.
When jazz guitar players improvise
, they use the scales, modes, and arpeggios associated with the chords in a tune's chord progression. The approach to improvising has changed since the earliest eras of jazz guitar. During the Swing era, many soloists improvised "by ear" by embellishing the melody with ornaments and passing notes. However, during the bebop era, the rapid tempo and complicated chord progressions made it increasingly harder to play "by ear." Along with other improvisers, such as saxes and piano players, bebop-era jazz guitarists began to improvise over the chord changes using scales (whole tone scale, chromatic scale, etc.) and arpeggios. Jazz guitar players tend to improvise around chord/scale relationships, rather than reworking the melody, possibly due to their familiarity with chords resulting from their comping role. A source of melodic ideas for improvisation is transcribing improvised solos from recordings. This provides jazz guitarists with a source of "licks", melodic phrases and ideas they incorporate either intact or in variations, and is an established way of learning from the previous generations of players.
, and trade off the lead guitar and rhythm guitar roles. Alternatively, two or more guitarists can share the lead and rhythm roles throughout the show, or both guitarists can play the same role ("dual lead guitars" or "dual rhythm guitars"). Often several guitarists playing individual note
s may create chord patterns while mixing these "harmonies" with mixed unison
passages creating unique sound effects with sound altering electronic
special effects such as doublers or a "chorus
" effect that over-pronounce the lead significantly sometimes to cut through to be heard in loud shows or throw its sound aesthetically both acoustically or electronically.
, guitarists often select certain pickups and use electronic effects such as effects pedals and distortion pedals
, or sound compressors, or double
r effects for a more sustained tone, and delay effects
or an electronic "chorus" effect as well as electronic reverb and echo
for a reverberant sound.
To attain this prized sustain effect tube amplifiers such as Marshall
are often utilized.
The desired effect, springs basically from where the tubes, when pushed to high volumes reach their peak and no farther which has an effect of attenuating the attack portions of the signal while presenting the trailing portions of the signal (which are normally progressively quieter) at the same volume as that peak output portions mimicking compressor/limiter
electronic effects.
Simultaneous to this, the distortion can actually distort itself in fidelity of its production adding a smooth "creamy" effect to distortion when as well the resolution of the usually gritty distortion sound is compromised and the note will almost return to its original configuration plus the desired "sloping" effects. These are aesthetically pleasing to many guitar players and sometimes violin
and keyboard
players as well.
High volume is also used to induce audio feedback
, which increases sustain dramatically. Sometimes, if done correctly by holding the guitar pickups at precise distances from the amplifier speakers such can present a steady, undecaying sound. Electronic special effects employing effects loop
s can artificially reproduce this as well. Other effects used to embellish lead guitar tone and pitch include the whammy bar which physically stretches the strings, slide
s used extensively in country music
and wah-wah and univibe
effects. Also very commonly used are hammer-ons.
Guitar
The guitar is a plucked string instrument, usually played with fingers or a pick. The guitar consists of a body with a rigid neck to which the strings, generally six in number, are attached. Guitars are traditionally constructed of various woods and strung with animal gut or, more recently, with...
part which plays melody
Melody
A melody , also tune, voice, or line, is a linear succession of musical tones which is perceived as a single entity...
lines, instrumental fill passages
Fill (music)
In popular music, a fill is a short musical passage, riff, or rhythmic sound which helps to sustain the listener's attention during a break between the phrases of a melody....
, guitar solo
Guitar solo
In popular music, a guitar solo is a melodic passage, section, or entire piece of music written for an electric guitar or an acoustic guitar. Guitar solos, which often contain varying degrees of improvisation, are used in many styles of popular music such as blues, jazz, rock and metal styles such...
s, and occasionally, some riffs within a song
Song
In music, a song is a composition for voice or voices, performed by singing.A song may be accompanied by musical instruments, or it may be unaccompanied, as in the case of a cappella songs...
structure. The lead is the featured guitar, which usually plays single-note-based lines or double-stops.
In rock
Rock music
Rock music is a genre of popular music that developed during and after the 1960s, particularly in the United Kingdom and the United States. It has its roots in 1940s and 1950s rock and roll, itself heavily influenced by rhythm and blues and country music...
, heavy metal
Heavy metal music
Heavy metal is a genre of rock music that developed in the late 1960s and early 1970s, largely in the Midlands of the United Kingdom and the United States...
, blues
Blues
Blues is the name given to both a musical form and a music genre that originated in African-American communities of primarily the "Deep South" of the United States at the end of the 19th century from spirituals, work songs, field hollers, shouts and chants, and rhymed simple narrative ballads...
, jazz
Jazz
Jazz is a musical style that originated at the beginning of the 20th century in African American communities in the Southern United States. It was born out of a mix of African and European music traditions. From its early development until the present, jazz has incorporated music from 19th and 20th...
, punk
Punk rock
Punk rock is a rock music genre that developed between 1974 and 1976 in the United States, the United Kingdom, and Australia. Rooted in garage rock and other forms of what is now known as protopunk music, punk rock bands eschewed perceived excesses of mainstream 1970s rock...
, fusion
Jazz fusion
Jazz fusion is a musical fusion genre that developed from mixing funk and R&B rhythms and the amplification and electronic effects of rock, complex time signatures derived from non-Western music and extended, typically instrumental compositions with a jazz approach to lengthy group improvisations,...
, some pop
Pop music
Pop music is usually understood to be commercially recorded music, often oriented toward a youth market, usually consisting of relatively short, simple songs utilizing technological innovations to produce new variations on existing themes.- Definitions :David Hatch and Stephen Millward define pop...
, and other music styles, lead guitar lines are usually supported by a second guitarist who plays rhythm guitar
Rhythm guitar
Rhythm guitar is a technique and rôle that performs a combination of two functions: to provide all or part of the rhythmic pulse in conjunction with singers or other instruments; and to provide all or part of the harmony, ie. the chords, where a chord is a group of notes played together...
, which consists of accompaniment chords
Guitar chord
In music, a guitar chord is a chord, or collection of tones usually sounded together at once, played on a guitar. It can be composed of notes played on adjacent or separate strings or all the strings together...
and riff
RIFF
The Resource Interchange File Format is a generic file container format for storing data in tagged chunks. It is primarily used to store multimedia such as sound and video, though it may also be used to store any arbitrary data....
s.
Creating lead guitar lines
To create lead guitar lines, guitarists use scalesMusical scale
In music, a scale is a sequence of musical notes in ascending and descending order. Most commonly, especially in the context of the common practice period, the notes of a scale will belong to a single key, thus providing material for or being used to conveniently represent part or all of a musical...
, modes, arpeggio
Arpeggio
An arpeggio is a musical technique where notes in a chord are played or sung in sequence, one after the other, rather than ringing out simultaneously...
s, lick
Lick (music)
In popular music genres such as rock or jazz music, a lick is "a stock pattern or phrase" consisting of a short series of notes that is used in solos and melodic lines...
s, and riff
RIFF
The Resource Interchange File Format is a generic file container format for storing data in tagged chunks. It is primarily used to store multimedia such as sound and video, though it may also be used to store any arbitrary data....
s that are performed using a variety of techniques. In rock, heavy metal, blues, jazz and fusion bands and some pop contexts as well as others, lead guitar lines often employ alternate picking
Alternate picking
Alternate picking is a guitar playing technique that employs strictly alternating downward and upward picking strokes in a continuous run, and is the most common method of plectrum playing...
, sweep picking, economy picking
Economy picking
Economy picking is a guitar-playing technique for a guitarist who uses a pick. A hybrid of sweep picking and alternate picking, economy picking involves using alternate picking except when changing strings...
and legato
Legato
In musical notation the Italian word legato indicates that musical notes are played or sung smoothly and connected. That is, in transitioning from note to note, there should be no intervening silence...
(e.g., hammer ons, pull offs), which are used to maximize the speed of their solos or riffs. Such "tricks" can employ the picking hand used in the fret area (such as tapping
Tapping
Tapping is a guitar playing technique, where a string is fretted and set into vibration as part of a single motion of being pushed onto the fretboard, as opposed to the standard technique being fretted with one hand and picked with the other...
), and even be augmented and embellished with devices such as bows
Bow (music)
In music, a bow is moved across some part of a musical instrument, causing vibration which the instrument emits as sound. The vast majority of bows are used with string instruments, although some bows are used with musical saws and other bowed idiophones....
, or separate electronic devices such as an EBow (electronic bow).
Some even like to play with their teeth or feet or other bodily appendages or the like, this is normally used as a performance technique in order to impress spectators. In a blues
Blues
Blues is the name given to both a musical form and a music genre that originated in African-American communities of primarily the "Deep South" of the United States at the end of the 19th century from spirituals, work songs, field hollers, shouts and chants, and rhymed simple narrative ballads...
context, as well as others, lead guitar lines are created using call and response
Call and response (music)
In music, a call and response is a succession of two distinct phrases usually played by different musicians, where the second phrase is heard as a direct commentary on or response to the first...
-style riffs that are embellished with string bending, vibrato
Vibrato
Vibrato is a musical effect consisting of a regular, pulsating change of pitch. It is used to add expression to vocal and instrumental music. Vibrato is typically characterised in terms of two factors: the amount of pitch variation and the speed with which the pitch is varied .-Vibrato and...
, and slides.
Jazz guitar soloing
Jazz guitarJazz guitar
The term jazz guitar may refer to either a type of guitar or to the variety of guitar playing styles used in the various genres which are commonly termed "jazz"...
ists integrate the basic building blocks of scales and arpeggio patterns into balanced rhythmic and melodic phrases that make up a cohesive solo. Jazz guitarists often try to imbue their melodic phrasing with the sense of natural breathing and legato phrasing used by horn players such as saxophone players. As well, a jazz guitarists' solo improvisations have to have a rhythmic drive and "timefeel" that creates a sense of "swing" and "groove." The most experienced jazz guitarists learn to play with different "timefeels" such as playing "ahead of the beat" or "behind the beat," to create or release tension.
Another aspect of the jazz guitar style is the use of stylistically appropriate ornaments, such as grace notes, slides, and muted notes. Each sub-genre or era of jazz has different ornaments that are part of the style of that sub-genre or era. Jazz guitarists usually learn the appropriate ornamenting styles by listening to prominent recordings from a given style or jazz era. Some jazz guitarists also borrow ornamentation techniques from other jazz instruments, such as Wes Montgomery
Wes Montgomery
John Leslie "Wes" Montgomery was an American jazz guitarist. He is widely considered one of the major jazz guitarists, emerging after such seminal figures as Django Reinhardt and Charlie Christian and influencing countless others, including Pat Martino, George Benson, Russell Malone, Emily...
's borrowing of playing melodies in parallel octaves, which is a jazz piano technique. Jazz guitarists also have to learn how to add in passing tones, use "guide tones" and chord tones from the chord progression to structure their improvisations.
In the 1970s and 1980s, with jazz-rock fusion guitar playing, jazz guitarists incorporated rock guitar solo
Guitar solo
In popular music, a guitar solo is a melodic passage, section, or entire piece of music written for an electric guitar or an acoustic guitar. Guitar solos, which often contain varying degrees of improvisation, are used in many styles of popular music such as blues, jazz, rock and metal styles such...
ing approaches, such as riff
RIFF
The Resource Interchange File Format is a generic file container format for storing data in tagged chunks. It is primarily used to store multimedia such as sound and video, though it may also be used to store any arbitrary data....
-based soloing and usage of pentatonic and blues scale
Blues scale
The term blues scale is used to describe a few scales with differing numbers of pitches and related characteristics. See: blues.The hexatonic, or six note, blues scale consists of the minor pentatonic scale plus the 4th or 5th degree...
patterns. Some guitarists used Jimi Hendrix
Jimi Hendrix
James Marshall "Jimi" Hendrix was an American guitarist and singer-songwriter...
-influenced distortion and wah-wah effects to get a sustained, heavy tone, or even used rapid-fire guitar shredding techniques, such as tapping
Tapping
Tapping is a guitar playing technique, where a string is fretted and set into vibration as part of a single motion of being pushed onto the fretboard, as opposed to the standard technique being fretted with one hand and picked with the other...
and tremolo bar bending. Guitarist Al Di Meola
Al Di Meola
Al Di Meola is an acclaimed American jazz fusion and Latin guitarist, composer, and record producer of Italian origin. With a musical career that has spanned more than three decades, he has become respected as one of the most influential guitarists in jazz to date...
, who started his career with Return to Forever
Return to Forever
Return to Forever is a jazz fusion group founded and led by keyboardist Chick Corea. Through its existence, the band has cycled through a number of different members, with the only consistent band mate of Corea's being bassist Stanley Clarke...
in 1974, was one of the first guitarists to perform in a "shred
Shred guitar
Shred guitar or shredding is lead electric guitar playing that relies heavily on fast guitar solos. While some critics argue that shred guitar is associated with "... sweep-picked arpeggios, diminished and harmonic minor scales, finger-tapping and ... whammy-bar abuse", several guitar...
" style, a technique later used in rock and heavy metal playing. Di Meola used alternate-picking to perform very rapid sequences of notes in his solos.
When jazz guitar players improvise
Improvisation
Improvisation is the practice of acting, singing, talking and reacting, of making and creating, in the moment and in response to the stimulus of one's immediate environment and inner feelings. This can result in the invention of new thought patterns, new practices, new structures or symbols, and/or...
, they use the scales, modes, and arpeggios associated with the chords in a tune's chord progression. The approach to improvising has changed since the earliest eras of jazz guitar. During the Swing era, many soloists improvised "by ear" by embellishing the melody with ornaments and passing notes. However, during the bebop era, the rapid tempo and complicated chord progressions made it increasingly harder to play "by ear." Along with other improvisers, such as saxes and piano players, bebop-era jazz guitarists began to improvise over the chord changes using scales (whole tone scale, chromatic scale, etc.) and arpeggios. Jazz guitar players tend to improvise around chord/scale relationships, rather than reworking the melody, possibly due to their familiarity with chords resulting from their comping role. A source of melodic ideas for improvisation is transcribing improvised solos from recordings. This provides jazz guitarists with a source of "licks", melodic phrases and ideas they incorporate either intact or in variations, and is an established way of learning from the previous generations of players.
Role in a band
In a band with two guitars, there can be a logical division between lead and rhythm guitars - although that division may be unclear. Two guitarists may perform as a guitar tandemMultiple guitar players
In rock and other related genres, bands often have multiple electric and/or acoustic guitar players to perform the different musical parts, such as instrumental melodies, "licks", riffs, guitar solos, and chords. The band can divide up the roles by assigning one or more performers the role of lead...
, and trade off the lead guitar and rhythm guitar roles. Alternatively, two or more guitarists can share the lead and rhythm roles throughout the show, or both guitarists can play the same role ("dual lead guitars" or "dual rhythm guitars"). Often several guitarists playing individual note
Note
In music, the term note has two primary meanings:#A sign used in musical notation to represent the relative duration and pitch of a sound;#A pitched sound itself....
s may create chord patterns while mixing these "harmonies" with mixed unison
Unison
In music, the word unison can be applied in more than one way. In general terms, it may refer to two notes sounding the same pitch, often but not always at the same time; or to the same musical voice being sounded by several voices or instruments together, either at the same pitch or at a distance...
passages creating unique sound effects with sound altering electronic
Electronics
Electronics is the branch of science, engineering and technology that deals with electrical circuits involving active electrical components such as vacuum tubes, transistors, diodes and integrated circuits, and associated passive interconnection technologies...
special effects such as doublers or a "chorus
Chorus effect
In music, a chorus effect occurs when individual sounds with roughly the same timbre and nearly the same pitch converge and are perceived as one...
" effect that over-pronounce the lead significantly sometimes to cut through to be heard in loud shows or throw its sound aesthetically both acoustically or electronically.
Effects and equipment
In rock, heavy metal, blues, jazz and fusion bands and some pop contexts as well as others, the lead guitar line often involves melodies (as well as power chords from the rhythm guitars) with a sustained, singing tone. To create this tone on the electric guitarElectric guitar
An electric guitar is a guitar that uses the principle of direct electromagnetic induction to convert vibrations of its metal strings into electric audio signals. The signal generated by an electric guitar is too weak to drive a loudspeaker, so it is amplified before sending it to a loudspeaker...
, guitarists often select certain pickups and use electronic effects such as effects pedals and distortion pedals
Distortion (guitar)
Distortion effects create "warm", "dirty" and "fuzzy" sounds by compressing the peaks of a musical instrument's sound wave and adding overtones. The three principal types of distortion effects are overdrive, distortion and fuzz. Distortion effects are sometimes called “gain” effects, as distorted...
, or sound compressors, or double
Double
Double or The Double may refer to:* Multiplication by 2* Look-alike* Body double, someone who substitutes for the credited actor of a character* Doppelgänger, ghostly double of a living person* Polish Enigma doubles...
r effects for a more sustained tone, and delay effects
Delay (audio effect)
Delay is an audio effect which records an input signal to an audio storage medium, and then plays it back after a period of time. The delayed signal may either be played back multiple times, or played back into the recording again, to create the sound of a repeating, decaying echo.-Early delay...
or an electronic "chorus" effect as well as electronic reverb and echo
Echo (phenomenon)
In audio signal processing and acoustics, an echo is a reflection of sound, arriving at the listener some time after the direct sound. Typical examples are the echo produced by the bottom of a well, by a building, or by the walls of an enclosed room and an empty room. A true echo is a single...
for a reverberant sound.
To attain this prized sustain effect tube amplifiers such as Marshall
Marshall Amplification
Marshall Amplification is a British company, founded by drummer Jim Marshall, that designs and manufactures music amplifiers, brands personal headphones/earphones , and, after acquiring Natal Drums, drums and bongos. Marshall amplifiers, and specifically their guitar amplifiers, are among the most...
are often utilized.
The desired effect, springs basically from where the tubes, when pushed to high volumes reach their peak and no farther which has an effect of attenuating the attack portions of the signal while presenting the trailing portions of the signal (which are normally progressively quieter) at the same volume as that peak output portions mimicking compressor/limiter
Limiter
In electronics, a limiter is a circuit that allows signals below a specified input power to pass unaffected while attenuating the peaks of stronger signals that exceed this input power....
electronic effects.
Simultaneous to this, the distortion can actually distort itself in fidelity of its production adding a smooth "creamy" effect to distortion when as well the resolution of the usually gritty distortion sound is compromised and the note will almost return to its original configuration plus the desired "sloping" effects. These are aesthetically pleasing to many guitar players and sometimes violin
Violin
The violin is a string instrument, usually with four strings tuned in perfect fifths. It is the smallest, highest-pitched member of the violin family of string instruments, which includes the viola and cello....
and keyboard
Keyboard instrument
A keyboard instrument is a musical instrument which is played using a musical keyboard. The most common of these is the piano. Other widely used keyboard instruments include organs of various types as well as other mechanical, electromechanical and electronic instruments...
players as well.
High volume is also used to induce audio feedback
Audio feedback
Audio feedback is a special kind of positive feedback which occurs when a sound loop exists between an audio input and an audio output...
, which increases sustain dramatically. Sometimes, if done correctly by holding the guitar pickups at precise distances from the amplifier speakers such can present a steady, undecaying sound. Electronic special effects employing effects loop
Effects loop
An effects loop is a series of audio effects units, connected between two points of a signal path; usually between the pre-amp and power amp stages of an amplifier circuit, although occasionally between two pre-amp stages. The two principal uses of effects loops are in recordings and in instrument...
s can artificially reproduce this as well. Other effects used to embellish lead guitar tone and pitch include the whammy bar which physically stretches the strings, slide
Slide guitar
Slide guitar or bottleneck guitar is a particular method or technique for playing the guitar. The term slide refers to the motion of the slide against the strings, while bottleneck refers to the original material of choice for such slides: the necks of glass bottles...
s used extensively in country music
Country music
Country music is a popular American musical style that began in the rural Southern United States in the 1920s. It takes its roots from Western cowboy and folk music...
and wah-wah and univibe
Univibe
The Uni-Vibe is a footpedal-operated phaser or phase shifter for creating chorus and vibrato simulations for electric organ or guitar. It was introduced in the 1960s by Shin-ei, and was intended to emulate the "Doppler sound" of a Leslie speaker...
effects. Also very commonly used are hammer-ons.
See also
- Guitarists
- List of lead guitarists
- Multiple guitar playersMultiple guitar playersIn rock and other related genres, bands often have multiple electric and/or acoustic guitar players to perform the different musical parts, such as instrumental melodies, "licks", riffs, guitar solos, and chords. The band can divide up the roles by assigning one or more performers the role of lead...
- Rhythm guitarRhythm guitarRhythm guitar is a technique and rôle that performs a combination of two functions: to provide all or part of the rhythmic pulse in conjunction with singers or other instruments; and to provide all or part of the harmony, ie. the chords, where a chord is a group of notes played together...