Hey & welcome!

Originally Posted by: TimRetallack1

I know exactly what I want to do; I want to learn to play lead guitar.[/quote][p]What is your current skill level? What style of music do you want to play? Can you already play some lead licks? Are you familar with scale patterns? Do you know any solos?

With the answers to those questions I can point you in the right direction!

For example, if you are more on the beginner side, then it might benefit you to work through the appropriate style course (rock, blues, country). Those will give you a guided path to the ideas & skills required to learn lead guitar (and other skills) in the context of that style. This is a beneficial path if you are completely new to the skills & ideas required to play lead guitar.

Rock course 1

https://www.guitartricks.com/course.php?input=rock1

Notice that lead guitar concepts start in Chapter 3!

If you have some basic skills, but need to build your ability to play single note lines, then you might benefit from my tutorials on scale patterns that are commonly used in lead solos. Examples:

Connecting Pentatonic Patterns

https://www.guitartricks.com/tutorial.php?input=737

Pentatonic Minor Exercises

https://www.guitartricks.com/tutorial.php?input=185

If you already have some of those skills, then you might benefit from jumping into my collection of tutorials aimed at learning to improvise. Improvising, playing or composing lead solos has 3 steps.

1. Use the key signature (the scale all or most of the song is using).

2. Target chord tones.

3. Build melodic phrases.

https://www.guitartricks.com/collection/learning-to-improvise

But notice all that requires that you understand some basic musical concepts & have the skills to play single note lines.

Another aspect of lead guitar is to build a vocabulary of things to play. So many lead solos are essentially a library of common little patterns or cliches that get repeated over & over in slightly different ways.

I have a collection of tutorials covering that. They are primarily aimed at blues style, but rock lead guitar shares many common elements from these licks.

https://www.guitartricks.com/collection/Bread-and-Butter-Butter-Blues-Licks

Many people learn to solo & build their vocabulary by learning the solos that inspire them. With that in mind you can also look through the GT song list for songs with solos you like & learn them!

[quote=TimRetallack1]I want to be able to come up with good guitar solos, but I also want to learn what lead guitarists to when they’ve not playing solos.

They play rhythm guitar! If there is already a dedicated rhythm player, then the lead player might play a complimentary rhythm part; different voicings or inversions of the same chords, or a counter melody that works with the chords.

Finally you might enjoy this article I wrote that contains these links & more explanations.

https://www.guitartricks.com/blog/how-to-play-a-guitar-solo

Hope that helps!