… you don’t want to do that all the time. I love listening to shred music. I do love listening to guys like Joe Satriani, Steve Vai, Yngwie Malmsteen, and others. They are the greats, no doubt about that. I do want to play fast lead guitar myself, but you can still play great, heartfelt and powerful guitar solos just playing slow solos with just a few notes.

Like David Gilmour has done with Pink Floyd for example. He’s the master at playing slow guitar solos with only playing a few notes, and it can still sound fuckin’ amazing! Jimmy Page has played a mixture of both fast and slower guitar solos.

You don’t want to play fast guitar solos all the time, or the music will sound like shit. You want to play fast or slow over a song, only when the song and the right tempo calls for it. I can play guitar fast okay, but not super blazing fast. Using the metronome, the fastest I am able to play is somewhere around 170 – 180 bpm’s. I do want to play even faster someday, but taking my time and practice.

I don’t care to become a shredder, I just want to improve my lead guitar playing chops. So I can be able to do all lead and rhythm work myself. My guitar studying and learning is coming along well.

I’m going to start making my own backing tracks in garageband so I can practice playing solos over them (just instrumentals with no vocals). I would also like to start getting together with other musicians ’cause that’s good practice to is jamming with real musicians. Another way of improving your lead guitar playing is playing along with solos on music that is not a guitar. For example, in jazz music, you can play along with a sax solo or play along with a violin in classical music.

I really want to be a better guitar player and trying the best I can to get there.

Kev