It’s real tough to become a great lead guitar player. I’ve been trying to learn how to play great lead guitar for years. I’ve been trying to figure it out since I picked up the guitar about 18 or 19 years ago. It does take a lot of years to learn. Like I said in a post before, when you want to play guitar solos… playing fast notes and shredding is great but you don’t wanna obsess with it too much. In my opinion, you want to concentrate on phrasing and play with a more melodic feel if you wanna melt people’s faces with your playing. Nobody wants to hear you play a bunch of scales. Scales are important yes but when you play scales, you have to play music with them. It’s tough to do but I think I achieved that goal with my latest guitar jam that I posted in youtube… the “A Dorian” jam that kind of sounds like Pink Floyd a little bit.

I still got a lot of learning to do, though. I still gotta work on my ear training and music theory stuff which is getting worked on. I really want to get “good” on improvisation. That’s what I’m most focused on.

When you’re a guitar player, I learned that it’s important that you need to learn both rhythm and lead guitar. In my opinion, when you want to learn guitar… you can’t choose to learn one of them. I had to learn how to get good at both. I picked up the guitar ’cause I wanted to play like my heroes that I looked up to over the years such as Jimmy Page, Satriani, Clapton, and Hendrix.

Studying and learning guitar is a lot of fun. When learning music theory, I’m just taking my time. Trying to memorize everything by heart and study every detail. Not miss anything. I’m getting better at music theory too. I pretty much understand a lot of it by now. Music theory is helping me and it is helping me become a better player.

If you wanna become a guitar genius and wizard, it takes patience, lots of practice and hard work. If you wanna improve your playing… practice is key. Don’t get stuck playing the same basic shit. If you’re bored playing the same things all the time… learn to improve and get better.

I laugh at all those musicians that play in bands that make claims they don’t practice their instrument. If you don’t practice, then you probably suck. I think practicing guitar is pretty important. I practice and learn new stuff on the guitar every day.

I’m more focused on the electric than acoustic, however. I’m working my way up toward in hopes of becoming a rock guitarist and a lead guitar player.

I just wanna learn how to play more professionally and become an actual musician. It’s not because I want to show off my ego and show everybody what I got. I just want to move forward musically and that’s what this is about. Take my musicianship to the next level is the goal. Notice how I said “musicianship”… I’m real serious about that.

Kev