Your First Lead Guitar Jam Session
In this section of Pro Guitar Tips, you get to jam along with me and a rocking band. Recorded live at Park Avenue studios, I’ve provided six different style play-along tracks and they rock! Play-along tracks are the best way to practice as you test your skills in a real life situation. In this series of play-along songs you become the lead guitarist in the band. I’ll play a guitar solo for the first rotation of the song, and then drop out. You should try to learn the solo and play along with me, then take the reigns for yourself. The songs will be repeated three times so you get to really lock in and jam. Once you’ve mastered the guitar solo, you can progress to using the songs as jam tracks and improvise over them. I have provided tips on which scales to use for each play-along.
When learning a new song take it very slowly, work out each bar individually, then join them together. If you’re having trouble with a section, stop and go over that part until you get it right. There’s not much point in repeating mistakes, because you’ll be training your brain, ears and fingers to play the mistake and not the correct part.
Here’s the six different style play-along songs for you to learn and jam with.
1 – Hard rock play-along using minor scale ideas.
2 – Melodic rock play-along using major scale ideas.
3 – Funky blues play-along: In the playing style of Albert King, using the blues scale.
4 – Shuffle blues play-along: In the style of Stevie Ray Vaughan
5 – Country play-along 1, using major pentatonic scale ideas.
6 – Country play-along 2: In the style of Albert Lee.
Have heaps of fun with the play-along tracks, and enjoy mastering your lead guitar skills.
What are your next steps?
Listen to a lot of music
Learn the solos to all your favorite songs
Have a go at writing your own solos
Form a band and rock out!
Hard Rock
Lead guitar play-along
To jam over this play-along you should use an A minor pentatonic scale. You may also wish to use an A natural minor scale.
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Slow Melodic Rock
To jam over this rock play-along you can either use the E major or E major pentatonic scales. You may wish to experiment combining both.
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Funky Blues
Here’s your opportunity to work on your blues scales.
You should solo using the A blues scale, try and work on your string bending and vibrato.
* I’ve simplified the notation to just show the tablature which is common on the internet. Use your ears to work out the timing.
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Shuffle Blues
This solo is me trying to emulate the great Stevie Ray Vaughan.
Have a go at learning my ideas, and then if you dig it listen to some of his albums.
Again you can use the blues scale, this time you should be soloing using the E blues scale or you may just wish to use the E minor pentatonic scale.
Remember the blues scale just has one extra passing note.
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Country 1
For this first country play-along you should use the G major pentatonic scale to improvise with.
Listen and try and learn my solo first. It will hopefully give you some great starting ideas.
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Country 2
This country play-along uses the B major pentatonic scale.
You can also use the B minor pentatonic or a straight B major scale to improvise your solos with.
With all the solos you can also use the chord arpeggios to sound more melodic.
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Well done, I hope you can get heaps of use out of these play-alongs. Every time you learn something new you should apply it to the play-alongs. It also would be a great idea to record you own solos to the backing track. That way you will hear your skills developing and be able to analyze the sounds.
Have fun and rock on!
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