Learning how to play lead guitar is an art and it can only be mastered using some of the most important and advanced techniques like string bending and tremolo picking among many others.

The most important part of playing the lead guitar is playing it well and using the various techniques to your advantage without going out of tune. Guitar techniques come into picture only in the advanced stages.

The tremolo or the whammy bar as many call it is a useful tool when it comes to lead guitar techniques and can bring out a distorted sound that is common in hard rock or heavy metal bands like Metallica, Megadeth and Dreamtheater. Some of the other lead guitar techniques include doing the slide and string bending.

Slides

When doing the slide on a lead guitar, you need to take care of an aspect, which is raising the strings of your guitar a little higher of the neck. You can always use an extension nut for this purpose. For sliding you can use your hand or another instrument called the slide. When you press the slide against your guitar strings, the pitch of the strings change and you can even vary the pitch to an extent by moving your slide upwards or downwards on the guitar neck. Slide is a lead guitar technique that is also known as the bottleneck guitar. It is an effective technique because it helps you to create pitch transitions continuously on your lead guitar.

String Bending

String bending also known as radial pitch-shifting is an important technique of playing the lead guitar. To create string bending, you have to move the string that has been held down in a particular direction, which is normally perpendicular to the axis and is always parallel to your fingerboard. This is a type of pitch-shifting that is most often used by in a rock or heavy metal band. String bending is most commonly used with other distortion techniques for making the lead guitar playing sound smoothly and melodic. It is limited to not more than 1 or 2 semi-tones but you will get to use even 3 semitones once you are highly skilled. Instances of 5-semitones can also be seen especially when you hear the guitar solo played by David Gilmour (Pink Floyd) in Another Brick In the Wall Pt.2 from the album "The Wall." This solo has become an anthem in Rock music history.

Tremolo Picking

When you need to play some fast phrases on your lead guitar, you can use tremolo picking. With the help of tremolo picking, you will be able to play a particular note multiple times in quick succession. It is also known as double picking and you can do it with your finger or with your pick. The main reason for using tremolo picking in lead guitar is because it adds more sustenance to melodic lines.

Chord inversions use diatonic chords and are important for playing lead guitar. There are several aspects of playing the rhythm guitar well and the mastery of using chord inversions is one of them.

When you have moved from the basic to the advanced stage, you will be able to play around with most of the chords. So you probably know how best to play the A major chord, it is one of the simplest of all. If you are already a competent rhythm guitar then you probably know how to play the A major chord with three different variations: an open A major chord plus the two barre chord shapes, which has one with a root in the 6th string and the other with a root on the 5th string.

If you think with all these three positions you are ready to play your rhythm guitar then here is something that you need to know: There are several other ways of playing A major, which fall under what is called lead guitar chord inversions.

What chord inversions really mean is that you are playing the chords in inverse. If someone tells you to play a major or minor chord inversion on your lead guitar then it simply means that the major or the minor chord has to be played based on a different sequencing of the root chord, which is the 3rd and 5th.

When the root chord is right at the bottom then it can be said that the chord is "Major or Minor, Root Position". But now if we move the root chord to the top and leave the 3rd chord at the bottom then what we get is the chord "Major, or Minor, 1st Inversion". And if we raise the root further up to the middle say to the 3rd from the top then this will leave the 5th at the bottom and it will be known as chord "Major or Minor, 2nd Inversion".

When you learn how to invert the chords then it will add to your flexibility, which will help immensely while playing rhythm guitar and especially when you are trying to bring in harmony using chords. There are times when the melody can be best played using the top note of the chord and sometimes you can do it by playing the chord at the bottom or in the middle.

Power Chords are an important aspect of playing lead guitar and lies somewhere between basic and advanced guitar playing. Mostly used in classic rock music, power chords can be used in progressive, metal and other forms of rock music.

The power chords sound great on stage in a live gig but it is not something that you can learn overnight. You have to practice. The one good thing about power chords is that they can make your lead guitar scream..real loud! They are easy and great to play around with.

Most guitarists don’t consider power chords as real chords as it doesn’t have 3 notes or more. Power chords normally have around 2 different types of notes. Some of the music players especially those who are good at playing lead guitar call it the power intervals as a result of the 2 different notes it contains.

Usually you will find that a power chord consists of a root, which is a perfect 5th interval. The root note gets doubled at a rather high pitch and is called an octave. So if you are thinking of using power chords for playing lead guitar then you will be playing a perfect 5th interval.

One of the reasons why power chords are used for playing lead guitar is because you can play them anywhere on the neck and they will help you to render a harmonic texture to any song. Power chords never have any minor or major third intervals. They mostly consist of the 1, 5 and maybe another 1, which is an octave higher. Power chords are played on the bottom 2 or 3 strings of your lead guitar and are used mainly for distortion.

The best example of power chords is the intro of Dreamtheather’s Pull me Under.Another reason why power chords are used in lead guitar is because when you try to play a lead using distortion, strumming on a full chord will definitely create a high level of dissonance. Apart from that if there is a fast chord change then it is easier and better to use power chords for playing fast.The two notes that are used in power chords on a lead guitar are the 1 and 5 degrees. Let's check the power chord on C Major Scale. The E Major Scale is:

I II III IV V VI VII
E F# G# A B C# D#

So we will need to start with 2 notes on power chords that have the root on the E-string. The power chord on the E string is the E5, which will also be known as the E5. This two note power chord will use only the root chord and the fifth chord, which will be E and B.

One of the most popular guitarists who have played the power chord successfully on his lead guitar is Pete Townshend. According to some of the guitar magazines like the Free-lance Star, the man who invented the power chord is Link Wray of the Link Ray and his Ray men. Bet you didn't know that!