One of the most beneficial learning tools for a guitarist looking to fully master the guitar is to play a lot of live gigs. Playing live shows is great for honing and perfecting your skills and abilities under the pressure of playing in front of an audience. Performing in front of an audience will help you to gauge how far you’ve come and give you a chance to entertain people and put all of that practice time to good use.

One reason why some guitarists may not do live gigs is because they aren’t in a band and have no one to back them up on stage. Others may be in a band with members who aren’t as dedicated, or don’t show up to practices, so playing a live gig would be a disaster. Whatever the reason may be, these individuals are missing out on a great teaching experience that could really help them to master their instrument by not playing live.

This is where playing live gigs with guitar backing tracks can be extremely useful. Guitar backing tracks are the serious guitar student’s most effective secret weapon for improving their playing style and perfecting their instrument. These backing tracks sound great, like a professional band playing behind you to back you up.

Guitar backing tracks are great for private practice sessions as well. They increase your skill by allowing you to practice chords and scales as well as improvising solos to a live backing band. This practice experience also helps you to develop the timing skills necessary to play along with other musicians. They improve practice time by making it less dull and helping you to use the knowledge you have gained to create awesome lead work as well as perfecting rhythm techniques. By perfecting your skills with guitar backing tracks, you can also work on perfecting your tone. All great tone comes from the player’s abilities and how well they actually play; it’s not all about the fancy equipment.

Once you’ve gotten comfortable with your skills and abilities, you’re ready to put them to the ultimate test. Using guitar backing tracks for a live performance will allow you to express your creativity by using your knowledge to improvise great lead work and to thoroughly rock the crowd without worrying about your back up band messing up or missing the show.

Guitar backing tracks are used mostly by lead guitarists in rock, metal and blues. These tracks are used for the sole purpose of practicing or live performances. There are different types of guitar backing tracks available on the Internet. Some are recorded in low quality or midi formats while others are professionally recorded. To get the best tracks for your practice, ensure that you purchase tracks from reputable companies such as LickLibrary or Planet of Rock. The best guitar backing tracks are the ones that are not in the midi format and have no fade outs. There are three different versions that are available including:

•    Record mixes: these guitar backing tracks will include a mix of bass guitar, drums, rhythm guitar and backing vocals.
•    Instrumental: This is the preferred type of guitar backing tracks that is most commonly used for playing lead or solo. These backing tracks will have only instrumental music and no guitars and no vocals.
•    Backing vocals: These guitar backing tracks will have backing vocals and other instruments except the guitar.

There are several websites that will provide you guitar backing tracks in midi format but that is definitely not the right format for learning guitar solo or improvising your lead. Whenever you download these tracks they should be in high quality bitrate mp3 format or ideally, it should be provided to you in a remastered audio CD. You can purchase guitar backing tracks for some of the top performers like John Petrucci, Dream Theater, Metallica, Joe Satriani, Guns and Roses, Steve Vai, Yngwie Malmsteen, Green Day, Iron Maiden, Eagles, Eric Johnson, Ritchie Blackmore, David Gilmour, Dimebag Darell, Santana, Jimi Hendrix, Whitesnake, Bryan Adams, Brian May, Deep Purple, and many more.

>Some of the most popular guitar backing tracks includes:

•    Guns N Roses - Sweet Child O Mine
•    Chuck Berry - Johnny B Goode
•    Pink Floyd – Comfortably Numb
•    Eric Clapton - Wonderful Tonight
•    Dire Straits – Telegraph Road
•    The Eagles - Hotel California (Acoustic)
•    Gary Moore - Still Got The Blues
•    Ozzy Osbourne - Crazy Train
•    Nirvana - Smells Like Teen Spirit
•    AC DC - Highway To Hell </B></I>

Most of the solos that are played by various lead guitarists use two specific scales: the minor pentatonic and the major pentatonic. The best way to learn is by playing the minor and major pentatonic in every key across the fretboard with guitar backing tracks playing in the background. It is not easy to play lead but then with practice, time, effort and the use of the right guitar backing tracks, you will be ready to do your own live gig!

Playing the lead or solo at a live gig is the greatest moment for any lead guitarist and the best way to be perfect is through playing with the help of guitar backing tracks. Whether you are interested in playing lead for classic Rock, heavy metal, hard rock, bluegrass, blues guitar or any other genre, you will not be able to achieve perfection without the guitar backing tracks.

These backing tracks are re-mastered music tracks minus the vocals and the guitar. It will have the drums and the synthesizer or the rhythm guitars. Hence, it will be easier for you to play a lead for November Rain by Slash or Comfortably Numb by David Gilmour using guitar backing tracks. There are three other aspects: you will be able to remain more focused, you will be able to play the lead better and you will be able to improve Upon your timing.

Playing the lead guitar easily is not a simple task and if you are thinking of going live then you better be good. The crowd out there will push you harder and if you make a mistake, the crowd would be unforgiving. This is why guitar backing tracks are used by most guitarists to assist them in improving their lead playing. But before you start playing around with guitar backing tracks, you need to be well-versed with each and every scale for playing lead guitar and any or all guitar mprovisations.

>The three main scales that you should focus on will be the major scale, which is a 2-octave scale, the minor pentatonic scale where you will play 5 different notes, and Major pentatonic scales. The pentatonic scales are the most important scales for playing the lead and if you master them, it will be easier for you to play along with the guitar backing tracks. Here’s an example of a pentatonic scale in the A:

e-----------------------5-8-5------------------------------
B-------------------5-8-------8-5--------------------------
G--------------5-7-----------------7-5---------------------
D----------5-7-------------------------7-5-----------------
A------5-7---------------------------------7-5-------------
E--5-8------------------------------------------8-5--------

Using pentatonic scales will help you to solo over both major and minor chords and you will be able to play a lead with ease using the guitar backing tracks. The pentatonic scale is known as the staple scales for playing rock or metal guitar. They are even used by some of the legends of blues guitar.