James Lee Stanley

I had another guitar lesson on Wednesday and Chuck brought up an interesting way to structure leads.

Earlier I had suggested to you that you learn all the inversions of the chords on the neck of your guitar. Find every C chord, D chord, etc in every position on the neck. And you would find that the fingering for an F on the first fret becomes, on the fifth fret, an A.

Well, what Chuck suggested is that when you are playing a lead, use that knowledge to structure the solo.

For instance, if you know how to play a C7 at the base of the neck, when you move that same fingering position up the the fifth fret, the chord becomes an E7.

Now to make your solo interesting, say you start on the second string, fifth fret, which would be your e note. Okay, rather than going to the next string down and on the seventh fret and playing what would be the normal easy reach, why not go to the string and fret that your ring finger is on.

You end up with another E down an octave.

The thing you have to do is learn all the chords and their substitutions and then use that fingering to come up with leads that are not the ones that you would usually go to.

It helps you to create solos that are different and musical.

And if you learn the scales for each of the keys then that also makes it easier.

The trickiest part about the guitar is how easy it is to learn to play initially and then how very complicated, sophisticated and deep it gets if you continue to pursue it.

That’s why it’s so popular in folk music. It’s easy to get started, so anyone can play a song on it at the end of an hour or so.

But once you learn where all the chords, notes and scales are, all kinds of doors open up and it’s not your Mama’s folk music anymore...just ask Robben Ford.