When Steve Vai’s sister brought the Led Zeppelin song Heartbreaker home to the house, it changed his life. That’s what did it. “When I heard “Heartbreaker” and that solo…I knew I wanted to play guitar!”. And boy… does he play! Did he take lessons? I don’t know, but even if he didn’t, he must of taught himself, right?

How important is it to take lead guitar lessons? It really depends on how motivated you are. Many of the greatest lead guitarists had little or no formal music education. George Harrison, for example, took only a few formal lessons and learned mainly by listening to, analyzing and then imitating the styles of his idols such as Buddy Holly and Carl Perkins. However, for majority of the people who would like to become lead guitarists, taking formal lessons is really important. You can learn what you need to, in order to become a good guitarist without a time-consuming trial and error process. And having an actual teacher to criticize your playing can motivate you to play better, avoid common mistakes of beginners and pick up a few handy tricks along the way. In short, you have nothing to lose and everything to gain by signing up for lessons.

What are the essential things you should learn from lead guitar lessons? First, the scales. When you have mastered all the notes on the scales, then you can play virtually any guitar piece and you can easily improvise solos just like Carlos Santana. The scales you need to learn include the major and minor Pentatonic Scale, which consists of five notes, and the Blues Scale, which has all the notes of the Pentatonic Scale but features an extra note to give it that blues sound.

Now it may seem painfully boring to practice scales when you’re wanting so badly to play entire songs and terrifying solos. But taking your lessons will help you become a truly good musician. Once mastering the scales is in place, you can begin taking on different techniques to make your solo playing sound better. These include slides, where you slide notes by sliding your finger from one fret to the next, vibratos which involve wiggling or bending the string just a bit to cause the pitch of the note you’re playing to flutter slightly and finally string bending, where you make the note rise in pitch by pushing or pulling the guitar string.

A good teacher along with good lead guitar lessons can help shape you into the guitar virtuoso you’ve always dreamed of becoming. When I first learned guitar, I took lessons, but I didn’t want to go. Wasn’t motivated. But I still went ahead. And it was the best thing in the world for me.

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