Lead Guitar

I've never been much of a fan of guitar soloing. Too much of what passes for guitar soloing is more about trying to impress the crowd with how fast the soloist can play than about playing something actually musically interesting. I came across one particularly egregious example on Youtube where a guitarist and bassist for an apparently popular band are doing nothing more on stage than taking turns playing regular ol' scales as fast as they possibly can. Good practice, and impressive in a physical sense, but it left me absolutely cold as a musician.

I much prefer players who only play three notes, but they are exactly the right three notes for the song. David Gilmour of Pink Floyd is one of my heroes in that regard.

I'd also like to see more variety in solo instruments in rock music. I'd love to hear more saxophones, or violins, or just about anything other than guitar. One of the reasons that the Talking Heads' "Stop Making Sense" appeals so much to me is the brilliant keyboard soloing that's all over the album.

I fully understand why we're never going to get away from guitar soloing dominating rock music. It's as simple as that you're virtually always going to have guitarists in a rock band and guitar soloing is generally more appealing than bass or drum soloing. Plus, most bands can't afford to have, say, a sax player as a band member for the sole purpose of playing solos, and it's just as dull to hear sax solos all night as hearing guitar solos all night.

If I had absolute control of an all original rock band, I'd probably go with a guitar/bass/drums/keyboards line-up and ask the keyboard player to handle as much of the soloing as the guitar player (if not more), using as much variety in the choice of sounds as possible. Supertramp had a very cool solution to this problem by having a member who played a variety of instruments (sax, clarinet, keyboards, etc.), but musicians with that sort of ability don't exactly grow on trees.

In light of my tastes, my latest personal musical upgrade is especially funny: I'm learning how to play lead guitar. It's not something I set out to do, and I don't plan to ever perform live in that role, though I might try jamming with some friends. I rented a guitar instructional video from Netflix with the intention of improving my rhythm guitar playing, since I've been spending more time on guitar as part of my current project, and it happened to include a bit about playing rudimentary lead guitar. Feeling that it'd be a waste to not use information that was right in front of me, I watched the lead guitar part and did some experimenting. I have to admit that I enjoyed it and also picked up some things I could use on bass as well. It's made practicing alone far more enjoyable, and I can finally see some of the appeal of lead guitar playing in a way I'd failed to appreciate before. As I find myself saying so often lately, I wish I'd started doing this a long time ago.