Lead guitar
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
For a list of lead guitarists, please see list of lead guitarists
Lead guitar refers to a role within a band, that provides melody or melodic material, as opposed to the rhythm of the rhythm guitar, bass, and drums. Lead guitar is commonly used in blues, jazz and rock music
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[edit] Overview
A lead guitarist typically plays solos, riffs and fills. Solos are improvised or written passages played with the accompaniment of the rest of the band often at the song's climax. Riffs are usually song introductions and often repeat for the duration of the song. Fills occur during the pauses of the lead singer's parts between phrases or sections.
[edit] Style
Many guitarists exhibit a style of playing which marks them out in a similar way to their tonal signature. The use of particular scales,modes and appegios are often key to a certain kind of music for example, a Pentatonic scale or a blues scale are commonly used in blues guitar and a dorian mode may be used by a Jazz guitarist.
Syncopation is used to make make solos more varied, for example metal, Speed-enhancing picking techniques such as alternate picking, sweep picking and left handed techniques hammer on, pull off, tapping, are used to maximize the speed of their solos or riffs. With Blues guitar call and response style riffs are created by the guitarist playing a musical phrase and then the phrase is repeated with the final note of the phrase repeated.
Other techniques include string bending which involves bending the string and changing the pitch (half tones, whole tone quarter tones), vibrato and slides
[edit] Effects
Many lead guitarists who use an electric guitar choose to alter the sound produced by their guitar. The 3 main effects that are used are known as distortion, modulation and delay. Distortion is used in rock and has been used by guitarists such as Steve Vai or Edward Van Halen, modulation allows the notes to last longer and is used to prolong the sounds of bends over several bars. Delay based effects such as an echo box allows a phrase to be repeated electronically.
