When you are learning how to play lead guitar there are basic points you need to think of as rules that will help your guitar playing. As a lead guitar player you are a picker, a player of single notes. So, that's your first rule, practice your scales and riffs. Most people who play lead guitar learn the blues scale, and you should learn it too because it is what many rock guitar solos are based on. But you also need to learn the pentatonic scales. These are five notes scales that you can play all the way up the fretboard.

When you are practicing the blues scale, practice in the key of whatever song you are learning. So if you want to learn to play the blues scale in A, your root note will be on the sixth string at the fifth fret. As a novice lead guitar player don't fall into the trap of playing all downstrokes. Use alternate picking and work on getting a clean sound. Once you have some practice, try playing tremolo or just playing each note of the scale twice. I've already mentioned that you need to be a single note player. But the single note player knows other things besides picking. He is an expert at hammer-ons, pull-offs and note bending.

As a lead guitar player you may have decided that you are so anxious to start playing lead guitar you don't have time to learn to read music. Okay, so don't. Learn to read guitar tab instead. It shows you where to put your fingers to play solos. As long as you have an idea of how the solo sounds, the guitar tab will give you the notes on the fretboard. You can find plenty of guitar tabs on the internet, and it will take you about half an hour to get the hang of reading them. You can also find them in guitar tutor books and guitar magazines.

One thing you will notice when you are first starting out is that guitars have their limitations. Some cheap the guitar models feature a whammy bar but if you use it your strings will break. On some other models your strings will break if you try bending them too much. If you can only afford a cheap guitar at the moment, you will just have to put up with these limitations.

If you've seen lead guitarists improvising you could be forgiven for thinking that a just randomly running the notes of the scale together. What they are really doing is making use of a collection of licks they have learned from studying other guitar players, and combining them to make licks of their own. Luckily, you don't have to go learning these licks by ear because many famous guitar solos are readily available for free on guitar tab sites.