 Hello everyone and welcome to Blackstar Potential, my name is Lee Fuge and I'm here with MGRmusic.com and in this video you're going to learn 5 essential techniques for beginner guitar players who are just getting started with lead guitar playing. In the video today I'm using the Blackstar Studio 10 6R6, you're hearing this amp mic'd up with the Luit Audio LCT 440 condenser microphone and the guitar I'm using is a Shergold Provocateur SP01. So the 5 techniques you're going to learn in this video are great to get you guys started on the journey to playing lead guitar. Now lead guitar is a tricky thing to learn and there's so many different avenues to go down but having good technique is a great way to start. So these 5 things we're going to learn in this lesson will be a great starting point to help you guys get the fingers moving and start to make your lead guitar playing fall into place. Technique number 1 is called a hammer on. This is from a family of techniques known as legato which means to join up notes smoothly. So here's what a hammer on sounds like and then we'll break the technique down. So this is the technique I can apply anywhere on the guitar I want. I did it there just in one specific place to demonstrate the technique. So we'll learn it this way but you guys can apply this anywhere you want. So the whole point of hammer on is it's 2 notes that are joined up but we only pick once. We pick the first note and then we hammer on to the second note with our fratting hand. So here's what we're doing slowly. So let's just start with the 5th fret of the D string. I'm just going to play this note and then using my fratting hand I'm going to hammer on to the 7th fret. So you'll notice that the second note is generated by my fratting hand hitting that note. I also did this on the G. You may find when you first start doing this it takes a little while to get the finger strength up. So try this little exercise here. So we're going to play the 5th fret on the D and I'm going to hammer on to the 7. I'm going to shift it to the G and do the same thing. Try that over and over again until your fingers start to build up strength. Like I said you can move this round the guitar if you want just to keep it sounding exciting. It doesn't matter where you do it as long as you're working on that technique. Pick the first note, hammer on with the second note. If the second note isn't sounding clear enough try hammering on just a little harder to make that note ring a bit clearer. Second technique we're going to do is a pull off. This is like a hammer on but it's reversed. So here's how this is going to sound. So the principle of this is exactly the same but instead of hammering on I'm now pulling off. So I've actually got both those notes now fretted so my fingers are on the 5th and the 7th fret of the G here. So when I pick the string I'm going to hear the note that's on the 7th fret. To do the pull off I'm essentially pulling that finger off which then sounds the note that's on the 5th fret. Now what you want to be careful of is not just lifting the finger straight off because that actually loses a little bit of the string energy. When you do a pull off you almost want to pull the string downwards slightly just to apply a little flick to the note. That just gives the string a little more energy and it makes the second note ring a little louder. Now we can apply the same technique across two strings. It's a great technique to practice. It takes a little bit of work to get that flick right but like the hammer-on exercise try it all over the guitar. Try it with different fingers as well. Use your middle finger, your third finger or your little finger to do pull-offs and see how you get on with that one. The third technique we're going to look at is slides. Now much like hammer-ons and pull-offs we can do this anywhere on the guitar we want but I'm going to use exactly the same notes we just used for the last two. So this time instead of using my fretting hand to hammer-on or pull-off a note, I'm playing a note and sliding that finger to another note without lifting it up. So if I start on the fifth fret of the D string, when I pick that note, I'm going to get the note that I'm fretting but before that note finishes ringing I want to physically move my finger to the seventh fret without lifting it off. That gives me a slide. Now when I'm doing the slide there's a couple of things I need to be careful of. The first is to not apply too much pressure. If I apply too much pressure the slide is going to drag and I'm going to hear that note in the middle. We don't want that. But also if I don't apply enough pressure I'm going to lose the slide before I get to the destination. I don't want that either. So it takes a little bit of practice to get the balance right between how hard you need to fret but again you can do this anywhere on the guitar and it works great when you do it over two strings. Sliding also works backwards. So if you fret the seventh fret and slide back to the fifth you get the same effect but in reverse. A great exercise for doing slides is doing that same combination of frets but up and down like this. Depending on what you play in the lead guitar world you're probably going to be doing slides with different fingers at different times. So it's really useful to get used to it early on. So let's do that same exercise again. I'm going to do it four times but each time I'm going to change the finger that I use. You'll find that your third finger and your little finger will probably be a little tricky to do the slide on straight away but persevere and it will all fall into place pretty quickly. The fourth technique we're going to look at is string bending. Now string bending is a similar concept to what we've just done here where we're playing one note and hitting another note with a movement but this time instead of hammering on pulling off or sliding I'm bending the string to change the pitch. So here's what it looks like. So this round requires a little more finger strength and also some year training as well. So not only are we pushing the string with our fingertips but we need to be able to hear when we've hit the right pitch. So the first thing is the technique of bending. I did a string bend on the seventh fret of the G and the eighth fret of the B. Now the important thing is I did my string bend with my third finger so I'm fretting the note that I'm bending with that finger. With the first and middle finger I'm pressing those down on the string. It doesn't matter if they're in the same fret or on different frets, the most important thing is that they're just there pressed down. What this is doing is it's supporting the string. So the tension of the string now is spread across three fingertips instead of one. This makes it a lot easier to bend the string. So when I push that string up, the tension of that is spread across three fingertips. If I try and do that with one finger, it's a lot harder and I've got to work a lot harder. So you should try that yourself and get a feel for it. So three fingers with a third finger being on the note that you want to bend. So I did that on both the seventh of the G and the eighth of the B. Now when I do string bends, I'm not just randomly pushing the string up and hoping for the best. I'm targeting specific notes. So there are many types of string bends but this type is called a full step or a full tone bend. And what that means is I'm bending the pitch the equivalent of two frets like we'd be doing with hammer-ons, puffs, and slides. So I'm actually taking the seventh fret note here and I'm bending it until it hits the pitch of the ninth fret. So the way you can train your hearing to help with this is like I just did there. Play the note that you're targeting. This is your target note. So if I play the ninth fret, I want to get that note in my head. That's my reference. So now when I start bending the seventh fret, if I go like this, and then I play the nine again, I can hear those two different notes. So I can hear that the note that I'm bending is actually lower than the note that I'm targeting. So that means I'm not bending far enough. If I do this, now I'm going too far. I want to match those notes. So this takes a little bit of practice because you really have to fine tune your hearing here. So play that target note. Get the pitch in your head and then bend the string. Once you start to match that pitch more efficiently, you will find it does start to stick into the muscle memory. So don't worry at first if it's a little bit all over the place and you do have to really think about it because after a couple of weeks of working on that, you will nail it and it will be much tighter and you'll get those bends every time. It's just a case of training the hearing to hear that pitch that you're bending to but also to train the muscle memory in the hands. Now you can apply this technique across two strings like we did for the other exercises just to get used to moving it around. So like this. Doing that will help you start to get used to bending on different strings. Obviously the thinner the strings go, the lighter the string bend is going to be. So try that in all different places on the guitar and see how you get on. Listen to that target note and remember to support the bend. And the fifth and final technique is to do with the pick. This is alternate picking. Now when most guitar players start playing, they always gravitate towards just picking down or just picking up. I've seen it both ways in many new players. Alternate picking is really going to open things up for you and it's going to help speed things up and make things more fluid. So let's start on just two strings and then we'll expand it. So once again, I'm going to take the fifth and seventh frets of the D and G. What we're going to do is we're going to pick this four note pattern down, up, down, up. Many players find alternate picking quite a tricky thing to get started with. So go slow. So bring that speed right down, focus on the movements of the picking hand. Once you start to get into a consistent rhythm with that, then you can start speeding it up. The great thing with alternate picking is it does allow you to go a lot faster than who just picked one direction. So if I now alternate pick that phrase, I can speed it up quite easily. Not only does it allow my playing to become more fluid, but it also allows me to speed up a lot quicker. So once you get into the rhythm of that, then we can start alternate picking across all six strings. So for this, we're going to use a scale shape called the minor pentatonic scale. So this is a very simple scale. It's the fifth and eighth threats on the E string, the fifth and seventh on the A, D and G, and the fifth and eighth on the B and E. All the techniques we learned in this lesson, we did actually use notes that were in that scale as well. So when you play lead guitar, scales are a big part of the framework of how you play it. Now don't worry about those just yet, you'll come on to those. But this scale is a great one to start with. So let's play through that scale again, but this time we're going to alternate pick it. So each string is two notes. We're going to go down, up on each string. The scale is a minor pentatonic scale. And then once you get to the top of the scale, you can then work backwards. So here's how it's going to sound in reverse. And then you can combine both up and down together and alternate pick the whole thing like this. The scale is a minor pentatonic scale. If you take your time with alternate picking, it can take a little while to get used to, but just persevere with those exercises and really commit that to muscle memory. It will benefit you so much down the road if you can nail alternate picking right now at this stage. There you go guys, there are five essential techniques for all you new players out there just getting started with lead guitar. Work on these techniques and integrate them with that scale pattern that I just showed you. And then you can start building licks, learning licks and learning solos. This is the first step in becoming a great lead guitar player. Thank you guys so much for watching. I hope you've enjoyed this video. Don't forget to let us know down below in the comments what you guys want to learn about. If there are any topics or techniques you want us to cover in future lessons, please let us know. And don't forget to go check out Blackstar Amplification on YouTube for more videos just like this. If anyone out there is looking for a guitar teacher in their local area, please head over to mgrmusic.com. We've got a network of great teachers all over the country just waiting to help you guys out. Thanks so much for watching and we'll see you soon.