Rhythm guitar vs lead guitar what is the difference?

Steve Lukather guitarist with Toto / session musician

Seriously, how do you know whether to buy a rhythm guitar or a lead?

Should I learn lead guitar first or rhythm?

It’s can be confusing and frustrating knowing exactly where to start and just when you think you’ve got it figured out.

Like you’ve read some reviews that say a Fender Telecaster is a good rhythm guitar.

You discover guitarist’s like Ted Greene and Ed Bickert playing jazz on the Telecaster.

Good news, you don’t need two guitars however you do need different skills to play either lead or rhythm.

At this stage, you most likely have a lot of questions.

Let’s deal with each question first and then we’ll look at ways to learn and combine both rhythm and lead skills.

Rhythm Guitar vs lead: What’s the Difference?

In a nutshell, lead guitarists play the melody. Most of the time this involves picking one single string at a time.

Whereas the rhythm guitarist plays chords which generally involves strumming three or more strings simultaneously.

Hank B. Marvin, lead guitarist of the Shadows

It’s probably difficult for young guitarists to comprehend a time when commercial radio regularly featured instrumental music.

Strange but true if you were to turn your radio on in the 1960’s you would most likely hear an instrumental song featuring the lead guitar work of someone like Hank Marvin.

Marvin was a member of a group named the Shadows that had numerous hit records without any vocals.

Yes, that’s right the lead guitar was featured playing the melody in place of the vocals.

And this was not a rare occurrence for example guitarist Tony Mottola had several dozen successful instrument albums that feature his lead guitar work playing the melody.

And while these guitarists were busy carving out a successful career playing memorable melodies other guitarists like Freddie Green with the Count Basie band were concentrating on rhythm guitar.

Green’s contribution to jazz rhythm guitar is astounding and did all this without ever playing any solos.

What should a guitarist learn first: Rhythm or Lead?

In a perfect world, you would learn to play rhythm guitar first.

This may sound odd at first however ALL good lead guitarists can play good rhythm guitar.

Most important skills for both rhythm and lead guitar

The two most important skills are:

To be able to GROOVE – play in the groove to LISTEN to the other players

If a player does not have these qualities no music will happen!

Assuming the player has these qualities the following are prerequisites to playing quality music in a high-quality band.

Essential skills

Essential rhythm guitar skills such as knowing the chords for the song, understanding the form of the song and the various harmonic devices at play in the composition.

These skills should also be part of the lead guitarist’s knowledge base.

By comparison, the rhythm guitarist role is much less glamorous.

It’s rare that the spotlight ever hits the rhythm guitarist and if it does it’s usually by accident.

However, finding a good rhythm guitarist is like finding a flying frog!

In fact, you would have a much better chance of finding a flock of flying frogs that a good rhythm guitarist.

So while the lead guitarist is busy playing a face-melting solo the rhythm guitar is holding it all together as a team player with the bass and drums.

OK, I think you get the picture so without any further ado let’s take a look at the various skills required for lead and rhythm guitar.

Rhythm guitar vs lead basic skills 101

OK, that’s the basics.

Let’s dig a little deeper to discover that other essentials we need for the more advanced rhythm or lead guitarist.

Rhythm guitarist: next-level skills

How to use a capo

Scaletone seventh chords

Cycle 5 chord progressions

Diminished chords

Chord families

Chord substitution

Augmented chords

Blues chord progressions

Basic chord progressions – by ear

Lead guitarist: next-level skills

Harmonic minor scale

Chord families

Recognize K.O.M (Key Of The Moment)

Minor pentatonic extended scale pattern

Extended Blues scale pattern

Major pentatonic scale pattern

Blues chord progressions – by ear

Basic chord progressions – by ear

Mixolydian mode

Well, that’s a start depending on the style of music you are interested in you may need more or fewer skills.

Music theory: the glue

As you can see from the lists above some skills overlap but one thing is for sure the glue that ties it all together is the understanding of music theory.

Can a guitarist successfully play both lead and rhythm guitar?

Yes

Steve Lukather is a good example of someone who does both well in a contemporary setting.

Steve learned all aspects of music theory and musicianship and applied this knowledge to the guitar.

Layering rhythm guitar

In this section, we will look at how a good guitarist can use his or her theoretical knowledge to create a second guitar part or a set of substitute chords to play over the keyboard part, etc.,

Lets’ use the chord progression from the first sixteen bars of Amy Winehouse’s Song Valerie

EbMaj7 EbMaj7 Fm7 Fm7 EbMaj7 EbMaj7 Fm7 Fm7 Ab Gm7 Ab Gm7 Ab Gm7 Bb Bb7

Rhythm guitar 1 could play chord shapes like these.

Rhythm guitar 2 could place a capo at the third fret and play these chord shapes

Capo position chord shape chord sound Capo at 3rd fret CMaj7 EbMaj7 Capo at 3rd fret Dm7 Fm7 Capo at 3rd fret F Ab Capo at 3rd fret G Bb Capo at 3rd fret G7 Bb7

Here is an optional way to play the F chord.

By replacing the F chord with an F sus 2 chord we will achieve a more open sound.

Next level rhythm guitar chords

The guitarist who understands the language of music has many other options when it comes to creating original guitar parts.

Guitarist Jay Gradon is an expert at this.

For example, check out just one of the possibilities below.

Band – original chords Rhythm Guitar EbMaj7 – Eb-G-Bb-D Gm – G-Bb-D Fm7 – F-Ab-C-Eb Fm – F-Ab-C Ab (Maj7) – Ab-C-Eb-G Cm – C-Eb-G Bb(Maj7) – Bb-D-F-A Dm – D-F-A Bb7(9th) – Bb-D-F-Ab-C Fm – F-Ab-C

In this example, I have chosen to play only minor chords for the 2nd guitar or overdub guitar part.

For creative guitar, the restriction is the key.

By applying certain constraints on our available material new possibilities emerge.

If you study the table closely you will understand how I arrived at the substitute chords for the rhythm guitar.

Check out how each of the minor chords contains notes that are part of the original chords or extensions of those chords, e.g., Major becomes Major 7th, dominant 7th becomes dominant 9th, etc.,

String grids

If we apply the concept of restriction to the guitar fretboard we can decide to play all the second guitar parts with one minor chord shape on one set of strings.

Like this:

Now I said earlier that this is just one of many options and the more you apply the concept of restriction the more fresh ideas will be revealed.

For example, if we consider that a minor chord contains three notes and that we are restricting ourselves to playing on a three-string grid.

Therefore it becomes obvious that there would be three possible starting points for our G minor triad, etc.,

Application: lead and rhythm guitar

Rhythm guitar: You don’t have to have two guitars in your band this concept will work fine with a keyboard player or bass.

Lead guitar: The triad layering concept is also great for playing lead solos.

Simply individually pick any of the notes in the triad chord shapes and you will immediately produce sweet sound lead.

So by now, I hope you are beginning to see that rather than a rhythm guitar vs lead guitar type of decision it’s more a question of becoming a complete guitarist.

The complete guitarist understands the language of music and is comfortable in either role rhythm or lead guitar.

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