By Tom Hess

Are you having a hard time coming up with awesome sounding guitar licks? You’re not alone. Many guitar players don’t know how to play great licks, even when they have already developed great technical skills. Why is this? Most guitarists do not take the time to focus on each individual note in order to get as much expression as possible from it. This approach will only lead you to mediocrity as a lead guitar player.
Previously you learned how to improve your lead guitar licks with the exercise in the first entry to this series. After practicing the exercise in that article, you have now seen the BIG difference it makes in your lead guitar phrasing. If you have not already gone through and read the first part of this article series, don’t read the article first – Instead, get started by watching the video below on how to play great lead guitar licks. Once you have done that, use the exercise in the previous article entry to apply the ideas into your guitar playing. Now you are going to learn how to get the most emotion possible out of all remaining notes from your lead guitar licks. Keep in mind that you can use the following guitar phrasing exercise even if you did not read the first half of this article already. However, do not skip watching the video above (this is necessary for understanding the ideas being used).
Lead Guitar Licks Phrasing Exercise (How To Create Tons Of Killer Licks)
Step One: Create a short guitar lick with slow note rhythms. Use a maximum of three or four notes to make your lick. If you play your lick using rhythms that are too fast, you will miss out on the specific nuances that you will notice in the following steps. If you use too many notes, you will become distracted by trying to remember which notes to play and will be unable to pay close attention to the way each note sounds. Once you have made your lead guitar phrase with these things in mind, move on to step two.
Step Two: As you observed by watching the previously mentioned video, the ornamental techniques used to change the lick were:

• Bending
• Heavy vibrato
• Slides

Come up with no less than ten unique variations of your lead guitar phrase by emphasizing ONLY the first note in your lick with any combination of the above three techniques. For the time being, keep the other notes in your phrase exactly the same as when you made it.
Remember: you need to keep all of the pitches in your guitar lick the same (don’t add any new ones at this point) – you are only changing the way you ‘play’ the first note in your phrase. If you are able to record yourself while you are playing, do this and listen back to yourself so you can make subtle improvements to your approach. If you cannot record yourself, still continue through this exercise anyway. As you continue thinking of new variations, you will notice your guitar phrasing skills increasing. This is because you are forcing yourself to think creatively since you cannot change the pitch of the notes in your lick. As a result, your guitar lick will sound infinitely more expressive than the way it sounded when you first began in step one. Also, don’t get caught up on trying to keep track of every single variation you think of (this is not the point of the exercise). Instead, continue working through the process of training yourself to get the most expression possible out of every note you play.   Step Three: Using the same approach from step two, apply the concept to the other notes in your lead guitar phrase (do this one note at a time). As you are thinking of new variations for the notes in between the first and the last, play the other notes either using the original phrasing from step one or any of the new variations you made in step two. The bottom line is you must focus on using all your mental energy on ‘one’ note of the phrase at a time (for this step).   After you are done with this process, you will have come up with ten different ways to change the sound the notes in the guitar lick you created from step one.
Step Four: When you have finished creating variations for each note of your guitar phrase individually, start playing variations of the phrase as a whole. Accomplish this by making combinations of any of the ideas you came up with from the previous steps of this exercise. After taking the time to think of ten or more variations for each note, you should have TONS of ideas to select from. CRUCIAL: you must not add extra notes to your lick in this guitar phrasing exercise… only focus on getting the maximum possible expression from each note in your original phrase. You might be wondering why I did not begin this exercise by telling you to simply do step four after step one. Here is why I did this:   A. Most guitar players tend to only emphasize the first and last notes in their licks while not paying attention to the (also important) notes in the middle. This common mistake leads to weak sounding phrases because the guitar lick ‘as a whole’ lacks expression.   B. Unless you are an advanced guitar player (or have already learned how to improve your guitar phrasing technique from a great teacher) you would probably miss out on the full value of this exercise because you would stop prematurely (after only thinking of a few variations for your lick). It is for this reason that I told you to make at least ten different variations per note in your guitar lick.   What Is The Value Of Using This Lead Guitar Phrasing Exercise?   These are the two main reasons why performing the previous steps are essential for making progress to develop your guitar phrasing skills:   1. You understand precisely how to create an awesome guitar lick from start to finish (without worrying about the specific notes being used).   2. This exercise will keep your guitar licks from becoming overrun with excess notes that do not sound interesting and are merely being used to cover up poor phrasing. By breaking this habit, you will see drastic improvement in all of the lead guitar phrases you play.   Here Is What You Need To Do Next   1. Use the exercise in this article to practice improving your guitar licks on a consistent basis. Repeat this exercise until it becomes second nature to apply the concepts involved for EVERY new guitar lick you play.   2. Watch this video on how to play rock guitar licks and get more ideas for creating cool lead guitar phrases.   3. Create better guitar solos by studying these lead guitar playing resources.   4. Find an expert guitar instructor who can show you the best way to express yourself when you create lead guitar licks. Then work together with that teacher to identify and achieve your highest musical goals.     About The Author: Tom Hess is an online electric guitar teacher, recording artist and virtuoso guitarist. He trains guitar players from around the world how to reach their musical goals in his correspondence guitar lessons online. Visit his website  tomhess.net to receive many free guitar playing resources, mini courses, guitar practice eBooks, and to read more articles about guitar playing.