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Whether you play guitar, or any other instrument, learning to lock into the groove of a song is vital. When soloing, nailing the groove has the effect of making your playing sound intentional and more evocative. This can bring a lot of power to your lead playing.

In his course, Groove Guitar: Lead, James Hogan gives you practical steps to adding this power to your chops.

Here are 5 free lead groove guitar lessons from the course. For the full course, check out Groove Guitar: Lead on TrueFire!

Gypsy Jam: Performance


Download the tab & notation for this lead groove guitar lesson

Enough can’t be said about the brilliance of Jimi Hendrix. No one really sounded like Jimi before he was on the scene, and thousands upon thousands of guitarists have tried to sound like him since! That’s the true mark of an icon, and in Jimi’s case, a genius.

This example highlights some of Jimi’s signature licks over a Band of Gypsys era, riff-based groove. There are some killer E minor pentatonic phrases here and lots of rhythmic variation in this example. It’s essential to stay in the pocket and really lock into the syncopation of these phrases! Hendrix was a master of rhythm & groove, so we want to do him some justice by staying in the pocket here.

Austin City Special: Performance


Download the tab & notation for this lead groove guitar lesson

For this one, we’ll be laying down a nasty SRV styled solo over a Texas Shuffle in “A”. This example showcases some of SRV’s signature gritty, funky and percussive soloing moves. There are some sneaky half and whole step bends here played over 8th note triplets, shuffle 8ths and a variety of other rhythms. We’ll be using a fairly clean tone here with a bit of overdrive to fatten things up á la Stevie. Check out the SRV tune “Cold Shot” to hear the inspiration. This is a killer groove to play in a blues trio; especially if you play with a lot of conviction, dig into the notes and can get a fat, “cranked” overdrive tone.

Faux Slidin’: Overview


Download the tab & notation for this lead groove guitar lesson

“Faux Slidin'” is a killer slide guitar “styled” solo inspired by master guitarists Derek Trucks and Jimmy Herring! We’ll focus a lot on connecting G major and G minor pentatonic phrases in this example, though there’s a bit of G dominant pentatonic and G Mixolydian in the mix as well. This one also features some really sneaky bends, position slides and picking moves!

Faux Slidin’: Performance


Download the tab & notation for this lead groove guitar lesson

For inspiration, check out the way Derek Trucks and Jimmy Herring add slide guitar styled licks into their phrasing without even using a slide! Jeff Beck does a bit of this as well, so check him out too while you’re at it.

Faux Slidin’: Breakdown


Download the tab & notation for this lead groove guitar lesson

We’ll add an overdrive here for fun and lock into the groove! I used my stock 1992 Les Paul Custom, a Hermida Audio Zendrive, a Malekko 616 Delay and Princeton Reverb in the performance examples. Note: Pay really close attention to the bending, sliding, inflections and nuance here. These small details are the most essential elements when executing these faux slide moves! Dig it.

Digging these free lead groove guitar lessons from James Hogan? Check out his full course, Groove Guitar: Lead.