Guitar Solos for Beginners: 3 More Easy Picks to Build Your Lead Skills
Remember my 2021 post on the top 3 guitar solos for beginners? If you’ve nailed those, it’s time to level up! As a Colchester guitar tutor with over 20 years of experience, I love watching students move from chords to their first proper lead lines. These next three solos are still 100 % beginner-friendly, but they introduce a little more melody, bending, and feel.
Here are three more brilliant solos that thousands of my students have learned quickly and loved playing:
1. High & Dry – Radiohead (2:49)
A gorgeous, melodic solo played almost entirely on the top two strings, with the high E string droning throughout. Perfect for developing clean picking, subtle slides, and emotional phrasing. It sounds way more advanced than it actually is! My top tip for nailing this one is to work on the melody on the B string by itself first. Then, when you feel confident you’ve got it, start to pick that high E string at the same time.
Here’s the tab:
2. Holiday – Green Day (the bridge solo at 2:01)
Pure punk-rock energy! This short solo uses slides, triplet phrasing, and a little alternate picking. Great for building speed and rhythm without complicated scales. The melody is very strong, and it’s one of those solos that you can tell when you’ve got it without needing to listen to the original recording. Pro tip: Work on the slides at the end slowly, as it’s easy to over shoot them!
The tab for this one is below:
3. Come Together – The Beatles (the outro solo at 3:13)
Long time readers of my blog will know I’m big fan of George Harrison’s playing, and he nails this simple solo with some highly effective and melodic phrasing. This is the perfect solo to practice bending accuracy – you’ve got to get the pitching spot on for it to sound good! I also find beginners tend to struggle at first with the bend – release – pull off technique that’s prominent in this piece, so it’s a great opportunity to nail this technique. The intro riff is fun for beginners too!
Pro tip: Practice the aforementioned bend – release – pull off technique slowly and deliberately, ensuring the pull off sounds as loud as a picked note. Here’s the tab:
How to Practise These Solos
- Start at half speed with the original track (YouTube slowdown feature is perfect)
- Focus on one 4-bar phrase at a time
- Record yourself weekly—you’ll be amazed at the progress
- Add your own tiny bends or vibrato once it’s clean
Ready to go deeper into lead guitar, bends, vibrato, and improvisation? My private lessons (online or in-person in Colchester) are the fastest way forward. I’m also planning a brand-new “Lead Guitar for Beginners” mini-course—drop your email on my contact page to be the first to know when it launches!
Which of these three will you learn first? Let me know in the comments—I can’t wait to hear how you get on!
Keep soloing,
Paul Burke
Colchester Guitar Teacher
