There are two different ways of playing the guitar along with a band - lead guitar and rhythm guitar. Rhythm guitar provides a steady pulse, beat or rhythm to a singer as well as to the instrumental accompaniments in a song. Rhythm guitar supports and accompanies the lead solos and melodies played either on instruments like string instruments, bass, wind instruments, synthesizer and other keyboard instruments or even when sung vocally by a singer. Most of the time, acoustic guitars are used for rhythm, especially in country and folk styles. Usually, the rhythm guitarists play a strong rhythmic sequence of chords, riffs or arpeggios to support the melodic lines, as through providing the basic structure for a song, on which the rest of the band builds up its music, or as a foundation for the lead guitarist to improvise upon.
On the other hand, lead guitar refers to the use of a guitar to play the melodies, instrumental fill-in passages, and also allows soloing in a song, especially in blues, jazz and rock music. It provides continuous, high-pitched melodies, counter-melodies and solos to the song, which makes it stand out clearly from the background music. In order to be able to play lead guitar, the learner must be equipped with a good knowledge about scales, arpeggios, guitar licks, and riffs. The learner must also learn a lot of advanced techniques of guitar such as hammer ons, pull offs, tapping, bending, vibrato, slides, and many other guitar playing techniques which are frequently used in lead guitar.
It is desirable for a person to be equipped with both ways of guitar playing - lead guitar as well rhythm guitar in order to become a successful guitarist. With the DVD series of Learn and Master Guitar program, a budding guitarist can master both lead guitar as well as rhythm guitar perfectly. This program makes the challenging task of guitar learning to be much more fun-filled and satisfying. It trains you in a large number of techniques, ranging from fingering picking, tremolo-picking, strumming, soloing, ear training, chord recognition, tapping, etc, in addition to several other guitar playing techniques such as bending, hammer-ons, pull-offs, slideing, vibrato, natural harmonic, pinch harmonic, palm-muting, etc. all of which are extremely helpful in learning both lead as well as rhythm guitar.
When you purchase Learn and Master Guitar program, you will not only learn how to play the acoustic guitar or the electric guitar, but also learn about several different styles of playing the guitar such as blues guitar, jazz guitar, rock and roll, classical and finger style guitar, country guitar, chicken picken style, funk guitar, etc. Soon after you have picked up a particular style of guitar playing, you can practice and play along with the Jam along CDs that contain a lot of songs and some of the best guitar licks. You can select anyone and play along for as many times as you want until you are confident with that particular style of guitar playing. You can either play lead guitar of practice rhythm guitar for any of the 100 r more song tracks.