There’s a thing people do on Bluesky a lot where they post “one like = one thought on [thing],” and then, well, for every like that skeet gets (yes, I am ride-or-die that they are called skeets), they post a thought about the thing. I did one of those over the weekend; specifically, I said “Ok, 1 like = 1 thought on guitars and guitar-playing.”

The post got 92 likes, and I thought the resulting 92 skeets wound up being a kind of useful and fun pile of guitar information. So I thought I’d compile them all into one post here!

1. Lead is like 80% tone. Get your tone right and your lead parts could be three notes that just make people say “wow, that’s a cool sound.”

2. Tone is slippery. The tone that sounds perfect when you’re playing by yourself is not the true ideal tone. To truly dial it in, you need bass and drums happening so you hear how it sounds in context.

3. Playing lead is made to seem harder than it is because most guitar instruction now starts from the assumption that the instrument’s primary purpose is to produce chords, not melodies; and playing lead is just creating melodies.