January 13, 2025

About the Author: Cameron Hayes

Cameron Hayes is a guitar educator at the London Guitar Institute, teaching a wide range of styles such as rock, metal, blues, jazz, folk, RnB, acoustic, and many more! He teaches a large volume of students on a weekly basis and always looks to provide outstanding value in each and every lesson!

Rhythm guitar provides the foundational backbone of a song, locking in with the band and creating a solid structure, while lead guitar adds excitement and flair, often through solos.

Although both roles are important, rhythm guitar is essential for most songs, especially those with vocals, whereas lead guitar shines in instrumental tracks or key moments.

Man playing guitar

Rhythm Guitar Role

For those just starting out in the world of guitar playing, you may mistake rhythm guitar as the inferior of the two as it is often thought of as “just playing the chords” or “playing the same riff over and over”.

Although it is often true that the rhythm guitar part of a song can often be more repetitive and fairly simple in terms of the technical proficiency needed to execute the part, there is a reason why “It’s A Long Way To The Top” sounds a lot different to Steve who’s been playing guitar for about a year now.

Rhythm guitar is the backbone of the band, working with all other members of the band to lock in tight and create one big wall of sound.

A strong sense of time is crucial, knowing when to push and pull the pulse to create different sensations.

Once this bedrock has been established, the lead guitar will make much more sense with its flashy and exciting exterior.

Guitarist performing on stage with a band

Lead Guitar Role

Now although we’ve just touched on the importance of rhythm guitar, it is true that lead guitar will more often than not require more technical proficiency to execute cleanly to its rhythm counterpart, which is the reason why most players start off playing rhythm parts before graduating to lead.

When we think lead guitar you may be thinking of Slash of Guns N’ Roses or Stevie Ray Vaughan or Eddie Van Halen, all incredible guitarists with different voices.

All of these guitarist know how to create excitement, sometimes being a key moment of a song such as the solo and other times being the main feature of the song (such as in “Eruption”, the instrumental classic by Van Halen).

This is perhaps the main difference between the two roles, lead guitar makes you turn your head or cut off your conversation to listen to the solo of a song, whereas the rhythm guitar gets you up and dancing.

Man playing electric guitar on stage

Which Is More Important?

Depending on what type of musician you are you may gravitate towards one of these styles more than the other, but which is the more important role to a band?

Although the flashy lead parts are sometimes the most exciting and the most noticeable, the song doesn’t really exist without the rhythm part.

Think about “Back In Black” by AC/DC – there’s a great solo in that song but if you take the rhythm guitar away (which is the main part of the song), you don’t really have a song! Now that statement is not always true – think about “Eruption” that we just mentioned or “Cliffs of Dover” by Eric Johnson, “Always with Me, Always with You” by Joe Satriani, or “Miserlou” by Dick Dale & His Del-Tones.

If you take away the lead guitar from any of these songs then the song no longer exists really, but I think it’s fair to say when it comes to songs with vocals as the main feature (a song that consists of the common verse/chorus structure) the rhythm guitar is the more important out of the two.

Two guitarists playing together

Do We Need Both, or Sometimes Just One Over the Other?

We’ve just eluded to this, but in most cases (except for when it comes to instrumental guitar music) we will always favour having rhythm guitar over lead guitar in our song.

This would be the first element to add it, before then adding on the additional colour of the lead guitar later.

There are often songs in the rock genre that don’t even have guitar solos or lead guitar happening throughout, such as “(I Can’t Get No) Satisfaction” by The Rolling Stones or “Twist And Shout” by The Beatles.

These are both very well-known and instantly recognisable songs that do not rely on the presence of lead guitar to hold it all together.

Even in the case of songs with lead guitar, it is often the rhythm guitar part that people will recognise straight away (think “Highway To Hell” by AC/DC, “Smells Like Teen Spirit”, or let’s pick a more current example – “Stitches” by Shawn Mendes).

Although it is of course nice to have both a rhythm and a lead guitarist, some smaller bands may only have one guitarist.

In that case answer me this – would that single guitarist be playing rhythm or lead guitar throughout the majority of the song?

Tags: Guitar roles, Guitar roles: rhythm vs. lead, Lead guitar, Rhythm guitar playing

Share This Story, Choose Your Platform!

Join London’s most distinguished guitar academy for adults

Exclusive music instruction for adults of all ages and abilities (absolute beginners are very welcome!)

Tags: Guitar roles, Guitar roles: rhythm vs. lead, Lead guitar, Rhythm guitar playing