I'm copying Ryan again. (Help needed)

[GoldenVulture]

oh yeah, dem bends too. gotta get dem bends.

and yeah, even though you're not really playing jazz, when you're playing lead, the thing of playing bum notes with conviction applies if you can figure out the "right" note to go to after the bum note. Takes some learning to get that right note though. Or you could just play it safe and do the safe notes that you can be assured of.

But you kinda gotta just play endlessly to get comfy playing lead with any amount of fluency.

Yes, no getting around that.
I used to play along with " anything " that came up on the radio and not just R&R radio.
I Did it to expand my knowledge of styles. I learnt a lot about patterns that come with styles. The more familiar you become with them the more predictable they become. This is for both chord/song progressions and melodic lines.

I've always been big on set the Key, the timing. Improvise !

I was at a mates place back in the 80's. One of his friends was there with a guitar and amp and the latest Tommy Emanuel LP. I was fooling around with his guitar when he put on Tommy. I started improvising along. He asked if I'd heard it before because I was going from chord to chord along with it. The answer was tommy was using some fairly standard progressions. I'd never heard the album before, just knew the style and progressions.

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A lot of shredding is just way out of scale but it really doesn't matter because of how its done.