Here Today... Gone To Hell!

Hey - ive been playing guitar for 2/3 years now and im still not that good. Im a bit of a bedroom guitarist if you know what i mean and tend to stick to stuff i know when practising. Has anyone got any help/info on how they advanced their playing and helped to learn new stuff? (Apart from simply practise more - which i know i should) I have thought about leasons - but in the past ive found music leasons very boring and they tend to just be a waste of money.

my advice, for what its worth is try to set yourself some targets for what you wanna improve at. for example i try to learn a new chord every one or two weeks, like your got yor major and minor chords then you got your maj7 and minor7 chords then you got your minor6 chords ect the list is endless... if its lead playing you wanna improve at try arranging some exercises for yourself or checkout this website i found (see my cool website for wannabe shredders thread.) also one last piece of advice i can give ya is when trying to learn solos if you find it hard to remember em sort of learn one bar of the solo and keep repeating it till you can remember it then move on to the next bit. thats all the advice i can give for now...

I don't think you need actual lessons.  I mean they would probably speed up your learning, but I doubt you'd be told/shown anything that you couldn't find on the net, or in a book.

Have you got a metronome?  Because in my opinion thats the most useful thing you can have.

Practise scales... The blues scale is good, you can solo in any key and once you get good at it it's always impressive. ;)

It's the only scale I know and people think I'm a good guitarist.

Fooling the bastards. ;D

i think you need to make sure that what you're learning is useful.

i know it's really really boring, but start learning theory, learn your pentatonic scales. Buy some guitar books/videos in different styles where you'll learn scales and chords for different types of music (7th chords and pentatonics in blues for example)

if thats too boring, another good thing to do is sing everything you play on guitar. That way you'll start being able to play what's in your head. It's the greatest thing to be able to do that. You could have a tune in your head, and without even hitting a wrong note play it on your guitar. That way you're only limited by what you come up with in your head.

a thing i did that some people disagree with is just stop learning songs (apart from a few basic ones to entertain myself) completely. I figured that i'd rather learn how to play the guitar than learn how to play songs if you get what i mean. Try and find a good balance that you can cope with either its 50% learning songs and 50% learning guitar or 10/90 whateva.

I dunno everyone learns differently though, so some people find my way stupid. ("do you know this song" "can you play this" "oh you suck why not" etc). If i've heard the song before i play it by ear, if i haven't i ask them to hum the melody and i play that.........i don't wanna waste my time learning tonnes of songs when they won't help me at all, unless i was in a cover band ofcourse.  I improve a lot faster by practicing technique theory etc, than i ever would learning songs. Just me though.

Ok - thanks for the advice, and keep it coming! -Would the people that recommended learning sclaes (Adz and Oddy) mind posting links to where i can find tabs of these scales? Thanks!

There used to be a good ZW article on GW.com on pentatonics but I think they've taken down all their old archives now...

However this seems like a pretty decent description of it...
http://midnightdruggist.com/a_minor_pentatonic_scale.htm

You want to make sure you learn it in every postion, so you can just wander up and down the neck and know you'll still be in key.

i didn't use this site for pentatonics, but rather for pinch harmonics and it worked wonders (i'm no zakk wylde but i can actually pull them off now for once)

www.cyberfret.com (http://www.cyberfret.com)

when i first got my guitar i used this site

http://guitar.about.com (http://guitar.about.com)

that one starts from beginners, not people that have been playing for 2-3 years, but it has a lot of basic stuff in there that you might have missed so it might be worth the read. you click on beginners and then it has lessons or something and then has 12 or so lessons from g c and d chords to pentatonics lead playings major scales and phrygian scales.

however i think cyberfret has a lot of good theory pages, so if you wade through that you'll be fine.

and the more you practice the better.

remember good guitarists aren't born, they just practice a damn damn lot.

 : ok:

Dont be sticking to what you can play if your practicing. Branch out with all different things and its just practice

i like the metronome idea also drum machines etc

i cant make up riffs worth a shit just playin guitar, but if i have a metronome or drum machine goin with me, for some reason i can compose riff after riff after riff, it really sparks your creativity


i know music theory real well and i play scales i just dont know which scale is which

i play with emotion and what sounds good, if im playin a solo i stay in that key and just sort of feel it

heres an exercise i use to do

play like 10 E's in 20 seconds

go thru and find every E on the fretboard and see how fast u can play them, do that with some notes, doing stuff like that helped me really master the fretboard

try different styles

even if u dont like a certain style, learn jazz guitar, funk,

its weird but its like if i put my guitar down for a week and dont play at all

i am better when i do pick it back up for some reason

id just like to say that i started trying to learn how to play jazz guitar back a couple of years ago and that did wonders for my rythm playing. jazz is probably the hardest type of music to play therefore if you can play jazz, you can play anything. try learning some of the jazz chords in the diagram below.

 key    
 C/Am   Cmaj7  Dmin7  Emin7  Fmaj7  G7   Amin7  Bm7b5
 G/Em   Gmaj7  Amin7  Bmin7  Cmaj7  D7   Emin7  F#m7b5
 F/Dm   Fmaj7  Gmin7  Amin7 Bbmaj7  C7   Dmin7  Em7b5

thats just a few of the keys there are if you find these usefull let me know and ill send more. using these jazz chords are very usefull if you want to sound like john fruscante (rhcp)  : ok:

hmmmm i can play all of those chords except the

bm7b5
em7b5
f#m7b5

wait......flat 5th.......don't worry i got it. See music theory can help you recognise and play chords that you don't even know. hahahah i'm sounding jazzy already. too bad my finger pickin is terrible.