Decided to deconstruct my playing. Back to start.

[GuitarIv]

Cheers guys,

Well, after 5 years of guitar playing I decided that I'm not nearly as good and far as I want to be. I've been way too lazy for long periods of time, followed by more productive episodes of practice where I improved my playing, being lazy again. I feel like I should change something since I'm missing the fun and the challenge and my songwriting seems to be stuck in a rut.

Now I'm sure this will be frustrating, learning everything from scratch again, besides me only having about 1 to 2 hours a day to spend on the guitar (university is eating up all my time right now), but I feel like if I don't do this, I'm gonna be always on the same mediocre level I'm now. So I need your help. I need suggestions. Where to start? What shall I look after?

I've been thinking about simple warm up practices with a metronome to synchronise my hands (the old fashioned chromatic exercise), practicing some scales, sweep picking arpeggios, change angles and picking styles to be most efficient with as little movement as possible and tighten up my rhythm playing and riffing.

Any DVDs you can recommend? Teachers on Youtube, Sites? Your thoughts on this would be more than welcome :)

[Lezard]

Metronome practice everyday even if you can only manage 15mins on an unplugged electric in the middle of the night, if you don't develop a good sense of timing you don't really have anything.

Try and get exercises as close to perfect as possible even when it gets boring and frustrating, which it will at times.

Record yourself often and be critical but not overly judgmental about your playing, if you aren't honest about your faults you'll never be able to correct them but that's no reason to beat yourself up over them, attaching insecurities to your playing helps nothing.

Try to be as relaxed as possible while practicing, tension leads to mistakes and in my experience really screws up my rhythm.

Good luck dude, I've done the same thing more than once and never regretted it.

Edit, Both of Guthrie Govan's books cover a wide range of techniques/exercises/concepts highly reccommended.

[Toe-Knee]

I found that taking lessons really helped even if it was only a few.

I found it hard to look at my playing objectively enough to figure out where to start so having the additional opinion plus someone experienced in teaching really helped me break out of the rut.

Now it really helps that my new band has my old guitar teacher on lead guitar as i'm constantly picking up new techniques from playing with him.

[Philly Q]

Interesting thread.  I don't really have any advice to offer, but I've often thought about starting again from scratch, having been stuck in a succession of ruts over many, many years.

I suspect that Tony's on the right track, taking lessons is probably the very best way to go, provided you can find the right teacher.  I probably learned more in the brief period I took lessons than at any other time; that was in a class, I'm sure it would be even better one-to-one.

[Plenum n Heather]

LOT helpful advice in John Pettrucci's Rock Discipline. It has sets of routines akin to a fitness program which you design around your time allotment.

[JDC]

Who do you want to play like? I get a couple of their licks and riffs then just copy them, even if you have to slow it down a lot, once you've got it down you can speed it up over time. Transfer it to your own ideas later.

If you're not using a pointy pick, get one, instant speed improvement but I'd suggest getting a dunlop sharp pick, mine are 1.5mm, they're really unforgiving at first but once you've got it down I made some serious improvements in my technique, most days I can literally pick up the guitar and shred with no warm up. Final thing I'd suggest is set your action as low as possible since least amount of effort = most potential for speed, even if you're not playing fast the efficiency will make everything easier.

[Kiichi]

Final thing I'd suggest is set your action as low as possible since least amount of effort = most potential for speed, even if you're not playing fast the efficiency will make everything easier.

This one is debatable and a matter of taste imho. While setting the action low does help with speed, I and as far as I know many others prefer higher actions because we feel it makes expression easier on things like bends and vibrato (mostly bends).
I am not the Jack White type who wants to fight for every note, but I canīt work with ultra low action with 9er strings guitars.
So if speed is the goal, sure, go for a low action. Basecally you should decide what suits you and what you want out of your playing.

For me that is relativly high action (not blues high or anything, just not shredding low), for most of the players I meet it is go as low as you possibly can.
Gotta try both, imho there is none superior.

[MrBump]

It's all very well saying "I'm sh!t, I need to go back to the start", but you actually have to work out what you want.

No point making plans unless you know where you want to go.

[TheyCallMeVolume]

Final thing I'd suggest is set your action as low as possible since least amount of effort = most potential for speed, even if you're not playing fast the efficiency will make everything easier.

This one is debatable and a matter of taste imho. While setting the action low does help with speed, I and as far as I know many others prefer higher actions because we feel it makes expression easier on things like bends and vibrato (mostly bends).
I am not the Jack White type who wants to fight for every note, but I canīt work with ultra low action with 9er strings guitars.
So if speed is the goal, sure, go for a low action. Basecally you should decide what suits you and what you want out of your playing.

For me that is relativly high action (not blues high or anything, just not shredding low), for most of the players I meet it is go as low as you possibly can.
Gotta try both, imho there is none superior.

I can't stand bending anything on a guitar with low action. I like being able to slide my fingers under the next string when bending.

[Jamie]

Final thing I'd suggest is set your action as low as possible since least amount of effort = most potential for speed, even if you're not playing fast the efficiency will make everything easier.

This one is debatable and a matter of taste imho. While setting the action low does help with speed, I and as far as I know many others prefer higher actions because we feel it makes expression easier on things like bends and vibrato (mostly bends).
I am not the Jack White type who wants to fight for every note, but I canīt work with ultra low action with 9er strings guitars.
So if speed is the goal, sure, go for a low action. Basecally you should decide what suits you and what you want out of your playing.

For me that is relativly high action (not blues high or anything, just not shredding low), for most of the players I meet it is go as low as you possibly can.
Gotta try both, imho there is none superior.

I usually prefer a relatively low action, however I can't shred for shite with light string gauges, I need a nice amount of resistance there when I pick the string.

[Toe-Knee]

I play with my action too low to a lot of my friends but its also quite high to some others. About 1.5mm at the 12th fret.

But i also play with pretty flat fretboards on all of my guitars too.

I agree with what has been said regarding finding exactly what it is that you want to improve. Again a good teacher can help you pick out weak areas just by watching you play for a short while.

[MDV]

LOT helpful advice in John Pettrucci's Rock Discipline. It has sets of routines akin to a fitness program which you design around your time allotment.

Really great DVD for giving you 'technique vocabulary' for want of a better way of putting it.

Doesnt tell you what to play. Tells you things that will let you play whatever you want.

[GuitarIv]

Thanks for the huge response guys,

I've been working on getting some essential stuff for recording myself, just to jam over my own music and to hear my own mistakes. Timing has always been a weaker part of my playing since I never really used a metronome, which I have changed lately. I already have seen some improvements, but I'm sure I can bring much more to the table.

I have a good friend of mine who teaches guitar and is an awesome guitarplayer, he studies Jazz Guitar and he's a really great dude, so I will hit him up for lessons. The band thing however isn't going to happen due to my limited amount of time I have, right now I'm just jamming with my best friend and bass player in his basement (we made a rehearsal room out of it.)

JDC: I'm using Dunlop JazzIII XL Picks, so those are pretty sturdy already. I also had a period of time where I used 10-52 Strings on a 25.5 Inch Scale guitar tuned to E-Standard, which is really tight and you have to dig in almost to the point where your fingers bleed. Has helped quite a deal, however nowadays I'm playing E-Standard with 10-46s so it's slightly loose compared to what I did before.

Regarding action I like it low, but I'm not the kinda guy who can't play with higher action and actually I feel even more comfortable with fretboards that have a bigger radius. My Strat feels more comfortable to play most times than my Jackson, the former having a bigger radius.

As far as my skills go, here's an actual video of me playing:

Sylosis Empyreal Sweep. Neubauer Guitars; Bareknuckle Pickups; Orange Micro Terror.

I can do fancy stuff like sweeping as you see, but then again I lack in lot of other departments.

As far as books and DVDs go, I've been thinking about getting Scar Guitar by Per Nilsson, Lezard has pmed me with some nice stuff and I got recommendations for the John Petrucci and Guthrie Govan stuff lots of times before, so I will surely check it out.

Considering my goals I'd say: I'd like to play tight rhythm stuff. Keith Merrow, Vogg from Decapitated, James Hetfield of Metallica being some examples. Then again as soloing goes I have the kind of metal thing going on: Josh Middleton from Sylosis, Dave Davidson from Revocation, both being amazing players both rhythm and lead. For the blues stuff I really enjoy John Mayer, BB King, Eric Clapton, Jimi Hendrix and my absolute god, Gary Moore.

I'm open to every genre of music, as long as I like the song.

Sorry for the wall of text, I just really wanna make this work :)

Cheers

[richard]

You can keep on acquiring new techniques forever but at some point you have to decide what you want to do with them. Being able to run up and down chromatic patterns at high speed may be good exercise but it's not music. These days there are thousands of shredders out there and it's sometimes difficult to tell them apart because they've learned from the same sets of exercises.

When I was learning there were no books, DVDs etc so you had to figure it out for yourself as best as you could. This produced some highly individual players who were recognisable in a few seconds - not something you hear so much today.

So where do you want to go ? You can take lessons and look at vids and possibly end up sounding the same as everyone else. Or you can decide to carve your own path and maybe end up doing something unique.

Edit: You posted again while I was writing this. I was going to mention Gary Moore as someone who did incredible stuff with a less than conventional technique. All those hammers and pull offs he did with only two fingers - no teacher would show you to do it like that.

2nd edit: just listened to your clip. You play really well and can certainly move your fingers around the fretboard. You hit the strings well without creating extraneous noise. Your timing is very good. If you can get a couple of lessons from a good teacher that could point you in new directions. Keep at it, you've got a lot going for you already.

[dave_mc]

er... having seen that video, what's the problem? :lol: