I don't want to repeat, so I'll try to keep to a few short points.
1) If you're tapping and sweeping away, there's an extremely
high likelihood you're not actually thinking about a melody and then playing it.
Can you sing your taps? Can your (potential) groupies hum along? Yeah right, you only want to play for other shredders anyway....
2) Many, many great guitarists are good drummers too and
think rhythmically. Paul Gilbert, Eddie Van Halen, John McLaughlin, Jeff Beck, Steve Vai, they're all capable of
employment as a professional drummer. In his videos Gilbert especially talks about approaching a solo like a drummer, and his method of alternating a few bars of rhythm with a few bars of a fill is a good way in. Instead of another guitar get a $40 Ebay drum machine and learn how to program it; learn what a "Mersey beat" is, learn what a "train beat" is, learn what a samba is and
where the beats are, then play them on your guitar. It usually works to play the bass drum on a low string, snare in the middle, and hihat beats on an upper string.
: : The Drummer's Bible : : <-great book, here.
To play scratch rhythms, get a digital delay/modeler that gives you a few seconds looping time and set up a looper. It's as easy as splitting your signal into two lines: one into a delay, and one into another channel. A $4 Radio Shack Y-adapter.... Record a rhythm into your loop, then kill the signal going to the delay (with a volume pedal, another stompbox set to send no signal etc.) then play over your scratch rhythm loop.
3) Listen to how
infrequently great guitarists are actually playing flowing, legato lines - 30%? Certainly not half the time.... It's a nice effect, but if your playing is just drooling on, and on, and on, all the time, try hocking up a nice big solid goober and see just how
fun it is to splatter!
$) Write a fucking
song, O.K.?
The actual career opportunities for wanking in front of a webcam are maybe not quite as good as they look.