[Wiz]

I've been playing for a few years now, not at a 5 hours a day pace, but a little bit at a time. I recently started playing fairly actively again, maybe 2-3 hours a day, and I once again became obsessed with improving as fast as I can.

Now, the dream of any guitarist is to be able to play the music he wants the way he wants (could be a "she" too of course ^^). I'm personally not at all satisfied with my current level and would very much like to improve. I've had guitar theory lessons from a great instructor for a few years but I always lacked the technical skill and that's something I want to work on.

The problem is that I'm stuck in this limbo, between songs by artists that provide no challenge for me besides sheer memorization (part of Opeth, Pink Floyd, Porcupine Tree, (some) Metallica and others' songs) and others that are simply way beyond what I can play (pretty much everything by Symphony X, a vast majority of DT, Sikth and so on). My hope is to be able to improve so that I can move into this more advanced territory where I'd be able to play the more challenging songs by my favorite artists and eventually absorb enough of their influence to be able to come up with my own material that would be inspired by their works.

The problem is that I don't really know how to get there.

I'd certainly appreciate if those of you who managed to reach such heights shared your approach to improving with the rest of us who are in my position.

Here's what I was wondering about:

Is learning progressively harder songs (basically songs that are challenging at one's current level) a good way to improve or is it a slower approach than other activities, such as pure practicing (for example grinding through exercises from "Rock Discipline")

Also, how do you approach instructional materials out there? Do you try to practice with them every day as you learn songs or do you just do only those exercises till you've mastered them all?

Sorry for the wall of text, hopefully I can get some great feedback from this

[thesimo]

I feel like I'm in your exact position right now, either easy, or WAY too hard. Its been like this for a few months now, but I just resigned myself to the fact that im not a pro yet - so I can only advise you on what I know to date, hopefully an experienced shredder can shed some light for both of us after.

So what im doing is playing the really hard songs at about 25%-50% speed until i get them super clean. Its the most frustrating thing because like yourself I want to be able to rip immediately but it just takes patience with it to go slow. Ive been doing that for a couple of months now, recording the odd video of myself just to compare with at a later date, and you can really see the improvements that way. Plus doing it like this gives you the chance to do the 100% perfect technique thing while your going sloooww - using pinky when you should, instead of 3rd finger

As for the routine I would definitely do Rock Discipline, but not hours of just grinding at it, if you stick at it too much you will just get stuck in that pattern and will probably find it difficult to adapt it to a song.

I just say learn progressively harder songs, trying the most challenging parts that you find diffucult and hammer out any weak spots in ur general technique, and hopefully you will end up with a wide range of skills you can apply to any song.

Hope that was of some use to you

[Wiz]

Thx for your tips man, good to know it's not just me out of the entire site who's in that situation

I'm definitely trying to mix songs and techinque in each session now. I'm working on both Rock Discipline, which has a lot of material in it, and also Troy Stetina's Speed Mechanics for Lead Guitar which imho is another great technique book which I feel already helped me a bit.

I'm trying to put in a couple of hours of practicing each day, which is still not enough compared to what the pros do (5 hour sessions are pretty normal for a lot of people) but atm I get exhausted rather fast.

Hopefully within a couple of months I can see some results out of this, otherwise I'm just going to buy a triangle and stick to that for the rest of my life