[neoclassical]

1. Playing classical full time instead of in addition to electric.
2. My teachers Jeff Y. He's a sloppy Malmsteen clone who has the speed and the chops. My other teacher Jeff A, a meticulous and precise shredder, and great classical/Flamenco player.
3. The Jean Marc Belkadi books.

Adam

[Fionn]

man early days was playing along to metallica and led zep records, and really bad jamming with people, then learnt to play eruption out of a guitar mag! then moved on to satch and vai song books, then got speed kills by MAB, that did the most for my shred and sweep techinques also recording my own stuff, quad tracking stuff means you have to be ultra tight so trying to nail takes and takes and takes helps alot!!!! shameless plug; MySpace.com - Fionn&trade - Torpoint, Plymouth, UK - Metal / Rock / Blues - www.myspace.com/fionnmccarthy

[Hawksmoor]

Playing with a great drummer ( Steve Vanderperren) in my band Corpus helped me develop good timing, and improved my technique apparently.

[Apophis]

1. John Petrucci - Rock Discipline
2. all vids by Paul Gilbert and Frank Gambale

[Maniacal]

1) Being INCREDIBLY fussy with everything.
2) Alternating between playing with a clean and distorted tone.
3) Recording stuff in my studio. Double tracking is an excellent practice method!
4) Jamming with my old drummer who is extremely good.
5) Doing session work for metal bands.
6) Learning Holdsworth lines.
7) Spending at least 2 hours a day on my picking hand which I still do.
8) Always trying to make things harder. Learn a sequence, then add 1 more note to create a grouping of 5. Then play that as 16ths, triplets, quintuplets.
9) You get the idea.

Oh and working on Flight of the Bumblebee on a regular basis, then playing it with groups of 5 rather than 4.

Basically, be as fussy as possible, don't try to copy other players parrot style and never say "I am really amazing at this".

[Fionn]

dude you must be shit hot if you play that much!!! i agree about the drummer thing, jamming with a good drummer is priceless!!!

[Gilbucci]

1) Rusty Cooley
2) Being really picky about how I sounded
3) Taking lessons with Chris Broderick
4) Rusty Cooley
5) Rusty Cooley

[Russ]

i think for about 12 years of my 17 years playing, I actually had no fucking idea what I was doing. I was just a tab monkey and I barely practiced. I took about 6 years off in the middle there from playing (another hobby ate my time)

Same boat here... When I started back I decided I wasn't going to take it so seriously, but at the same time try to stick to some things to see what kind of progress I could make. I don't go for most of the gimmicks out there, but this is one that I can promise will give you a boost: Guitar Speed Trainer - Home

They have a trial edition you can check out. I don't think it's worth $50 as it's a fairly simple utility, so you could see how it works and set up your own practice doing the same thing without the software.

I'm still trying to build them.

[All_¥our_Bass]

Playing guitar/bass a lot.

Legato exercises (Playing leads with as little picking as possible)
Alt. Picking exercises
Bending exercises (Playing Pink Floyd stuff)
Practicing with distortion (Muting practice)
Playing lots of odd meter