[Padraig]

It's an article I'm going to put on my website when i finally get it finished.

A question most guitarists that come to me for lesson's ask is "Im currently working like crazy on my sweeping but my chops in all other area's are getting worse, what should I do?"

Here's the solution and its pretty simple. Write down your goals as a guitarist.
Do you want to be a metal shredder? A funky mofo that makes halls groove, write a pop superhit or all the above?

So you want all the above? Well your outta look, there's no such thing as the perfect guitarist (John Petrucci may come damn close but he's still not perfect). So get your goals in order.

1 - So you wanna shred like Jason Becker or Rusty Cooley? It's gonna be tough but not impossible. If you wanna be a shredder you need to focus on the main techniques used by a shredder. If you've got 2 hours of practice break your time up to focus on shreddy goals. If I was trying to up my chops in the shred department, I'd work on Alternate and Sweep Picking Exercises. Getting fluent with scales in 16th note sequences so my 2 hours would work out like this.

5 mins - Warm Up
5 mins - Finger Stretching Exercises
25 mins - Alternate Picking Patterns
25 mins - Sweep Picking Patterns
20 mins - Ear Training
25 mins - String Bending, Whammy Bar, Legato, Tapping, Rhythm
15 mins - Jam 3 songs that focus on these your main technical goals, there's no point jamming metallica if you wanna sweep like Cooley. So get out some neo-classical backing tracks and jam.

So what if I want to play funk?
Well you don't need to sweep like rusty do you? Let's try and get our groove on.
5 mins - Warm Up
5 mins - Finger Stretching Exercises
25 mins- Different Funk Rhythms, Syncopated rhythms.
25 mins- Learning Triads, and high register chords.
20 mins- Lead Basics
25 mins- Ear Training
15 mins- Get your funk one. Put away you yngwie cd and jam along with Stevie Wonder.

To sum it all up. Don't get bogged down in one technique. Find the techniques that matter too you and will help you reach "your" musical goals. Of course it's good to dabble in all genres but most people don't have the time to practice 9 hours a day or take on the latest 40 hour workout. Practice what you need to express "yourself" the way "you" want. Aim for your goals and not what your local teacher or guitar mag tell's you.

[Michael]

Nice job, man!

[Drew]

Originally Posted by Padraig

A question most guitarists that come to me for lesson's ask is "Im currently working like crazy on my sweeping but my chops in all other area's are getting worse, what should I do?"

As a side note, I find the opposite to be true - part of it has got to be I'm just not a naturally good sweeper, but I tend to find sweeping is good practice for my fretting hand's timing.

About the only aspect of technique this isn't true for, for me, is phrasing - if I do a lot of drills but don't spend some time just improvising, mny phrasing takes a dive.