Some thoughts: 1. How do you spend that practice time everyday? Just messing around or playing the songs you know well isn't very helpful (not saying you do this, just trying to give advice), if you are trying to play faster, you need to work out what you're going to be playing before you begin...
Don't flame me, but doesn't anyone else think Maynard is just trolling everybody? These tracks are obviously meant to be played simultaneously, but the messages and lyrical ideas in your average tool song are so vague, you could really interpret a vast number of meanings out of one idea... it's...
I don't think there's any right or wrong answer to this. There's people that play faster then god using alternate picking, and there's some crazy fast economy pickers too. Both techniques can be used to play as fast as you want. Just pick whichever you like the sound of, because there are some...
I really like the CAGED system's way of organizing arpeggios. The whole fretboard can be broken down into 3 forms, and its much easier to see more tonally rich arpeggios as derivatives of these forms then entirely new licks.
I wouldn't feel too bad about not having technique like Shawn Lane's. Anyone that claims that his talents were anything other than innate has not spent very much time trying to practice those techniques.
I think that while the pinky is more coordinated then the ring finger, it's probably the weakest finger strength wise. I think it just needs more momentum to get a good tone out of that finger, because I think if you were to analyse most players technique you'd find that their pinky is going to...
I really love Sublime but can't get into any of the songs that show off their punk side. Which is like half their songs. I also really like 311, but only the reggaeish songs; there's not very many of those. So I'm looking for reggae that is similiar to these two bands brand of reggae. I also...
Here's some arpeggio shapes tabbed out in Guitar Pro. They'll open in Power Tab too I think but I really suggest acquiring Guitar Pro. Getting the basic technique down is probably the hardest part. After that you can pick up some of these shapes real fast.
What sort of players do you know that use these? All I can think of right now are Allan Holdsworth and Rusty Cooley. Using all 4 fingers can get messy. It's mainly the middle 2 fingers that are a bitch. But I find these scales fascinating and using 4 pickstrokes per string can ease the alternate...
I don't know for sure, but I'd think they probably take a lot of people since they're a business, and obviously: students = cash. Therefore, the cash will probably be more difficult then getting in.