How to get technically better?

[right_to_rage]

Start picking elements of technique to work on. Can you work out the mechanics of sweep picking, maintain stamina during difficult alternate picking passages, shift between rhythms, relax all of your muscles, and perfect your finger tone? Sure you can. Can you find or create etudes and exercises that help you discover these aspects of guitar playing? Yes.

Devote an hour a day to working on the elements you stumble upon.

 

[MaksMed]

Try John Petrucci "Rock Discipline"

 

[loktide]

focus on playing clean and accurate rather than 'as fast as you can'

every note you play should be accounted for. keep things musical! ALWAYS play with a rhythm. you don't want to accelerate/decelerate during playing

just as guthrie said: 'speed is a byproduct of accuracy'

 

[TraitorsEyes]

Jonathan Strange's Riff Training.

ShredTraining.com - Home

The best $30 I ever spent. Applying his practice methods finally got my skills up to play the ending sweeps of selkies. You won't regret it.

 

[Maestro]

Practice with the metronome. Learn pieces you like, then take the most challenging parts of the piece and turn that into an exercise, expand on it, change some notes, or rhythm.

I also recommend take a lesson or two every few months. Having someone who knows what to look for watch you play can help you tremendously. They can see where you are falling short and tell you what you can do to improve. Then you can take a couple of months off if you don't want lessons and spend that time doing your homework and improving till the next lesson later on.

Instructional videos are cool and all but they don't give you feedback. And sometimes you might be going about something the wrong way and you will never know why you can't quite get it right.

Metronome and a teacher will let you know when you mess up.

 

[MaksMed]

Train your legato a lot

 

[ShadyDavey]

All of the above

There's a metric fuckton of instructional material, etudes, free software incorporating metronomes/timers and if all else fails, Google Video actually has a fantastic search function which easily locates suitable videos.

Just work out exactly where you need to improve and don't limit yourself to mere technical studies, learn musical phrases as well

 

[emperor_black]

In the end, it all comes down to what you can do with all the technical prowess. Yeah, I can do legato tapping and some sweep picking. But so can umteen billion kids out there and they're gonna be MUCH better at it.

Join a band. Make sure the others are better in skill than you. you can learn a lot about live playing, creating songs, structures, etc. which is the real talent you need to progress.

 

[Charles]

To echo the sentiments of the two before me, yes, it is more important what you DO with your chops than it is to lock in on some kind of macho "how fast can you play" mindset.

I know this is a thread about developing technical prowess, and I want to respect that, but with the fact that everyone has already listed most things that are useful, I want to discuss a sort of personal note with regards to chops.

It's funny in a way, we work so hard to attain the chops we do, but at least for me, we work even harder to figure out how to exercise it tastefully.

The key, at least in my mind, is to figure out how to use the fewest notes possible to convey the idea we want to come across.

As guitarists, it's easy to get wrapped up in a certain sense of self importance. After all, we work so hard to get the ability we do, so why not use it? At least for myself I know my perception of what sounds "good" becomes colored by the knowledge that I CAN play fast. Ego becomes involved, and with music that's never a good thing.

Sorry for the rant, but I guess what I want to say is that don't neglect song writing craft and such too. Remember why most of us got into this in the first place, and that is to play good sounding music

Charles

 

[Stealthdjentstic]

^ For sure, it's just nice to have such a large palette available to you as you develop more chops. Learn to sweep, learn your legato, but it doesn't mean you have to use laser gun sweeps every song.

 

[emperor_black]

The key, at least in my mind, is to figure out how to use the fewest notes possible to convey the idea we want to come across.

Charles

Dave Mustaine: "David Gilmour can do more with one note than most guitar players can do with the whole fretboard."

 

[DMONSTER]

I'm definitely not wanting to get technically better just to be faster lol trust me, i just want to kind of clean up my playing a bit, and become more accurate, ive never been a fan of the people who definitely an play as fast as they can, sure its pretty cool, but not what im trying to accomplish

 

[emperor_black]

then, two words for you! 'Record yourself'.

Record everything that you play. And then listen to it and see where you're making mistakes and correct yourself. I know, its hard to do it all the time, but that's how the guitar-greats all play so perfectly because they learned from their mistakes. I've been telling myself to do it but cant do it all the time.