Reminds me of things George Lynch has said over the years:

https://www.blabbermouth.net/news/ge...-ve-ever-done/I don't play enough to ever notice any loss of dexterity but it's real for serious players.

Thank you brahs, this is the honest critique I have always wanted.. I will work on vibrato and also my bends which I think are chit.. In my defense I used to have better vibrato before, I barely practiced that song and just recorded it really late.. Like in this one is it still that bad?https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=73wrJkHabzU(already posted this solo more than once probably lol)

But either way if I was good at it I could still bust out a good vibrato any time, it should be natural to me after all those years...

Kirk bought a $2,000,000 guitar and still sounds like chit.

haha

I would try slowing everything down. Bending and vibrato these days is an afterthought for a lot of players whereas it used to be the bread and butter kind of like a "do not pass go" and shred until you get those down.

The first song I can remember specifically focusing on it was Satriani'sAlways with me... A lot of guitarists I heard play it at the time seemed to spend hours working on the solo parts and then rush through the main melody and it didn't sound right. There were more slides than bending in that but it drove home the point the guitar has to sing like a voice to be a convincing substitute. It was only after I got that right that I tackled the rest and only when I could play it exactly like the album I performed it live.

This isn't about me, it's about you, but I don't really work on much technical/chops related stuff these days. I just focus on being melodic because to me if you can improvise interesting melodies you almost don't need the other stuff and when you do add it it's like icing on the cake if that makes sense.

Practicing playing slow is always skipped. Guys get their metronomes swinging and just keep pushing the envelope and literally cannot play slow tastefully and accurately anymore.

You sound experienced. Got any videos or sound clips?

Got it man.. Will do that. Enough about me though, hijacked thread with my bullchit again lol..

Took it more seriously years ago. Studied music, practiced 6-8 hours a day, and played in a few bands. Then I took a long break from it and replaced it with photography and training but they never filled the void. These days it's just a hobby, something I enjoy doing and clears my head. I'm writing a lot of music, mainly on piano, so we'll see how that goes. You?

Nope.

You hear the vibrato with your right hand middle finger on the tap at like :03? That was far better (for a brief moment) than the vibrato on the F# with your left hand ring finger immediately following. You are rushing through your vibrato, likely because you are focused on the stuff you're going to play next (or you just have Kirk Hammett Syndrome, lol) and are not taking time to smell the flowers.

So while you can develop a good vibrato that sounds great while you're getting a blow job, it doesn't guarantee that you'll be able to implement it in a practical musical setting, so I agree with Dom - play some blues stuff because you can't cheese out on the vibrato there. For example, learn the slower parts of Lenny by SRV - it will also work your wang bar vibrato, as well.

Also, try practicing vibrato on two strings together. For example, on the 5th fret on both the G and B strings together. Since it's more difficult, it's also makes it more difficult to cheese over the vibrato and will force you to slow down.

If you have an Apple device, consider getting this app to work your intonation:https://apps.apple.com/us/app/intune...er/id580791793

It plays two pitches, and the second pitch is always higher or lower than the first pitch and never the same exact frequency. Do it ten minutes a day, and you should be able to get that down to 1-2% (1-2 cents) or lower in a few weeks.

Swim, just one more thing to add to the excellent advice you've been getting above. Work on vibrato with every finger so it's consistent — ditto for bends. You'll notice a lot of players will really lean on the 3rd finger with 1 and 2 supporting it for bends and vibrato but that will limit you especially when improvising where you don't know what finger you'll ultimately land on with a line and if you suddenly have to scramble to get some fingers behind it then it won't sound natural or flow.

I mentioned Satch before (okay at least 100 times) and he used to do this thing where he'd slide around a lot with the first finger and that really became part of his style. Vai does it as well and loves showing off his circular vibrato. So that got me comfortable using that alone. Then I focused on the rest where it sounds the same no matter which one I use. I slide a lot with the pinky so that's an important one for me with vibrato but sometimes I'll be bending a string while hammering or pulling off on another and if I was always leaning on a certain finger supported by the rest for vibrato then I'd be limited there.

It's pretty late here but tomorrow I'll share a few quick recordings to give you an idea of how I play. There's a whole world of expression stripping everything back and focusing on the basics which we've been discussing so I reckon a year from now once you get all this down your playing will be a lot closer to the level you're striving for. I took a long break and the 4 note per string legato chops were gone so I had to rebuild. These days I play with a lot less gain and I'm closer to the player I wanted to be. It's weird how that works. If I never took that break I'd still be playing the same way which might be more impressive to some people but not for the music I want to make.

Sup guys. First time posting in here. Picked up a guitar about two months ago.

Can play pretty much all of of the major chords, most bar chords also but switching to/from bar chords is pretty difficult.

So far I can play most of the chords + rhythme of Desecration Smile (RHCP), Lonely Boy (Black Keys), De Música Ligera (Soda Stereo) - totally random as you can see.

I'm having a bit of trouble of finding songs that are fun to play and challenging. I can come up with tons of difficult songs (pretty much all of the RHCP songs) but those are too much for now.

Do you guys have any tips on any fun songs? fun exercises? I notice my fingers are getting more flexible, have been stretching x)

Any sources will help. Kinda lost tbh.

^Roller nailed it. Just go with the classics in this case. It's a good way to get used to single note stuff, as he says, and also to just have fun jamming to songs you like. Sabbath is the perfect starting point, honestly. A lot of the stuff of the album paranoid (Iron Man, Paranoid, Hand of Doom) has pretty simple and fun riffs that you can pick up pretty quickly. Another song I really love playing is 'Square Hammer' by Ghost. The main riff might be a little tricky but you can definitely get it if you work towards it for a while. Carl Brown's GuitarLessons365 is a really good youtube channel for learning songs. He does pretty detailed tutorials and I believe he also has videos on how to read tabs. Check his stuff out, I have found it helpful. GL.

Some people can go overboard with vibrato. It's a combination of everything. Varying pick attack, how hard you press on the note, vibrato, using bends/slide, legato, ghost notes, playing notes staccato vs ringing them out, tempo etc all of it when done naturally can make someone play 4 notes and have it sound 10x better than someone else playing those exact 4 notes.

New ears can't pick it up, but you can easily tell when notes sound all even and robotic compare to someone who has all these techniques done, fluently and effortlessly. It can take a year, it can take 10 years, some never can get it.

But yes to summarize it's not all about some slow blues vibrato it comes down to "Touch" which incorporates everything I mentioned before.

I mentioned previously, try practice the same 4 notes over a chord progression. When you can get that sounding interesting and fresh you have "touch" and it's partner "phrasing" in a good spot.

Fast is still good, but when timed nicely and when it's interesting. Whenever I listen to some cliche sweeping, 3 note picking, same grouping my brain shuts off and I move on elsewhere because that sh*t has been done to death for probably 50 years. People need to know when to graduate from this zone, sadly many don't because it's cheap thrills. Fast but interesting stuff good examples = Greg Howe, Shawn Lane many fusion instrumentalists, Guthrie too.

Also make sure you're listening to a huge array of artists and not JUST GUITAR. I am constantly listening to piano, violin etc and using my hearing to try pick up their sort of lines and approaches.

I get idea and inspiration all the time from non-guitarists. It's a good thing because if you just listen to youtube guitarists you can get caught into the trap of using technique over note selection.

This guy hear is an absolute, utter monster in improvisation. Play the notes, not the instrument. When you start thinking "OH gee, I am gonna start sweeping" Ask yourself are you sweeping to get the notes in your head out more efficiently or are you now sweeping because that's what people are doing as a trick?

Their version of "A Night in Tuscany" is pretty awesome. If you watch his studio sessions and his improv teachings you begin to learn he has mastered MUSIC before the instrument.




My ears prick up when I hear something fresh like in this video go to 4:45 to 5:21.




It doesn't stop there. I was listening to some synthwave Cyberpunk EDM that other day and it sparked an idea, making me run to my guitar room and trying some things out.

How can I put this in a TLDR: Do your best when playing guitar to not try sound like a guitarist. Caveat being don't try this if you're completely new to music and learning an instrument for the first time - but definitely keep it mind for a bit later.

Watched this when I woke up, great advice. Still chasing speed.

Easily the best haircut

Just in case... it's a wig.But no-one cares, he's such a legend.

I had to post again because these boards are so buggy there's editing and "access" errors if you edit a post too much etc.
I can pick around Rusty Cooley speed--if you remember my early audio clips--and I don't sit there picking one string and never have. I am not a fan of people drumming in an exercise over and over until it's robotic. You can develop speed with repetition sure but it will come with time anyway.

One lesson I liked from Shawn Lane is that it's good to practice slowly and build up speed but after a while if you linger too long on slowing it down you can start to develop bad habits and not playing it fast properly. Sometimes once you've got it half down it's good to go all out fast even with mistakes to train that CNS then clean it up. I hope that makes sense. Everyone's different some people just learning quicker, some have to do it a certain way etc.

Plus I bet you most people can pick faster than they can fret a note, so don't worry so much about picking speed unless you like doubling up on notes. Who cares if you play 210 or 205, I can give you a phrase that will make you play 150 BPM. It's meaningless to a certain degree. People doing world speeds are playing slides and chromatic, all that's doing is playing THAT piece the fastest, not making you the fastest players.

Rock Fusion and Jazz fusion usually go hand-in-hand for many artists. I don't know how much you know in these areas but artists like Richie Kotzen, Frank Gamble, Scott Henderson, Greg Howe, Allan Holdsworth, Brett Garsed etc all of them will open a new world of approaching notes and more awkward phrasing.

You'll see these greats with barely any youtube views while intermediate players have 1-20mill because of better media management. At the end of the day, the ones who are the greatest have always done it for the passion and not clout.

Take any sweeper you see cheesing with diatonic shapes and what Frank Gamble does with economy/sweep will eat them alive. The other sweepers will have their speed dramatically decrease.

And read my other post going on about not treating a guitar like guitar tricks and just learning music lines from all instruments. It really helps me a lot not sounding like another 1 in 1000000 guitarists maybe just 1 in every 1000 lol.

Try even playing one note and see what variation of that you can do. Fret pressure, different harmonics of that note, sliding into, bending down/up into, varying pick attacks, all of it will help you not sounding like it's a midi file. Then expand that to like 4-6 notes only and see how many different phrasings/grouping and note manipulation you can do for like 30sec without sounding boring.

Use everything in your toolkit for those few notes, hybrid picking, staccato, legato, picking, pinching, anything and even with those few notes see how many different shapes/note orders.


Lessons are everywhere:



This guy is master, not a circus show. This is more a blues+jazz infusion lesson but his earlier works are so outrageously funny because he manages to playing rock tempos/progression but add Jazzy dissonant chords/passing tones that make sense yet seem off at the same time.

I can't think of the song, but it's probably the best example of playing a standard major progression while sounding crazy dissonant. It is a cover of a famous piece and he ends on all these altered chords. I'll see if I can remember it and edit later.

This guy is proper fusion. Not "I play some chromatics so now I am fusion".

Some of his work with Tribal Tech.



Even the slow parts sound awesome when you play them fast, refreshing stuff.

That's cool too, enjoying what you're doing is the most important. Just as long as you have a full catalogue of information to make a decision. Yeah that wrist vibration thingy as I call it is just something that came naturally, I was doing it eventually before I knew it was a thing. Then one time I watched Shawn Lane talking about "Focal point" it sort of clicked what I was doing. I can do it with my pick taps too, I even sort of tense my jaw, I threw a clip of that too way back but yeah the quality is dodgy on my phone. Dom even laughs, I have 10s of thousands of dollars worth of gear but used my phone to record.

All I can say is I've never tested my BPM, it's silly to sort of even use that measures tbh and I cringe when youtube comments go on about it - goes back to my point saying WHAT are they playing fast. I don't need to know where I sit, I can roughly gauge through-out all these years of listen to so many artist and styles roughly where I sit. My left hand cannot fret notes as fast as my picking notes unless I cheese with slides/chromatics or use 4 note per string patterns. So only when I am doing some cheeky double notes I never go full out with picking speed, maybe up to 90% to match both hand speed.

I am not one to really ever talking about my playing much IRL but on the internet where I don't know people personally I can sort of be a bit more open. I am very reserved and humble IRL about it. I think I showed one of my Father's friends my wrist vibration thing at dinner once and he was very amused lol. I even did it then just to see it.

I had a lot of chances to take it to professional level but I always knew it was going to be a hobby I wanted to enjoy, plus there are far better ways to make money. I didn't want to play because I had to, I want to play because I want to.

The same thing with youtube, I think I could have had a somewhat decent channel with just improvising--and I have lots of gear--but I just really am not fused about that side of it. So many channels you can see how set-up and fake they are being to try get views; the marketing comes first. The clickbait titles and all the other political nonsense that I won't get into.

But yeah these days I just try learn/listen to music from all instruments+genres and whatever I like I transpose on the guitar. Like Jesus Molina I linked, if you watch his improvisational videos it's incredible.

I keep saying it, but the days of having a small group of players easily outshine the rest are kind of gone. There's so much free content and learning to get to about 95% of everyone's technical ability is so much easier. So it's the note selection and compositional skills only left to stand out. If an artists like that "thick pick" guy can't write songs I enjoy then I lose interest no matter what trick they can do.

I get more bored watching a technical guitar piece now if it's not playing some a bit spicy. I love watch violin, piano and drummers because it's at least something technical that I haven't learned or possibly cannot do.

I played in live bands and even had a small group I used to jam with once a week but life sort of happens. Just 5min ago I picked up my nylon and played something that was in my head, I like that freedom. To me I could die and not care if no-one saw me play, I know exactly where I stand and that's good enough. But there are a small group of people that know my musical side and are equally passionate.

But yeah I won't write so many essays then now I know sort of where you stand and your goals. They sound fine dude. I personally am learning keyboard atm, it's such a different world but I kind of enjoy being sort of at the bottom again. But it is easier to learn when you have most of the theory down from learning another instrument.

Post videos!

Great discussion.

EoR, I prefer Scott Henderson's playing before he turned into Jeff Beck on steroids using the bar to manipulate every note. I saw Tribal Tech live and he was starting to incorporate it but hadn't yet gone all in.

Posted this before but I don't know how you play a better fusion solo than this. It's melodic, he effortlessly sails through the changes, and as usual it's a legato masterclass. He was at the peak of his powers in the 90s. AH cast a long shadow so I didn't appreciate Gambale and Henderson as much back then.

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