I've been practicing guitar for about 8 months now. I feel i can play fairly well, i mean i play pretty clean and fast. I only know a few chords, and hardly basically no songs. I can't play by ear yet, and i have trouble making good bridges over the fretboard to go along with whatever improv shit i've come up with.

so im wondering what should i be doing to maximize my playing abilities(e.g what are some good often used metal chords aside from the obvious Bars)
And where were you at 8 months into learning the guitar so i can judge my progess.

well, i consider my 8 month mark my 2 month mark because all i was playing for the first 6 was drop d bullshit, not actually doing anything to progress myself. but ive made up for it because of my previous experience with instruments (6 years with the violin)

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work on scales, and altenate picking, and stuff. go to the scales and sweeps thread.

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get a guitar teacher

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I say DONT get a guitar teacher. I find it much more satisfying to teach yourself stuff, because im self absorbant and all that :-P. No seriously, ive been playing for nine months so we may be on the same boat. i kan play by ear and i know lots of songs, so i say you dont need a G-teacher imo

ANYWAY! dude, in your post you pinpointed everything your bad at! so just keep practicing what you're doing bad in and eventually you'll get good. thats all ive ever done. if your ever unsure about anything, just look it up in google.

well, hope i helped.

Learnig to play guitar is exponentillay difficult. Firstly it isn´t that difficult, but better playing is more and more difficult.
I think its important to do de ALTERNATE picking ( down-up-down-up,...). This error is the most common in the self made guitarrist ( i know what i´m talking about:-().

Another thing i´ve learned is that is important to have ricght hand palm muted high speed.

Try "Arise" (sepultura) to 238 bpm and you´ll see what speeeeeeeeeed is.

BUt anyway keep playing.

P.D: Sorry my Crap (i don´t know if itsais like this) English (or whatever this is)

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your english is alright behemoth, just alittle jumpy in areas

90% of the time your grammer is better than mine :/

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Theres some one else on this thread that can hardley speak english and its pretty funny.

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all i can say is learn as much as you can, when i'd been playin for 8 months i was just learning scales such harmonic minor, i never really bothered to much with chords, i just learnt the common, easy ones eg c major. I had also learnt alot of slayer, pantera, sabbath and stuff like that, just to help me progress. Anyways dont listen to Infinity, i'd suggest u look around for a good guitar teacher and get them to help you improve. It dont have to be loads of lessons, maybe just 1 or 2, just to lead u in the right direction.

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just learn other peoples songs so you can learn what others do...

Yeah im kinda on the same boat, just learn songs that you like and try to come up with your own shit. Practice scales, alt picking, palm muting.....

PRACTICE PRACTICE PRACTICE.

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the whole game of music is to listen to other genres and then write music bye altering that style so it sounds good to suit what you think is best. People come up w/ new styles infact by using other styles.

Infact, the only person to be totally original was the guy who made up the concept of music (like thousands and thousands of years ago, we have no idea who, probably neanderthol who was banging on rocks and said "eeer?! cool! a beat!")

an important thing to do is make sure you always play in close to perfect tuning so every time you play a certain note or chord it is slowly built up until you know pracically the whole fret board. That will make it much easier to listen to a song and play, as well as writing music too.

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as you learn to play more tabs that are correct, you will also(whether you know it at the time or not) develop a sense of guitar theory.

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Try playing what you like, set goals for your self and learn how to Two Hand tap, and impress people.

what exactly is a 2 hand tap, how is it different from a normal tap?

Two handed is where you use your right hand to tap on the fretboard with your left also, EVH uses this alot, listen to eruption, its quite easy and fun as hell

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