I've seen a few threads on this, but nothing that really hit home, so I'm making my own.

Been playing a little over a year. The first 9 months, I would do nothing but learn and play tabs, usually playing several hours a day.\

The past few months, however, I've had much less enthusiasm to play. If I feel like learning a song, I'll learn what I can (most everything I've learned to this day has come with very little effort), and when I get to a solo or some other part that I would have to spend weeks practicing and working up to speed, I just lose interest. So I turned to technique and theory. I learned some scales, and a few chords, but there's so much out there I need to work on. General speed, scale speed, tapping, sweeping, trills (could be faster), strict alternate picking (usually just went with what was natural), etc.

I'm lost and have no idea where to start, and would rather not turn to lessons, as, quite frankly, I'm broke.

Any advice would be greatly appreciated.

I was stuck in the same road block man like 1-2 weeks ago. I bought a book that teaches you Guitar Techniques.(Sweep picking, Tapping, Legato Work outs). I began on it last saturday and i have to say i see my speed and everything improving. It's called "Rusty Cooleys Chops from hell".(Comes with an intructional dvd). So if i were you pretty much work on technique now; after you get up to speed i would get a book on theory. I have a book on theory now pretty awesome book its called "The complete idiots guide to music theory" makes theory very easy to understand.Its made for the piano so yes you do have to do a little converting to the guitar.

However this is the route im going; others have choosen different routes and ended up in the same place in the end.

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Try using your new skills at writing.

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Yes Ser.

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Start a band, or learn more songs.

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Get your chops up, start jammin with other people, and play the fucking guitar.

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Yeah it's great to get a band going.

What's good to do when you're lost is find a website like this: http://www.insaneguitar.com/mc/alternate.html
Have fun with that and practice your pure speed there.

Find backing tracks online, it's just a google search away, really. Play along with any bands you like, it's pretty cool.

Watch videos that inspire you, that's half the fun of being able to play guitar. You can watch, and actually KNOW what guys are doing. This one will get you going if you haven't seen it yet: Holy Crap Paul...

Honestly, I felt really down when I had no chops too, but I just watched and listened to excessive amounts of the top guitarists out there. I just did that EVERY day when I got down. I was like, whoa, I could do that if I tried!

Also, look up scale shapes (like I guess you already did) but screw around in one spot for a while. Record it, even one note at a time. Improvise in one spot with multiple tracks until you get whatever sound you want: evil, happy, mysterious.

Last (I know this is getting kinda lengthy) play along WITH your favorite guitarists. I played along with G3 2003 once, pretending I was there. That (beleive it or not) was really fun for me. Getting involved is great.

I hope this sparks some ideas, and if not, just tell me so I can try to shoot some more thoughts up. I dunno, maybe you're better than me.

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Thanks so much for the suggestions, I'll be giving them all a shot.

A friend of mine had strongly suggested I work on basic scales and build of speed with those. Is that important at all?

If you want to be fast an acurate, yes. And a even larger yes to using the scale/speed suggestion with a metronome. But also practice soloing with backingtracks or a friend so that you don't rely on just methodic patterns for solos.

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Ive been playing for over 10 years straight... the longest ive gone is probably 1 month without playing. If you keep at it and get better, you'll be more enthusiastic about playing. There are plateaus to learning guitar also which get harder and harder to beat.
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