I haven't seen a thread like this so I'm gonna start one since when you play guitar, it all comes down to practice.
Just some questions, feel free to discuss...

When you practice do you train on 2 or more songs to switch or do you just learn one song and then go to the next?

When you're practicing, do you plug in the guitar or just play without enchanced volume?

Some nice songs to play if you want to learn teqhniques and so.

And just good songs to play.

I use my computer as an amp, and I play along with mp3s for practice, so I have my guitar plugged in when I practice. I usually just add most of my mp3s to the playlist and go through them. If there's something that is too easy, I'll either skip it or listen to it while doing other stuff. If there's something I'm not able to play that doesn't sound impossible, I go look for a tab and start playing it over and over until I know it, or until I'm tired of it, and move on to the next song.

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Yeah I also play along with mp3's sometimes. I sit at the computer (and the screen if showing the tab of the song im playing) and play with. Really good practice.

i don't really play along with songs too much. i just like to plug in and let it rip. most of the time i have the metronome on.

when i first started playing not that long ago (like a year and a half) i would learn like the first riffs of songs then go to another song and learn another riff. it worked out alright i guess but just recently i started going back to those same songs and learning the whole songs. i play to mp3s with the tab open too constantly replaying the same 15 seconds or so until i get it down.

If I try to learn two or more songs, I get bored with one and then partially learn the other most of the time. I like to stick with one song at a time. Lately I've been learning whole albums all the way through. Only Sound of Perserverance, Alive in Athens and Dark Saga now. I'm working on the rest of this Best Of album now from Testament...its going slow cause theres no tabs out there. I like doing albums at a time so I don't have to get my lazy ass up and change the cd or skip to the next song.

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i usually play songs off the computer, crank it and play along. Most of the time i download a song and if i like it learn it then just keep going from there. or if im too lazy to turn computer just sit back and play watever

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When I practie, I practice. Theres a diffrence between practicing, experimenting, and playing around. Practice to me is this: Every day at least 4 ours of exercises, metronome, and working on my weak spots. Then I go and tab or learn a song which is more of playing around but can also contribute to practicing. I love experimenting and finding new ways to use the guiar, espcially with my effects board.

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I usually play 3-4 hours... and all sorts of songs... mostly my own music, but of course also a lot of covers, where possible with cd... It´s best way to learn a song, when you play along with the band...

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me, i learn songs that are melodic and somewhat complicated by looking at tabs and playing along with the mp3's. but now, i'm too lazy to down tune my guitar so i stick with shit like dimmu borgir and emperor. when i DO down tune my guitar, i usually practice with cradle of filth shit. most of the time i practice scales and usually i peice together licks that are fast and incorperate ALL of my fingers. then i'll play the riff faster and faster. it really helps on the acuracy. having a noise gate helps as well because it lets you actuallt hear each individual note when you shred or trill

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If my guitar was in E I'd be playing Becker, Gibert, and Vai shit ALL the time. I'm building a guitar right now thats going to stay in E. Its got a wizard neck and I just got pickups in it. All I need are strings

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How bout this then?

How much training do you need to become a really good guitarist then? Euhm, maybe i'm gonna do an example... Kirk Hammet?

Here are my training habits...
Once or twice a week i take out new tabs from the internet and play them.
I usually train 60-180 minutes a day (1 to 3 hours) and my medium is problably about 90 minutes a day now in the summer (I dont have lessons on the summer).

Shit i always tell my lifes story in my posts. :S

imho practicing songs can be good but it can fuck you up easily, ie: you could lose inspiration
you should add scales and just random improv on those scales to your practice(string skipping, sweeps, trem, trills)

Im going to add onto Freezer's post about songs. Songs are great and they help you get rythum so when you jam with friends its easier. But they can become distracting. Take some songs that you know and do these things. Find out what key they are in, find out what scales/modes they are using and make your own solo to add in. That is great practice and will improve a wide variety of skills.

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My dad has a book called Guitar Improvisation that i have looked into. There is alot of scales there and the when you have learned the whole book, the final objective is to play some sort of C-scale over all the frets or something. Im gonna do that i think. Might be good. By the way if someone thinks they have that book, the front site has a guy that look like Jimi Hendrix in some rainbow or something.

I am currently new to the board and to guitar, and came across this board. Suffice it to say, this particular thread holds the most interest for me, and I was wondering a few things:

I am looking for some fun songs (My prefered taste falls under Cradle OF Filth, but I dont mind playing other styles at all) that would be good for an entry level guitarist. I am also looking for good warm-up routines, excersizes, common scales, and the such.

Any and all advice would be appreciated. Thanks

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For whom the bell tolls (Metallica)
Fade to Black (Metallica)
One (Metallica)
Broderskapets Ring (Dimmu Borgir, this song is really really easy so youre not gonna learn anything from it, but you can say that you know a complete song!)
Hallowed be thy name (Iron Maiden)
Crimson Tide/deep blue sea (Nightwish)

They take a while to learn but they are good!

Common sweeps and scales that are great for practicing are at the top of this thread. Also there is a thread below it about pinch harmonics. Search the forum for other things such as alternitive picking, tremelo picking, music theory, tapping, ect.

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heres a excersice i learned from a dvd. its like rock house or something. it really helped me get fast playing, just use a metrognome and play it as fast as you can using alternate picking.
|-10-9----------8-7-----------------------------------------------|
|------8-7-10-9-----10-9----------8-7-----------------------------|
|------------------------8-7-10-9-----10-9----------8-7-----------|
|------------------------------------------8-7-10-9---------------|
|-----------------------------------------------------------------|
|-----------------------------------------------------------------|

|-----------------------------------------------------------------|
|-----------------------------------------------------------------|
|-----------------------------------------------------------------|
|-10-9----------8-7-----------------------------------------------|
|------8-7-10-9-----10-9----------8-7-7-8----------9-10-----------|
|------------------------8-7-10-9---------9-10-7-8----------------|

|-----------------------------------------------------------------|
|-------------------------------------7-8----------9-10-----------|
|-------------------7-8----------9-10-----9-10-7-8----------------|
|-7-8----------9-10-----9-10-7-8----------------------------------|
|-----9-10-7-8----------------------------------------------------|
|-----------------------------------------------------------------|

|-7-8----------9-10-----------------------------------------------|
|-----9-10-7-8----------------------------------------------------|
|-----------------------------------------------------------------|
|-----------------------------------------------------------------|
|-----------------------------------------------------------------|
|-----------------------------------------------------------------|

i just warmup by mucking around with solos.

then il get into slayer songs for about half an hour, then il just make shit up that i find hard to play and try and get it down in the next half hour.

il usually finish off by coming up with riffs or just shredding.

an hour a day coz im lazy.

if im bored il either not pick up a guitar or il go through some theory books and try and add some of that shit when im mucking around coming up with riffs.

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Ktulu call, thats a good run to practice but I woudent suggestion getting to use to it. When using a metronome, you should go threw all the real scales. That way when you really are soloing you have a better feel for this scale since you practiced it so much in so many diffrent speeds.

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yeah i do practice with scales, i got 1a those gig bag book of scales which is pretty cool (lol i was going through them and i got to like the 4th scale in the book and i noticed it was metallica's fade to black and i coulnd stop laughing). question-is there some sort of way to help memorize scales? like a pattern cause i cant see it

The scale is the pattern, just go back and forth. Its just like a riff in a song if you think of it that way.

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but theres a million of them. i would never expect my self to know the all

For mondays, tuesdays, wednesdays, and fridays:

*between 8a-12p

1:00 of warm ups and excercises from Book guitar teacher wrote for me
:30 "Fade to Black"
:30 Dissection/other songs

*12p-6p

1:00 of bood
1:00 of "Fade to black"/other song(s)

6:30p-7:30p (while watching simpsons

1:00 of book

*8p-12a
:30 book
:30 fade to black/other

This is my schedule that i started today. I play a total of 6 hours. On thursdays, saturdays, and sundays, i will only play 2 or 3 hours. Does that sound excrusiating or what?

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i wouldn't recommend all that. Yeah, it'll make you a better player, but it takes the fun out of playing. Making it like a job, or school for that matter, just doesn't make it as fun.

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Exactly. That's one reason why i've been so lenient on taking lessons.......they make you practice at least 30 minutes a day, if not more. That makes it into a chore and something that isn't much fun.

Some weeks i'll play almost 3-4 hours a day just cause i want to.....last week was like that, but this week i've barely even played 1 hour in about 3 days. Just depends on the mood.

Basically don't force yourself to play if you don't "feel" like it.

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thing is, i DO want to. I built up the will power to practice. Just today i wrote a solo and got it down pat.

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I play for a year and a half now , without any lessons,
and I'm getting to solo's like Nothing Else Mathers, Hypocrisy solo's (The Abyss and others), ...

How long have y'all been playing before you could play any solo (name it )

And does anyone has a good site or sumtin with lots of scales and stuff to practice?!

Thanks

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for scales i use guitar pro to practice, it has a speed trainer and a scale database which you can use...

as for playing+solo, the first solo i mastered was the one in Metal Heart(dimmu borgir) after about 4 months of playing or so

That was the first metal-song I learned It's fun to playbecouse it's eazy to learn
I can of lot of those old "dimmu-powergrip" songs..

I am working on a lot of songs. If I don't get the song at once, I often take a pause from the song to come back later. But there is some songs I never gave up...

I also make a lot of songs myself.

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Well, I am working on the Guilty Gear soundtrack now, and the first solo I learned was the one for Millia Rage's theme, Writhe In Pain. It's not an overly complicated or long solo, but it is all good. Been playing sfor about a month now.

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My schedule now in the summer (I started playing seriously at the start of the summer vacation).

30 minutes - Scales (at any time)
30 minutes - Songs (Metallica, Dimmu Borgir, the harder of it)

In the summer i don't have lessons. But I'll guess that when its school again and lessons starts it may look like this.

30 minutes - Scales (at any time, often before I do the other things, just to warmup.)
30 minutes - Homework from guitar lesson.
30 minutes - Songs that I get much out of, eudicational.
30 minutes - Licks & Tricks (New thingy I'm gonna start doing have some books).

2 hours in total. Somedays more somedays less. But ALL that time is quality training time. Some people can say that they play 2 - 3 hours a day and spend 1 hour just playing the same chords all the time just to be able to say that they practice.



Yeah me too. I'm learning it right now. I've got to the sweeps. Should i sweep pick them or alternate pick? In the song it doesn't sound like they sweep pick...

edit: What the hell, this post ain't long enough.

I practice for about 4 hours daily, and my routine looks something like this:

First Two Hours:

- Scales
- Arpeggios
- Left hand/Legato playing
- Sweep picking

30 minutes each.

Final Two Hours:

- Playing Songs I know
- Learning new songs

Hour Each.

I basically adopted the John Petrucci method for practicing I heard about after watching his instructional dvd.

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Usually I warm up by stretching my fingers and such...and then I start my practicing....
I practice with a metronome NON-STOP.....it gets your timing and accuracy down....plus it helps with speed...I would practice a scale of whatever sort and start off at a nice slow speed and increase it from there...I'm fast as hell at picking, but I need to work on accuracy now......and Alot of people just play scales....but you also need to practice chords too....it helps alot with getting to know the fretboard better and knowing the notes and all....

I've rambled to much already....continue on

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I know that some people might not like this idea, but here's my two cents worth of advice. Learning music from tabs might increase your technique for fast songs, but it's not gonna make your ears any sharper. Listen to songs and try to figure them out, sometimes without even having a guitar in your hands. then pick up your guitar and see how close you were. The more you do it, the sharper your ears get. Instead of just doing scales, try to squeeze some improv into your practice. Scales themselves won't help that much when playing guitar...it's the stuff that you make, your own unique style. Also try to improvise over chord progressions. This will make you a formidable guitarist during jam sessions. I'm not saying that your practice routine sux or anything, but some of this stuff could be better used for other stuff. Like learning songs that others have written. Learning other songs is good to include in your practice, but, unless your whole music career is going to be playing cover songs, you really need to learn how to improvise over simple and complicated chord progressions...sorry for taking up space on the forum...hope this kind of helps.

[QUOTE=Exodus666]
How long have y'all been playing before you could play any solo (name it )

I've been playin for a year and a month and can play most solo's now, my most accomplished ones are

Always with me,always with you' by Joe Satriani (a kickass song to learn)
seasons in the abyss by slayer (fairly Hard solos )
War Pigs-Black Sabbath (easy as piss solos)

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Yeah, that's very true, I generally sit around with a Led Zep DvD on just jamming and working out all the improv stuff Page does, it helps a lot when trying to work songs out.

mmm i am playiing guitar for about a year now
with an average of 1 hour a day
i thought it was a lot but when i hear some guys in here they play like 3 or 4 hours a day.
do you guys have that much time and dont your finger and palm get tired after a while?

Dude, to practice, you don't have to have a guitar in your hand. Even humming a tune to a song you like to listen can probably be considered practice (practicing how to make stuff sound cool over a nice chord progression as well as practicing expanding your musical vocabulary). After you hum awhile, eventually it gets in your brain and then to your fingers. It really helps increase your musical vocabulary by humming to a couple of rhythms. It also helps you develop your own unique style when improvising as well as when songwriting.

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yes yes, that adam is a funny dude!

Definatly. Espically to try and identify every note you hear will greatly improve your "ear" for guitar.

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Yeah, definitely. Before I tab a tune, I've got to be able to hum it first. It just makes things easier but it has the cool side effect of training your ear to recognise notes and intervals. Training your ear should definitely not be overlooked when you practise - figuring out songs is one of the best ways to improve this part of your playing.

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you are probably right but at the moment i'm just playing the tabs from bands i like and when i can play all those tabs i'll think about tabbing some other songs. at the moment i think its too difficult