Need help.

[Ex14]

Hey guys, I've been learning guitar for awhile now, and for some reason i don't seem to be getting any better. I've played an assortment of songs found on Ultimate guitar but mainly i play Lifehouse songs. I usuallyread chords and just strum them. hence i'm not good with scales, solos that kinda stuff.

Recently my guitar teacher has been giving me more "challenging" (to me anyway) songs to learn like One Last Breath, and Dead or Alive. To me these are challenging because their intro's are picking parts and i don't do that well in picking. Also he's trying to teach me string skipping by asking me learn "The Reason"'s Riff.

A problem i feel is that, my theory is infact shit. and i can't apply whatever i learnt in these songs...

any suggestions on how to improve?

 

[dudelove]

erm why dont u get ur guitar teacher to give u advise on ur playing? isnt what a teacher is for? hahah sorry i cant say much but really lah i know its like nagging but the key is practice

 

[Likui]

For picking and string skip I used to train by playing classical music lots of bach especially. And for how to do those stuff I recommend u watch paul gilbert's video or his instructional videos take note of the right hand how he holds the pick how he rest his palm on the top 3 strings and the way he picks. For theory what would u want to know?? how to form chords? stuff like that u can google or look up wikipedia.org
so yea you don't really need a teacher

 

[Ex14]

erm why dont u get ur guitar teacher to give u advise on ur playing? isnt what a teacher is for? hahah sorry i cant say much but really lah i know its like nagging but the key is practice

Yea, i haven't forgo practicing but no matter how long i practice, i seem to be getting worse. For Example I learned "You and Me" by Lifehouse a long time ago, but yet i still play like beginner when i play that song. In fact, sometimes i feel i gotten WORSE.

For picking and string skip I used to train by playing classical music lots of bach especially. And for how to do those stuff I recommend u watch paul gilbert's video or his instructional videos take note of the right hand how he holds the pick how he rest his palm on the top 3 strings and the way he picks. For theory what would u want to know?? how to form chords? stuff like that u can google or look up wikipedia.org
so yea you don't really need a teacher

Theory, i heard is important for playing solos. My long term goal is to be able to improvise solos in the hopefully not-so-distant future.so yea.>.<

 

[Bad Company]

practice,concentrate,feel and enjoy!That's the key...

 

[Likui]

ok For playing solos for improvising. The standard way a lot of ppl do is play the notes of the chord and add in passing notes and other decorated notes well that works fine no one will say you are wrong. But if you were to explore more like trying to play the notes out of the chords and notes that clash with the chords it can make your song sounds more interesting but don't over do that if not ppl will think your a noob who play nothing but wrong notes.

 

[cryingstatue]

some suggestions

hi there,

i think its important to know what you want to achieve first and i think dont set like too high goals like soloing and scales if you think you cant play/strum songs yet. you might have heard that if you cant play rhythm you cant play lead. so yeah maybe you should try to be a better rhythm guitarist first.

secondly why just stop at intros and riffs? i think you should try to learn the whole song if possible otherwise you would just have a bunch of uncompleted songs.and learn to play exactly like the song, you would pick up more things.

also i feel that a lot theory isnt practical for us guitarplayers as its always written in the perspective of the keyboard/piano so of course we can apply it directly and it doesnt make sense. i would recommend you just ask your teacher to show you how to apply theory into practice, after all thats what you paid him for yeah

 

[Likui]

hi there,

i think its important to know what you want to achieve first and i think dont set like too high goals like soloing and scales if you think you cant play/strum songs yet. you might have heard that if you cant play rhythm you cant play lead. so yeah maybe you should try to be a better rhythm guitarist first.

secondly why just stop at intros and riffs? i think you should try to learn the whole song if possible otherwise you would just have a bunch of uncompleted songs.and learn to play exactly like the song, you would pick up more things.

also i feel that a lot theory isnt practical for us guitarplayers as its always written in the perspective of the keyboard/piano so of course we can apply it directly and it doesnt make sense. i would recommend you just ask your teacher to show you how to apply theory into practice, after all thats what you paid him for yeah

I won't say theory isn't practical for guitar players because being a musician you need to know music and so happens that theory is what u need to know and also know how to play an instrument in this case guitar so yea you need to have good musicianship to be a musician if not you are just going to be a guitarist

 

[Excalibur]

Hi there TS, to address your problem of picking. Do view the video link, it'll help you a lot on technique.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=owRCHxlhu4U&eurl=http://www.justinguitar.com/en/TE-003-ScalePicking.php

Once you've got about 80% of the technique right, you might want to start looking into scales and stuff. (Theory)

Cheers!