Technique PraKISH

I think it depends on what style of guitarist you want to be. Slash has openly admitted to despise working on music theory and says he goes off of his “ear” more than anything, and eventually has learned patterns that work for him. However, we can all admit that Slash is a very monochromatic player. He’s damn good, but he’s damn good at writing rock n’ roll and blues stuff. He has a couple of Spanish-style influenced songs but it’s minimal. Also, you take Dimebag. He said he made up his own scales and never spent much time on music theory. However, the fucker was LIGHTNING on the frets and still composed some mind-blowing acoustic work. Some stuff I couldn’t believe was Dime. I think it be best to look at who you idolize the most and you drives you the most. The person where you say “I want to be like THAT guy/girl” and do what they do.
I really wish people would understand just how much players like Syn are very rhythmic when they play their leads. If you really dissect his playing, there are very distinguishable rhythmic feels he does, and I believe that stems from him jamming a lot to backing tracks. He understands melody very well, because if you listen to his solos, about 95% of them follow Matt’s melody in someway shape or form. Or there is some lead hook in there somewhere that follows Matt’s vocal line.
I can admit though, I think 5 minutes on each technique is not enough. It doesn’t matter what kind of guitarist you want to be. Even bands like Blink 182, Guttermouth and CKY spent HOURS a day practicing. Although they were writing songs and rehearsing most of that, they still have certain techniques down really well (fast down-picking, anyone?)
I think songwriting IS crucial. But in order to write good songs, you have to know your instrument. For me, it took me about 4 hours a day for about three weeks to get the sweeps down fairly well in HTTK’s solo. I have a toccata technique in one of my solos, and it was a BITCH. I think of it this way a little bit:
I learned recently by my own experiment with the school that spreading yourself too thin and trying to accomplish many things with little time is not efficient or proficient. If you were to practice sweeps for several hours a day, you’d become fairly okay with it in probably a month’s time. Not a MASTER, but you’d get the technique down. Keep this in mind, Syn said it took him roughly 2 years of practice before he could effortlessly incorporate economy picking into his playing. I think patience here is key. Keep practicing stuff. But it’s going to take time AND lots of effort.
A fitness quote I read said it best: “enjoy the ride because you’ll never get there.” What this means, is that when you reach one goal, you have another one you’ll want to achieve. And then another. So don’t focus on the ending point. It will never happen. Just enjoy it and don’t stress yourself out I hope this long-winded answer helps.

I read an interview last night with Yngwie Malmsteen that actually was really inspiring. He said he never really “practiced” per say but he played all the time. He never actually sat down and focused on technique or anything like that. He said he developed his technique from wanting to just be good. He knew what sounded bad and what sounded “better than bad” When he would take the train to work it was a 45 minute ride on the train and he would bring his guitar and play on the train. When he was younger he would walk to the bus stop for school with his guitar in his hand and play for 15 minutes on the bus. He openly admitted that it was probably at an unhealthy level of obsession. But he just loved music so much that he spent ore time playing and trying to compose and mimicking what he heard than actually practicing. When people dissected his regimen, he actually didn’t sit down and play for a specific amount of time and he didn’t Have a specific thing he wanted to practice. He would play for what he felt like playing and would play it until it sounded good. He said that he spent a majority of his time composing and writing than actually practicing if that makes sense. It was actually quite inspiring for me because Dimebag Darrell said the same thing. Perhaps maybe us newer generations of guitarists are too focused on the wrong aspect. Not saying that practicing isn’t a good thing. But in they both believed that practicing and playing are 2 completely separate concepts. Yngwie stated that the only time he ever actually really practiced is if he had a tour coming up. He also made the point, just to make it clear that he didn’t just play for a couple hours A-day and get that good. He never liked to sit down and say “I’m going to practice my sweeping technique for 3 hours.” He would play things that had sweeping arpeggios in them from classical songs he really loved. And he would play them over and over again until he got them good. But this extreme structured a timeframe that we all tend to develop might be counterproductive