What Have You Improved On, and What Are Your Goal Songs?

[Jak Angelescu]

Hey everyone! I hope you all had a great weekend, I know I did! The studio is really daunting, and mentally draining. Nothing reveals your flaws quite like hearing yourself back :/
Anyway, last night I finally got to take a small break and jump back on the school to move on to the next lesson and I picked Hail To The King back up to shake out the tension. And… I sucked at it :/
Literally! I haven’t played that song in several weeks and I’m finding myself having to slow down the metronome again. Does anyone else have this issue? You get something down fairly well, and two weeks later you have to start back up again? This made me think though, that if I conquered THIS song, what are my other songs I have been wanting to learn? So here are some of my personal goal songs!
1. Scorpions – Rock You Like A Hurricane (That solo epitomized sexy shred lead for me)
2. Dio – Rainbow in the Dark
3. Pantera – Primal Concrete Sledge/Revolution Is My Name (rhythm, rhythm, groove groove)
4. Testament – Seven Days of May/Sins Of Omission
5. Metallica – Enter Sandman/Unforgiven 2/King Nothing
6. Primal Fear – Armageddon
7. Ozzy – Crazy Train (I still can’t play that solo)
8. Avenged Sevenfold – Scream/The Stage/Fermi Paradox
9. Judas Priest – Way Too Many To Name
10. Skid Row – Way Too Many To Name
11. Aerosmith – Walk This Way/What It Takes
12. Versailles – Ayakashi
13. Black Mage Orchestra – One Winged Angel
14. Wasp – Animal
15. Poison – Life Goes On
16. Warrant – Uncle Tom’s Cabin
17. Classical Guitar versions of many different Disney songs.
Also, what have you improved on? I’m seeing SOOO much improvements in the riff section I can’t even keep track. And I remember Ben Newton posted a forum topic that I loved, with which he said “we only see the good traits of our idols and only the bad ones of ourselves with our playing.” So I really wanted to take some time for people to share with everyone what they feel THEY improved on, because I sure am seeing it! With me, I’m definitely getting more comfortable with knowing my way around the neck and getting more creative instead of just using scale runs. I look forward to reading your comments! Have a great day, everyone!

 

[idssdi]

I haven’t really improved on a lot because I’ve been having a hard time finding time to practice anything. Songs I would like to learn
1. John Mayer – Gravity/Slow Dancing In A Burning Room/I don’t need no Doctor/Bold As Love/Everyday I have the Blues/who did you think I was all of where the light is
2. A7x – The stage(mostly getting the intro down)/Fermi Paradox/Higher/the whole stage record tbh /heretic/Acid Rain/Dear God/Seize The Day/Save Me/The Wicked End/M.I.A
3. Django Reinhardt-every single song in the songbooks I own
4. Symphony X – The Odyssey/The Turning/Without You
5. Stevie Ray Vaughn – kind of whatever song because he’s awesome and I picked my strat based of the one that fits his
6. UFO – Rock Bottom(strangeRS In Thé night version)
7. Led Zeppelin – whole how the west was won record
8. Pantera – Cemetery Gates
9. Rainbow – whole On stage record
10. The Beatles – while my guitar gently weeps and all the other songs because it’s the Beatles
11. Gary Moore – Still got the blues and a bunch of others
12. B.B. King discography
13. Derek and the dominos – Layla
14. Deep purple – Highway star/Child In time
15. Mr. Big/Paul Gilbert/Racer X-Scarified/Technical difficulties/Viking Kong/Daddy,Brother,Lover,little Boy/Partitia in DM/Bultaco Saturno/Fuzz universe/Olympic/one woman too many
16. Marty Friedman/Megadeth-Tornado Of souls/Hangar 18/whole scenes record/Inferno/Horrors
17. All the songs off my star wars for classical guitar book
18. Whole whatever you day I am, I am not and Am by the Arctic Monkeys
19. Pink Floyd – Comfortably numb/time Shine in you crazy diamond/Wish You were here
I’ll leave it at that because there is probably more but all of this will take me a couple years orobably,

 

[Guest]

Glad you liked the comments Jak.
My list of goal songs of the moment;
1. Steve Vai – The Audience is Listening
2. Jason Becker – Perpetual Burn
3. Zakk Wylde – Anything he can do (I sort of adopted the hybrid approach)
4. Paul Gilbert – Technical Difficulties
5. Steel Panther – Anything Satchel
6. Avenged Sevenfold – MIA, Strength of the World, Shepard of Fire
7. Dream Theater – Erotamania
8. Lynyrd Skynyrd – Freebird
9. Protest the Hero – Anything they do (Luke is amazing)
All I got at the moment!
What have I improved on? I think that my general knowledge of theory has improved greatly. As I’ve just started teaching privately its forced me to pay attention to alot of detail that I may have missed out on before.
My picking has developed also. I’ve been examining my playing alot recently and found I have two different picking styles, and try to use both.
I think, though I’m miles off, that my improv has improved greatly, but might need to look at other scales. I take on board everything that is said on my videos, but can’t always learn right away.
What I could improve on is giving myself more time to practice. Time is short these days and I quite often feel terrible when I can’t keep up with peoples advice. Syn gave me advice on legato the other day, and I just havent had time to listen to his suggested artist. Along with others advice. So, there is something I’d like to work on!

 

[idssdi]

Ed-I saw that comment too. Allan Holdsworth is definitely worth checking out! He’s a great guitar player. I read somewhere that he should be named in line with mozart.

 

[Dominik Gräber]

Hey, haven’t been too active here lately, only some background reading. I am not having too much time to play at the moment, so I just fool around with some covers.
I am currently learning One by Metallica, which helps me working on my Timing, Feel and Vibrato. Using the clean channel only helps as well for these things. So this is what I am improving on slowly I guess.
To my long term goals of songs I want to cover:
Metallica – The Day That Never Comes (Love that Solo!)
Avenged Sevenfold – The Stage, Afterlife
The guitar duet in Ashes Of The Innocent by Bullet For My Valentine with another guitarist
But that’s it. I choose my goals more from a point of view what I can achieve in the next couple of months and then process with something harder rather than having many songs in mind I want to play someday

 

[Matt Wildman]

I’m in the same boat as Dominik, I haven’t gotten a chance to sit down and go through many lessons lately. However I have improved on economy picking a little bit, and I feel like I have finally broken the habit of wanting to rush through things I want to learn. I’ve been really slowing it down… A LOT. my goal songs include:
“Fallen angels” by Black veil brides
“Beast and the harlot” just the solo A7X
“Afterlife” just the solo A7X lol that will take a while.
“Master of puppets” by Metallica
“Gematria” by Slipknot (I don’t think my guitar is made to tune that low )
“In the end” by black veil brides

 

[Matt Wildman]

Oh and Dear God A7X awesome song…

 

[Sayonil Mitra]

To be honest, I do not have any goal songs at this moment. I am practicing and learning stuff from this school. I am completely focusing on composing guitar solos and instrumentals. I am trying to bring more variety and unpredictability in the solos (trying, trying, trying). I am making a song right now based on a video game. I will post it here as soon as I am done with it (have not posted for days). Opinions from all of you will be valuable to me and help me become a better composer (maybe).

 

[Josh Wright]

If I’m really honest with myself, my biggest improvement has been putting myself out there musically, and experimenting. My goal songs that I’m working on are Cheat on The Church by graveyard bbq, and hells bells by acdc. I take on multiple songs at a time because otherwise I get bored.