Help improving speed and accuracy

[Cliff]

Wow, sorry to hear about your wrist. Time to practice legato then?

I guess I didn't explain very well: I agree with you about practicing the small things. The single note per string thing is intended to do just that. The reason I'm not doing it on, say, just two strings is I think the motion to switch quickly back and forth between two strings might be different to the one where you cross several. But what do I know? . Anyway, no major progress yet, but I'm keeping at it because I still think/hope it will have some benefit.

[ginsambo]

Not really, other way around as it's my left hand, lol. Still only being prissy and the drill only went 3/4 of the way through by the bone and missed the artery. Feckin internal bleeding/bruising hurts though, especially on the little finger stretches and supposed to be laying 30 metres of sandstone paving tomorrow. Oh joy.

OK here is another idea you could try, hence the SRV example. Forget everything you are trying to do with these techniques and such and just play as loudly and scrappily as you can, fast, like you are strumming it, just with single notes, don't worry about buzzing other strings and unwanted noise, just as long as each note gets the right timing and emphasis. I mean play so hard and loose that you are almost breaking the strings and then, once you can play it hard and loud, try and reign it in a bit to sound neater. Not only will this loosen your hands up, but I think you are missing the fundamentals of rhythm, which might have been your weak spot anyway, especially with string changes and such, because you are trying to be too accurate from word go. In my book accuracy and volume sensitivity is something you learn once you have the rhythm, looseness and volume down already not the other way around. I think you might be going about it the other way around if you get what I am on about.

It's much better to have the blues rock chatter and learn to reign it in than never have it in the first place. All the best players have it and it's a findamental part of playing and separates a real guitar from a synth or computer simulation, so embrace it and learn to use it to your advantage.

To get that Warren Demartini JB chatter you have to be able to play really hard in the first place and then reign it in and fine tune control it to get his tone. The way you are approaching it means you'll take ages to get it. Trust me I probably have the same background as you - years of funky bodged up, pull off legato style winging it with all lead, some quite impressive at the time to non guitar players lol, and very little rhythm skills, tab books Grade 3 classical as a kid, rewound cassette tapes and slowed down LP's and major restrictions to the musical freedom of expression to my playing through beng limited to variations of the same old riffs, hammer ons, pull offs and string skipping and muted pulloff sequences. But it has taken these last two years to get my shit together, especially as on a strat type guitar, you just see straight through that funky Les Paul stuff and a lazy Gibson technique just doesn't work on a brighter sounding 25.5" scale. So now I play it and it doesn't play me. I can see any weaknesses physically being able to skip notes or mentally being able to remember a phrase and I can quickly come up with a riff or a pattern that will fix it, so I can fit in a couple of notes in a sequence I wouldn't of done before, or end a solo run exactly on the beat or just simply play what I want and I hear in my head, even going fast up the board, without just doing triplets or quadruplets or whatever, I can fit a single or a couple of notes in there somewhere you know and make it all sound fluid. I still have this winging it kind of sound and I'II never be a metal virtuoso, but I like my style, I play with authority and my Charvel and Marshall respects me for that, even though I mostly play with the minimal amount of distortion on a non lead channel I can milk my strings and valves whichever way I want to get the tone and the sound I want, even when the room and the valves are cold I can still pull enough tone out of it to get inspired.

Don't get too hung up on this method madness and modern metal, it might send you down a whirlpool which will be hard to swim out of. That said, even though I hate modern metal, the good musicians out there that play it, play it effortlessly and they can play it loud.

Honestly, your left hand work is fine, I reckon you have to realise your potential and you have to concentrate on your right hand, or more to the point, your head and your idea of rhythm as that is the crux of it. You well have the ability already, but because you are focusing on the exercises and such you are missing the wood for the trees I reckon.

I think the painkillers are kicking in now.

You really do have to work extra hard to get a fat sound and sweet tone out of a strat scale length and the only way to work it is by jangling the fuck out of it at one extreme and then reigning it in. Anyway, you probably think I am completely mad ranting on.

I don't see any differences between crossing one or many strings, unless you mean sweep picking or raking? It should be all the same fluid kind of technique.

Seriously a bull at a gate approach would be much more beneficial I reckon. I don't think there are any hard and fast rules about technique and if your old technique creeps back in, maybe embrace it, if it can let you do what you wanna do more fluidly?

I don't reckon there was much wrong with your technique on page 1, apart from smaller wrist swings to reign it in. I don't get this scalpel picking stuff, especially because that is how I started playing my first electric for a year or two before I changed to a technique more resembling you on page 1 as I couldn't get the swing and looseness to my playing! Dude.

[ginsambo]

Anyway back to the point, yeah I think from memory that I found that scalpel technique thing extremely limited how I could change from picking a sequence on say a high E string to say an immediate sequence on an A string. Say picking a rotation of three notes or five on one and three on the other per string between the two. Also it extremely limited the range of tones I could get out of the strings. Maybe this is why you like it? I donno.

Back to the mental thing, I seriously think scales alone are next to useless for practicing. Namely because they have no real musicality about them, when played with a complete lack of accent notes in groups of say 5 or seven etc. over the beat, where as patterns sound much more like they are going somewhere. But the trick to playing scales well as speed is figuring out how the notes will fit against the beat and what kind of tonality you want to get from the notes to make it sound like it is going somewhere in your head first. If you can hear this and figure out the tonality and remember it, then you can play it pretty easily. It's the same with anything, you have just relax and hear where the notes are going in your head and once you can hear it fluidly your fingers will just follow. It definitely is a mental thing. When you are playing fast and winging it on the spot, I kind of hear where I want to be/am going whilst I am looking at the next sequence of notes I need to fret whilst still playing the last.

[Cliff]

Ginsambo - you're awesome. I really appreciate you taking the time to think all this through, go back to the first video, and put all your thoughts down like this.

I think we both agree that a bit of 'blues rock chatter', for want of a better term, is a good thing. I don't want to be a sterile player, and the players I admire most certainly are not. I used to play with more of that bull-at-a-gate approach, except I always had really bad timing. So really I am trying to reign that in. It doesn't show in my practice vids, but I still try and keep some of that in there when I noodle around. (If you haven't already, have a listen to my cover of Since I've Been Loving You in the MP3 section to hear how I used to play.)

Whether or not this strict practice regime will yield results, I don't know. I'm flattered you think my left hand technique is fine - I agree it's the stronger of the two, but I'd definitely like it to be better. Back in the old heavy-handed days, I could never play EVH-style licks fast enough, nor fit them in when I was improvising, but could sort of get by with the Paige style. It'd be kind of funny of my technique was okay from the beginning of this thread and it was just a question of approach or mental attitude. My wife for one thinks my playing has gone steadily downhill since I started practicing formally. Clearly she's listening to the musicality rather than my ability to play 10% faster or a little cleaner. That said, I'm pretty sure my timing is better than it used to be, and I think I can play things I couldn't before.

What I meant about the difference between playing across two strings instead of several: I think with a two string lick, you can switch strings with just a subtle motion of the wrist; if you're playing a fast run that crosses many strings, you're obliged (or at least the way I play it) to bring the forearm in as well, and in my case actually move the right hand across the strings.

I don't like scalpel for the limited tones, although I do find I can more easily control the tone with it and be consistent when I want to be. I've only been trying this for three or four weeks, so I definitely can't play as well with it as I could with the previous technique. But I feel like it makes string changes easier, and I feel like I can add emphasis where needed. Maybe I'll try and record some pentatonic meanderings to demonstrate.

As for hearing where the notes are going in my head before playing them - well, that's just way beyond my musical ability .

Again, thanks for all the thoughtful advice .

[ginsambo]

I just find it a bit frustrating, as like a lot of us, we have been there. Just waiting for your eureka moment mastery to snap into place when you realise your potential. I really think you just might be leading yourself up the garden path or treading water with this attention to precise detail picking and such. You have already done the hard bit and established the neural networks in your head by having played twenty odd years and it is obvious that your left hand is well up for it. It seems you are probably a bit of a prefectionist like me. But sometimes you can't put an open and closed chapter on your practicing cleanly like that. The last piece in the puzzle really is just getting your head and your right hand, which will follow, around it and I think this concentrating on a perfect picking technique is stalling you. Moreover you should be concentrating on rhythms and tones and to hell with your right hand technique I reckon.

You are concentrating on way too much precise detail IMO. As for musical ability, you'll be surprised what you can do and remember and predict, once you can shred fairly easily and aren't focused on that 2 dimensional aspect of it, you only think it is way beyond your ability, because, consciously, you haven't knocked those doors down yet. Once you are not concentrating on your playing technique and it comes naturally like breathing or something, it leaves your brain with loads of space to think about musicality againm, which is what it is all about really. It isn't easy, as I said it's a bit of a catch 22 as you can only hear, remember and augment the tone of a group of notes played fast, once you can play them. But on the bright side, once you can play without thinking too much about it, for the same reasons, your progress and motivation becomes exponential and you get really creative and stylistic very quickly, very quickly.

I had that exact same, tight, static wrist and forearm, moving forefinger/thumb movement, Scalpnel technique on a Vox badged Fender Strat when I was 14 so many years ago. It is a technique that does lend itself to low bridges, like recessed trem and Vintage trems. I changed it because I looked at the way Joe Perry and my idols played their TOM Bridge Les Pauls and thought I must be doing it wrong and also because I just couldn't habe the swing and string changing reach that they had. But I had to get a Les Paul copy to emulate it as it felt all wrong on a low bridged V trem Strat copy when learning.

Some twenty plus years later, I have a totally loose wrist/forearm technique which I can turn up for some stuff and reign in for other stuff, but basically without it I wouldn't have any control over tone, rhythm or string skipping licks and patterns. I just don't think a technique which consists of moving your finger and thumb has the rhythmic control that the mastery of your wrist and forearm would give you. It's a mad technique, that if anything is limiting if you ask me.

The key to picking is reigning in your looseness, not perfecting your tightness. You have to be in a position to pick anything loosely and effortlessly with no muslce tension, to a rhythm in the first place. The other way around kind of reminds me of my TAB book days if you know what I mean. I just don't see that it is the best way to go forward sustainably. But I guess it is whatever works for you and we all have to experiment.

Looking back over the years when getting a better technique I think the major landmarks in picking technique/accuracy in order were:

Playing 4/4 Rock/Blues riffs and rhythms, bodging very blues based, half chromatic, ascending and descending runs and picking slow bluesy and 4/4 rock stuff, but never being able to play fast snappy on the beat blues shuffles, basing everything on bends and vibrato and developing a great technique in that kind of field, but playing the majority of stuff with pull offs and downpicks.

Learning Randy rhoads style legato's, phasing patterns and ascending runs and getting better with volume on my third/little finger.
Learning loose SRV style rhythms and picking and starting to learn up picks for rhythms and alternate picking
learning EVH rhythms and loose mastery of rhythm.
Learning scale patterns hammer ons, pull offs and then learning to pick them, learning to play rhythmic on the beat solos
Learning to pick scalar runs

Learning to pick with the side of my first finger and thumb and learning how to loosen up.
Learning to pick any odd or even number of notes in any sequence, inbetween or at the start or end of picked scalar and chromatic runs so I can master landing on the beat and the right notes and keep the whole thing fluid, in time and as one unit.
Being able to play killer improvised, fast blues shuffles (In my head anyway, lol) and take the notes and atmosphere to another far way place and fill the ambient space with just one guitar and being able to play ascending runs, patterns or notes in an order that I want to sound a certain way at speed, making it up as I go.

All this playing in bands or over records. The most important of course is learning tone and rhythm.

But really the best thing I ever learnt was relatively recently by getting loose and being able to play without my thumb cramping up after an hour. The next most important thing for learning picking accuracy, fretboard mapping and learning rhythm and tonality and understanding chords and tone, I would say would have been making up patterns from scales and playing them to extremes.

I seriously think there is 3000% more value in learning and playing along with old EVH rhythms than there ever will be with exercises. It will put the feel of the beat and rhythm in your head and then your fingers will quickly follow, rather than trying to teach your fingers something when the puppet master is out to lunch.

This is what worked for me, I am no pro by any means but I am happy with my playing, it motivates me and I can always get the tone I want and feel wholesome inspired to play, even when the amp sounds shite.

Music, like the rest of life isn't about making as much money as you can or scoring a record deal or imposing your views or liberating yor thoughts onto others, it's just about a day to day doing something that makes you feel wholesome and indirectly influencing people for the better because of it, either through your music or just your attitude, even if they have never heard you play, because what you do makes you happy and feel wholesome.

Maybe it's the approach of middle age but I look at my guitar now for it's components and my fingers feel at one with the crafted slab of rosewood, dressed nickel frets and worn quartsawn maple neck, when I'm playing and feeling it well, rather than thinking about the name on the headstock or the cap or colour on the body. Of course when that great feel combined with a 'Charvel' on the headstock, of course it makes me feel better. Oh dear I am so full of shit, you just wouldn't believe!

Anyway, like I said, yeah you sounded like you did have bad timing, but going back and learning and playing along to some VH records will soon fix your head space for that. There is no need to get into this micro surgery picking technique, although, ultimately it might help in the long run. I think it'd be quicker and easier to just turn on to some old VH LP's which might have been the discipline or bit you lacked in your teens! Picking single notes isn't gonna necessarily help your mental sense rhythm and fitting notes in to the beat that much, you have to learn how to swing your wrist and move your forearm and get the uppicks and string skips in time as well and it comes from the head.

Sorry for the bullshit waffle, I just realised that was a whole wall of text. I still remember the day I learnt to type without thinking about it. What a sad day for the world that was. Still, internet forums weren't around back then and the primary motivation was to baffle people will pages of text, not translate an opinion on a forum. Maybe that is an '80's rock analogy. I hope you can pick some pieces from it.

[Cliff]

Hey Ginsambo,

The idea with the scalpel picking is definitely to use it with a loose wrist motion. I've been advised to begin, though, without any wrist motion, so I can get the finger movement down without falling back on the old technique. I've got about another week to go like this, and then I intend to try loosening up.
FWIW, I spent a good part of yesterday warming up with these picking exercises, then moved on to playing my current two favourite practice thingies: the pentatonic lick with the outside picking and the Malmsteen harmonic minor lick. I was able to play both more cleanly and evenly than I've been able to previously, so I do think I'm getting somewhere. Of course, I rarely have that amount of free time to warm up first .
I appreciate your thoughts and will definitely try to make more time to just jam along and think about the notes rather than the technique.

[ginsambo]

Despite the waffle essay, to my horror, I actually noticed I sometimes kind of use a watered down version of that scalpel technique when picking some stuff fast and accurately with distortion, I still use my wrist, but my thumb and finger starts getting freaky too, I never much analysed it before as I'm concentrating on the notes with my left hand. I don't like it when my thumb joint bends like that and finger starts wriggling, it seems poncy and less able to be controlled to me, plus I spent the best part of twenty years trying to rid myself of it, but as I said I do it to some extent, still moving my wrist when playing some fast stuff that incorporate progressive string changes with everything picked, like an ascending scale pattern for example, nearing fly picking speed. It only creeps in on some stuff like that, less notes per string and wider string skips, it doesn't happen at all and when I do actually fly pick, it's more like an arched back EVH style, so I don't know where it comes from. Maybe the reason it does is because I hold the pick quite far out and still play quite hard, so doing it allows more of a 90 degree pick angle, rather than parallel with the strings, which means picking becomes faster and sometimes it happens when the pick slips out from the side of my finger to the point, as I have short thumbs. But it's not to the extent that you seem to do it, maybe as my wrist is still moving, my thumb does seems to bend back and forth between being reflexed backwards and maybe a 20 degree angle forwards off being straight, not that you'd notice to look at it.

Rhythm and melody definitely comes from your head, but whichever way, you'll get where you want to be. I shouldn't be so judgemental!

BTW, who reccommended this scalpel technique to you?

I always considered it bad, but it seems that in fact I have a genius, schooled technique without even knowing it.

[Cliff]

That's funny .
I found out about the scalpel technique by browsing through old threads in this sub-section of the forum. Someone mentioned Pebber Brown, so I took a look. I've been interested in different picking techniques for a while, possibly because I'm so crap at them all, so I decided to give this one a try. He actually advocates both scalpel and what he calls 'sarod' picking, which he describes as similar to the motion you use when stirring a spoon in a cup of tea. The arched back EVH style you mention he describes as 'swan', which sort of makes sense - still sarod, but the wrist is angled to make it a bit easier to do. (Also, Indian sarod players apparently have to angle their wrists like this to account for the curvature on the front of the instrument). He suggests a hybrid of both, with sarod coming to the fore at faster speeds. To be honest, I've never been able to make that technique work for me. I can move my wrist in a nice loose way, but as soon as the pick goes anywhere near the strings it all falls apart. But I intend to give it another go in a week or so, once I feel like I have the muscle memory down for the scalpel part.

[Cliff]

I've been practicing this scalpel technique for a month now, so I recorded some vids to show my progress. This is also the first video outing of my new Death Warrior .

Here's the outside picking exercise from Stetina. I like to think this is a little cleaner than previously:

And here's exercise 25 (again!). I think the string changes are cleaner. Unfortunately, that's at the expense of a bit more uncontrolled noise:

Finally, as promised, here's me just jamming around without a metronome. As becomes pretty obvious. This is why I think I need to practice so much :

All comments, criticisms and advice appreciated!

[ginsambo]

There is a bit of being stronger with your left hand needed, such as a stronger vibrato whilst holding bends or doublestops and stronger, clearer, more precise and faster pull offs and hammer ons with all fingers, but nothing that couldn't be cured with a few weeks practice given your experience. In fact this is something you need to consistantly practice to keep your chops up, otherwise everyone gets a bit arithitic and clumsy. But the crux of it is your right hand and arm movement.

I would LEARN that SVR Rude Mood, it will teach you to loosen up as all the main rhythms and the soloing fills are all based with the same hand movements and timings.

Also try and break solos and riffs down in your head, in terms of timing and beats, this will help your brains cognitive rhythmic functions. Most importantly, by doing so, you will be able to make sense of stuff and thus remember it mentally, thus so you can progress. If you can't remember the timings and pulse of solos you'll never progress. For example say the Randy Rhoads Mr Crowley solo, he was a great rhythmic player BTW, including the universal blues riff at the start, is just groups of six notes Da da da da da da - Da da da da da da. You can then add in accents like Da da Da da da da or Da da da Da da da to make it sound slightly different or augment the pulse of it. All the G string bend in the blues riff does is substitute/play the first two notes out of the six.

Then take No Bone Movies, the solo starts off in groups of eight notes. It's not rocket science mate, but alot of what you try to acheive comes from listening to it by breaking it down. No matter how notes change and how many semi quavers are randomly introduced mid bar, you should always try and break them down into sections, based on the beats and the rhythmic pulse, otherwise it can sound like nothing.

At the moment you have bitty left hand and tapping show off one stop pieces and adversely loose jangly rhythms where you fail to hit or accentuate the right notes. It ain't bad, but it's pretty obvious where your weak spot is and what you need to practice. I relate to this because I have been there too/am still there on occasion.

Also you need to stand up and play. Sitting down is for poofs or recording stuff you can barely pull off.

Now you know all this already and I think you have timing already but you tense up for some reason when it comes to double stop rhythms and picking.

Picking fast, in my opinion is just an extension of rhythm playing, except on one string, you are treating it like a fine, unobtainable science.

I won't comment on your other two vids as solo exercises are not my bag, but look at yourself in the VH number in the last vid. You start off, fluidly moving your shoulder, your arm, elbow and wrist really loosely to get the tapping and especially the harmonics after the tapping to sound controlled and fluid, it continues with the raked harmonics and the first note and sounds great...then as soon as you start to play the picking pieces your 'Oh Shit picking part' schizoid tendency kicks in and you tense everything up and it sounds stuttered and you start missing slightly with the pick. OK, granted this tendency may be your snakeoil solution to picking that you have taight yourself, but I personally reckon it is psychosematic.

It's the same pattern of behaviour in Little Wing, you tense up when you play the double stop fills that require less sweep exaggeration to maybe only hit a couple of notes instead of all six and it sounds shit for it, but whilst your timing is spot on, it's your schiziod tendencies that make it sound out of time.

It's the same pattern with your legato pieces in what might have been an extract from a 'Since I've been loving you' type thingy, the left hand is great, the right hand, although only picking a few notes out of the pull off legato is tense and you can hear it in the notes.

Playing the Mr Crowley rhythm riff you are tensed up again, so you it sounds to shit and you can't fluidly go to the fills and treat them the same as the rhythm. Although no doubt you were winging that one. Yet Crazy Train you get looser on again.

Also your last VH songs were great, but again, look at what you are doing, your whole arm/shoulder/wrist is loose and moving! Yet those riffs do require a fair degree of accuracy and control to play like they sound good. Hence why I think you are Schiziod.

And what happend to the Mr Crowley solo?

Seriously, LEARN RUDE MOOD. It will teach you to dive on in there on any string, and not be afraid of doing it! There is no major difference in techniqiue when playing good rhythms to playing solos, it should all be fluid and you should be able to dive on in there and play rhythmic fills or solos inbetween playing rhythms, whilst keeping the pulse going. Check out Paul Gilbert instructional stuff, especially on rhythmic playing, as he is a great teacher and places a lot of emphasis on the importance of that. Not everything should be rhythmic granted, but it will teach you to loosen up and dive on in there and hit the right notes and give you a feel of how you can play things efficiently and the pulse and this in turn will help you pick faster or pick what you want, when you want.

Seriously I think the biggest thing holding you back is not your inability, but yourself. Remember it's OK to talk to yourself, it's just when you start arguing with yourself it is possibly time to seek help..

Loosen up, don't differentiate soloing to rhythm playing in terms of style or technique and play the two as a group whilst tapping your foot to a beat and check out Paul Gilbert.

What I do when I am sliding a bit is to play slowly to work stuff out that will push me to get where I am liking what I am hearing. Playing slow at first is important, as you not only hear how the notes fit to the beat but also get your technique right.

And solo fill between riffs. Take Feel your love for example, what I hear over the verse are question/answer based licks say, first based in A major blues licks followed by an answer afformation in E minor pentatonic, then the same in E major-E minor. I think that he what he also did in the solo, it's generic but sounds right. Also as well as improvising in time, by slowing yourself down you can also work out runs that are less rhythmic but will sound good and fit exactly to the semiquaver. All that hapens when you improve is you do it in real time and have more of an expectation about the notes you select.

This looser, rhythmic improvising basis, is definitely the way to practice rather than trying to pin your technique down with strict exercise regimes to improve your technique.

Also, I think someone mentioned something about being able to uppick as well as downpick. This is right, whilst I wouldn't get hung up on starting with uppicks etc for solo stuff, you could try playing doublestop with driving pedal tone rhythms, such as You're in Love Ratt or I don't Know or Steal Away the Night or the Crazy Train verse etc with an uppick to get your body parts used to the feel and sound of it. You could also introduce a bit more snap and honk by uppicking various parts of blues riffs.

Picking fast, it's like bricklaying, the more you concentrate on levelling each and every brick, rather than the course you are laying, the slower you will become and actually, the more difficult it will be as the mortar is sucked dry, the crappier the wall will look and the more time you will have to spend remedying and bodging it up. Just treat it as if you are playing rhythms, over time your'll get your eye in for the level, or lack of other noise in this case and you'll find your technique improves naturally and naturally becomes more efficient, if in your mind's eye, you can hear the pulse of the notes first.

I don't think your timing in your head is bad at all, I just think it's the fact that you don't quite know where you are going with stuff because you are not hearing the pulse of things, so therefore not remembering the pulse of things and thus not progressing more rapidly, as you are too obsessed with technique. Not to say the scalpel stuff is a waste of time, just you'd be better off relaxing and hearing a Da da da da da da or something and then playing it, rather than excluding that and just focusing on each note pick. Also test yourself, sing a solo you love out loud in sections. If you can't do that, you'll be mad to think that you'll be able to play it (The notes you sing don't have to be in tune, in fact they can be in mono tone, but they must be in time), but singing in tune will also take you to a whole other level. You'll be amazed how much easier it is to pick any combination of notes on any strings, once you can break it down into rhythmic chunks, say Da da da da da da etc. As I say, it is all in the head really and if you distract your mind and concentrate solely on the Da da da da da da rhythm/solo chunks, then you won't be tensing up and worrying about hitting the notes accurately, thus your technique will just evolve and improve naturally.

[Cliff]

Hey Ginsambo,
Thanks so much for taking the trouble to listen and for such a detailed critique. There are so many good points in here it's going to take me some time to digest them all. I've already read through this twice, I'm sure I'll be doing it again. I think you're analysis of my weaknesses is very astute.
Funny, after reading what you said I went back and watched the vid again on youtube. My wife happened to be passing by and said, "hey that sounds pretty good". Then "hey, he's got your guitar!". She actually thought it sounded better than I normally play .
The Mr Crowley solos? It was too terrible for me to include, even by my own low standards . (As was the intro to Aint Talking About Love, which, to my shame, I still can't play properly.)
Actually, nearly all the rhythm parts there are things I learned years ago (and have now forgotten). These days I've been concentrating almost exclusively on single-note stuff. Need more of a balance.

[ginsambo]

I'm only using what worked for me as an example. Probably much like the blind leading the blind, but I felt obliged to write something, didn't realise it'd turn into another essay again.

[javert]

Ginsambo, if they'd count characters or words instead of posts on here, you'd be way ahead of RacerX!

Cliff, I think you need to forget about all these exercises for a while and simply go play music with some other people. I did exercises for a couple of years after I started playing again and it did wonders for me, but I also hit a wall, and I can honestly say that I developed way more in the past couple of years by playing with my band than I ever though possible. I can certainly relate to some of the mental brickwalls you seem to hit.

[Cliff]

You mean go... go outside!? I dunno man...

[javert]

Yeah, I know... I'm not crazy about that either!