brandon239

hey. my names brandon. I've been playing guitar for 10 years and i am at a stand still in my ability. im self taught and id say im about mid-high intermediate level and i have no idea what kind of things i should be learning and practicing to become an advanced level guitarists. i know some basic scales and can improv pretty well by ear even, but i want to be able to absolutely shred like dimebag/yngwie level. what kind of classical scales and arpeggios and sweeping patterns should i be learning to be able to do that. how do i get to the point that i sweep and solo throughout the neck with little effort?

Dnouw

There is no magic button to press. It all takes time and patience. Learn your major and minor scales and which scales are relative to each other as well as to major and minor pentatonic's. Many people want to try to get modal, which is fun for noodling but can leave people lost if they do not truly understand how to use modes. Their is a lot of interconnectivity between the scales i mentioned and using them correctly can help you move up and down the fret easily. For example, a C minor pentatonic and blue can be used with a C pure minor and then D# major. This is example can be used all up and down the fret and has many sweeps and licks to offer. Find a jam track on google that is in the key of C minor and give it a whirl with your basis maybe starting at the C on the 8th fret of the low E string. This may be stuff you already know but I find it is always a good place to start when I get in a rut is to go back to some simple ideas and move forward from there. Also, get outside of your comfort zone musically, check out jazz progressions and blues progressions and jam along with jam tracks paying close attention to the notes that work and the ones that don't. Not that there is anything wrong with going outside, it just takes a advanced musician to go outside tonally and make it fit in the progression. Also, study phrasing from musicians you like as well as ones you may not know of. I recommend Guthrie Govan and Alex Hutchings to really get a feel for phrases. Metronome is KEY as well as you want to be able to phrase as well as play in time. Hope this wall of text helps mate!

supersac

^that wall of text helped me a little

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Bazz22

In the grand scheme of things, 10 years is a very short time to have been playing.

Just stay patient, and keep playing. Think about the kind of music you want to make, or the songs that inspire you, and learn how to play those.

ChucklesMginty

Find a good teacher. A good teacher.

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brandon239

thanks for all the input guys. i do already know the major and minor and pentatonic scales. but im trying to figure out more advanced scales and techniques that i should be learning. can anybody point me in the direction of some useful scales or some tricks with improvising or anything that an advanced level guitarist would need to know. maybe even a sight with useful video lessons

Bazz22

http://www.guitarmessenger.com

That's a really helpful site^

Dnouw

Knowing the scales and using the scales are two different things. It seems that you are having an issue of properly using the scales because you do not need exotic type scales to do what you originally posted. You mentioned Dimebag and he really rode minor penatoics and the major and minor scales in his music.

Geldin

This.

90% of guitar music is written in basic diatonic and pentatonic scales. You might see an exotic scale here and there, but more often than not, it's not present for more than a few bars. I'll bet that the most exotic thing you'll see in rock and metal is a harmonic minor scale. Pentatonics and diatonics can sound plenty interesting; it's just a matter of learning to phrase things well.

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brandon239

i understand the difference in what you are describing. i myself almost always use the harmonic minor scale and make slight variations here and there which i guess would be what you mentioned. i also realize that i wont need to know most of the useless scales out there, but part of my journey to becoming a great guitarists means trying to learn as much as i can so that i can take what i want and leave what i don't

brandon239

Great help! thanks a lot

losing battle

Learn counterpoint, done. you can know every scale and mode in the world and it won't mean dick because you don't understand its context and how it relates to what you are playing.

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brandon239

is there anything that anyone can tell me about positions? sometimes i get lost on the neck and hit a sour note after improvising for a bit, especially around the b string. any good tips or references anyone can point me too?

Zaphod_Beeblebr

There's a couple of things you can do here:

1 - Remember that you are never more than 1 fret away from a note from they key you're in. If you hit a note that's out you can slide it up or down a fret, bend up, hammer on or pull off to a note that's from the scale you're working with. The key is to hit the note with enough confidence that it sounds like you meant to do it. If you can get that right then it will never sound like you made a mistake again.

2 - Learn your scales properly. This is a long and hard process but totally worth it:

learn the notes of the fretboard
learn scales as a series of notes and intervals
apply one of those things to the other and you get a complete map of the fretboard for any scale
The next step from there is one of the ones people miss most: learn the sound of the scale. If you don't learn the sound of the scale you're never going to be able to use it well.

You really should be doing all of those four things at once as well, just to complicate things further.

That said, it's still worth learning the scales up and down the neck as a series of 3-note-per-string shapes but only so you have the physical facility to play the ideas you have, without learning the sounds and theory behind them well there's not a huge amount of point in learning the shapes.

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SimonJames

invest in the best tuition you can afford and practice, practice, practice..... steer clear of methods too

Zaphod_Beeblebr

Uhhh... what?

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Shadowofravenwo

Guitar teacher time?

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