Well, I'm a dumbass and a half. Just when I go and start thinking I'm getting good (not to say I suck) I realize just how much there is actually going into being a great musician. My aspirations are to succeed in mastering as much as I possibly can and on my journey to doing so I learned that I'm a whopping no where near. I've recently baned myself with a stricter practice routine so much as just jam times and due to some events in my life I learned that I should be putting more time towards practice than I have. So, where to start. Also, I like variety, so if anyone could suggest things ranging in skill levels, that'd be great. My complete gratitude is given for the help.

1. Rhythm - I learned that I can't keep with a beat for ****, any suggestions on where to start with learned to keep with a beat?

2. Sweeping - Sweeing looks fun and I sure wish I could do it coherantly, some help for making it sound cleaner would be nice.

3. Legato - Ok, I start playing and when I move higher up on the neck the notes are harder to hear and soon basically seem to cease all sound. Do I need to crank my volume or something?

4. Tapping - Now, I read on another post about 8 finger tapping, I'm not so much of a newbie on tapping, but it could stand to be more comlex and the idea of doing 8 finger tapping legato style just seemed so awesome to me that I'd like to give it a try. Any help is much appreciated.

5. Ear training - ok, I've recently begun attempting to get "perfect pitch" as I guess it's called. I have 12 midi files of all the notes at different octaves on a cd that I listen to at work. If I was to sit there and listen to those notes for X amount of time (x = 8 hours at most but probably not that long because that would just suck) would that be a bad thing or are there better approaches to training my ears?

Ok, I'll leave it at that...Yeah, it's been a while since I've been here, I've just been busier than usual lately. Nice to see you all again and all that other welcome back type crap.