Question about practicing

First I want to say hello to everyone. This is my first day here and i've been reading some stuff you guys have been posting.

I started playing the guitar in December of last year and have been practicing 3-4 hrs a day, so i dont really know much about guitar. The first 3 months all i did was practice picking. I want to get decent at chords and great at picking, but i dont really know how much i should practice for each. do you guys think i should focus a lot on picking and a little on chords, or both evenly? which do you guys think requires more practice?

thanks

Welcome dude,
i would suggest
85-75: picking, shreds, licks, scales, all that jazz
15-25: rhythm
i feel rhythm is important and i feel it helps all other area's of guitar.
helps you understand what you are soloing to and things like that. you never want to exel in one area to leave another part behind. good luck in becoming the next slash man. he used to practice 8 hours a day, so you better up the dose man!
rock on
Aaron

thanks for the advice man.

gotta get practicing!

Here is some Slash history for you. Slash's mom-black and dad-jewish, he was a minority alright and people thought he was a bit of a looser. In college, before he became Slash, he used to sit on the bleachers and watch the games and play guitar for 8 hours straight. People slowly realized how good he was and he used to have these lil mini concerts at those bleacher.
so there you go man
practice away
hope to hear some posts from you soon.
Aaron

in my opinion the fastest and best way to progress is with tuition. for me it really made a difference. and now its over i really notice a slump in my developement. if that is not possible practice chords, picking technique and rythm for a start.

Hey. Thanks for the help guys. I'll probably start taking lessons in the summer. I've found a lot of picking exercises on the internet but not many chords exercises. I read an essay that said that the best way to improve with chords is to play a chord, slowly lift your fingers up in the same position, put all the fingers back on to the strings at the same time, and keep repeating it. Do you guys know any other methods of practicing chords?

To me there is no 75 percent picking, 25 percent chords...What there is however is picking 1 thing at a time and mastering before you move on. So learn a few chords and master them, learn some picking exercises and master em, what you will find is that you will spend more time on picking before you move on because it is generally harder, although some of those jazz chords are insane.

It pays to have a schedule and goals, but over time what you play will dictate how much time to spend. So if you like slash, your gonna play 50 50 percent because slash does a lot of arpeggios....well mayb 70 30 lol.