the biological clock

say you practise enough per day
30 mins to so many hours etc.. or till you get bored

on average "if your doing the right thing" how long (months or years) did it
take you to shred??

i'm still in the rut and hating every minute of it,
must admit I've been slacking off heaps due to lack of
progress.

Just a curiousity :)

Try different things that you usually don't do when you practice. This may help you get out of your rut, also help with the boredom. If you want speed, get a metronome and practice building your tempo up.

hehe I've been usiong metromones and scales etc ever since I've started (2 years ago) but I guess I haven't been to faith to the routine. Sigh.

so I've been taking a break from building speed just play songs of interest. Just curious from reading what others posted up on this forum, seems like most can shred and do it well too.

One of techniques i want to do while playing guitar.

Say speaking of playing songs... anyone know any good Jazz/Blues stuff? Fast paced songs usually get me interested, that's why I started playing guitar anyway. I if you know any please do share!

I know what you're going through.

I got so sick and tired of playing metallica's song that I didn't progress for some years.

Then I bought some books on lead guitar. Speed mechanics by troy Stetina was a break point for me. Great exercises in there.

After a year of practicing his stuff, I deceided to stop playing scales and other people music and start playing my own stuff. I did tons of riffs I liked and few songs here and there even joined a death metal band. Learn to play with multiple guitar tracks.

I began to develop my own style and sound. about two years ago I started playing more accoustic songs. then a year after that I started fingerpicking. Saw that I wasn't so bad at that and continued.

Now I deceided to work on my bad habits. I inlisted for online lessons with The Jonezter (guitartrick host and guitar war champion) and I'm now working on mistakes I made and stuck with for the past years.

As you can see I took a lot of paths in my quest for musical knowledge. Maybe you're at a point where you need to try something else. I would suggest playing styles you're not used to but that you like.

Ahh good advice, and matter of fact I'm trying to do that right now. At the moment looking around for some jazz band around the area (Sydney) to join and gig.

Well I haven't been going shopping for some books/videos because I'm a bit skeptical about'em. Think they're all the same and pretty useless. I guess I have to take the step.

Cheers for the replies guys :)

When you hear clear evidence that your practice is paying off it WILL cease to be a chore. Meantime, don't bore yourself with it 'cause you'll develop an aversion to practice and spend long periods of time not practicing followed by impossibly long boring routines which you only do out of a sense of duty and not 'cause it's fun. Little and often is best. Practice what's hard for you, the steeper the learning curve the faster your ascent.
It took me 3 years to start shredding, after the fourth I could play Midnight by Satriani (I learned from tab). AFter 5 years I started practicing sweep picking and wished I'd tried earlier, it's great fun. There are some cool sweep picking postings on this site, check out (for instance) Leandro Spataro (not sure on the last name) and Anthony Layne's postings on this.
I recommend you work on a few different sweeps at the same time. Try them at different paces, it's a surprising fact that (having learned a sweep at interstellar speeds) it can be harder to play it slowly.
Practically anyone can shred if they're dedicated, I'm not Mr Coordination but I CAN shred like a mother so keep practicing.
If you find any more cool sweeps on this site let me know!

Woah! I give you a bow :)

Well I can see the difference, obviously I can play stuff that I couldn't few months ago etc. And learning a song is easier and takes less time to memorise now than before.

But once you can do more things like sweeping, guitar only gets more fun, well that's other level I want to get into sometime soon.

i can only speak for myself - no guarantee that it will work for others too - however..

i once was in some kind of rut too. the thing that helped me out was classical. i started to work on the most difficult pieces i could find. i came arcoss some realy wierd stuff and unusuall scales, strechings, chordfingerings, etc. It was extremely challengeing and helped me within only a few months do make a quantum leap in both shred and precision. for once you can play sh*t like Fank Martin or William Walton, a simple fast scale run will be like kindergarden for you.

Haha, well I'm into probably all the genre you can think of. Still shaking my head in pity listening to rap etc, back in high. :(

At the moment trying almost everthing except for getting a teacher again, which I don't mind getting very soon to clean up my tech's.

Classical? I'll try that.

hmm lets see... started playing in about 1969... was able to shred about 1995.
I play guitar great, I'm just lazy as hell.

I've been playing for 5 years now, and still occasionally get frustrated over what I can't do...
Practice is annoying, irritating, repetitive, you name it.
But once you get to that point where people just look at you, drooling:), saying "How the hell did he do THAT?" makes it all worth it.
That, and the money you get from teaching guitar:)

Dude,

I played mostly rhythm stuff for a good 2 to 3 years playing all sort sof stuff like Slayer, The Smashing Pumpkins, Metallica, and Megadeth. Then i started listening to Malmsteen more and also discovered Jason Becker. Being inspired to be able to play at the level of both Malmsteen and Becker i took up the daunting task to learn how to play insanely fast yet melodic and controled solo guitar. It took me all of a year to build speed up to and not exceeding roughly 320, if i am lucky i can sustain that speed long, but at the same time i realized i was lazy with my finers which were fairly week in the end so the speed was there, but the note clarity was a bit lost. I found that during the time where i was leanring the technique, building coordination and speed it was best to work on a variety of songs and solos of songs i enjoyed playing along to.

Here's my advice,
Number 1, Seek out one insane gutiarist you most admire, Joe Satriani, Malmsteen, Becker, Via, Holdsworth, etc...
Or even something less virtuosoish perhaps a metal song you enjoy or a classical piece. And basically do everything in your power to get that solo perfect.

Number 2 while you are working on learning that one solo practice scales and charomatic scales with a metrinome at a speed of 80 or so. Remember that this is just practice and do everyhting you can to work you hand and inscrease speed. The whole point of charomatic scale exercsie is just that, to give your left hand a work out. Otherwise choose a scale and a position and do runs up and down it in that position wtih different note patterns. 4 note patterns, 5 note patterns, 6 note patterns, 7 ntoe patterns, 8 note patterns, 9 note patterns.

Number 3, Time and patience will pay off.
Results are never immediate, if you live in America you are fairly conditioned to believe otherwise with quick fixes advertised everywhere and forced into your head as very real. When it comes down to it, with instruments unless you are a prodigy painful suffering is in order to gain skill and technical ability. Don't get frustrated, work on some simple stuff that is enjoyable to play and work up to more insane stuff that is fun to play.

Hmm...can't think of too much else,
Hope that helps some dude.

I`ve experienced the same problem, butjust keep on trying. what you can try is to learn flight of the bumblebee real slow. It is packed with cromatics and works both as a warm up and a exercise.