What do all these mad practice sessions have to do with being able to jam along with brian may and slash to tie your mother down?! Ive written about 6 or 7 riff based songs purely through analysis of a wide variety or bands methods. I can solo all over the fret board using blues, pent, and major scales. I know modes from analysing solos and how they get flavour from emphasising particular notes at particular times.
Put it this way, if you sat a person who'd never played before, showed him the tab of a range of songs, and then asked him to write a song.. i bet he'd do ok. Look at the beautiful symmetry of the tabbed representation of sweet child o mine intro!! Or the progressive pattern to "Welcome home" intro by metallica.
It seems to me too many people stray from what sounds good to what is technically good. Take slash, he never sweep picks, always uses basic common scales in common fret positions and rarely plays barre chords. He has a raw approach to guitar that probably stemmed out of years and years of listening to music as well as playing. Joe perry is the same, he writes awesome solos that are defined by the way he plays notes as opposed to the actual notes, take "dude(looks like a lady)" solo for example.
I was chatting to the guy in my local music store and i was like "hey! youve never heard me play!!", he was laughing at my liking for ZZ top. He said "ok, so can you sweep?"
The sight of slash running on stage and whipping out a killer blues based solo off the cuff along to tie your mother down is way more impressive than standing in front of your pals and doing a few sweeps!
I guess it depend on what stuff your into playing but when these forums are littered with people desperate to "shred" i get annoyed! Its like people who judge how good a driver you are by the fastest youve been!
Later Kriss
PS - Its my birthday today so am prolly just grumpy