1st, there is nothing wrong with remaining an intermediate player. I think that would describe most players actually. You already have a lot of stuff down with the exception, if I may be bold, of discipline. That is probably why you are not getting those solos memorized. It takes practice after practice after practice to play a lick smoothly. If you are still thinking about the lick as you play it, you haven't drilled it into muscle memory.

Check out Red House by Hendrix. It is an awesome tune with so many good licks you can use again and again over lots of stuff, it should be something every player has in the bag. The song is deceptive in that it is not a fast song, but there are parts of it where Jimi is getting a bunch of notes in over a very short piece of time and this takes a lot of work to get down. 

Other than that, I wouldn't know what else to suggest because I don't know where you want this to go. As I said, you already have a lot you can do and if you joined us for a jam you could probably fit right in.

But if you want to know what my practice time looks like, it goes something like this:

Learning a new song or part of a song
Writing and recording my own songs
Picking up songs by ear - something new I just started. So I put on a song and try to find the chords and play along to the song. I don't care about strum pattern so much, just that I have the right chords and my timing is spot on. In my head I would like to be like someone I play with. Mark can listen and just start playing the chords by ear. That would be awesome and something to work towards. For now I have to go down the 6th string note by note. Its take a lot of work, but it is very satisfying to "find a song on the guitar" on my own. 

Good luck

Edit:

This guy just popped up in my YouTube feed. I've never heard of him, but he is pretty much on message... gotta love these old muscians lol

https://youtu.be/2YLfj0Xub8I?si=dDEGgkmyWJhx9IwM

edited 5 months ago