why am i showin no progress?

[iommi]

Hello,
I have been playing for a year now and nothing,absolutely nothin in my playin impresses me
I pratice for usually 3 hrs a day ...6 hours on holidays(and in the last 15 days) But nothing seems to improve my playin skills
I play scales,chords,use a metronome,and do everything i can...but here seems to be my list of woes
Can't keep rhythm
Can't play clean despite playin scales cleanly at 200 bpm
One year and still haven't played one full song!
Can't get correct intonation in bends..Can't even push up for a full bend(Ok..I couldn't even find out if i was pushin enough..couldn't note any similarity in pitch..so Used a Tuner program and sorta found out how much i should push..Not even sure if it's right!)
Despite learnin much abt chord progressions,substitutions,strum patterns..I still can't put togehter a piece which sounds good
I've kept my cool abt not bein able to play songs...but it's been way too long..and pressure's pilin up :(
Does everyone experience such troubles?
In case u were wonderin what songs i tried to play ..they are songs bY Deep Purple,Black Sabbath,Led Zeppelin,Joe Satriani,Eric Johnson
(cliffs of dover in particular...can't even get past the intro :( )

In case anyone reads this thanks for sharing my miseries..I just had to pour it out....

[Creeping_Death]

You may want to try going to lessons, get a professional to tell you why you're not improving

[55'gibby]

let me make a couple of assumptions here:

1) your self taught (maybe a few lessons)
2) you play alone in your "bedroom"
3) you compare what your playing to what you guitar hero plays

what I would suggest for starters:

1) find one SIMPLE song, learn the chords and words and play it straight thru front to back. just the basic chords and you singing along, even if you can't sing. don't get fancy, don't try to impress ANYONE. just learn and play that one song. after you learn that one song, learn a second.
2) find someone else to play with, find a drummer, bassist, tuba player.... ANYONE!!! your not forming a band here, your jamming with other people. do some freeform jamming, do some simple arrangements, read the music right off the sheets to play along, it doesn't matter.
3) your guitar hero is a PRO, he/she has spent years working this stuff out with the aid of other musicains, engineers, crowds, and a host of other people. he/she has big bucks to tailor his/her equipment to create a tone, and engineers and studio tricks to make it work and sound just right. if you had this at your diposal you would be much better too.

don't quit cuz you hit "the wall", change what your doing... KEEP PLAYIN'

[55'gibby]

one thing I see a lot in guitarist that have been playing of only a short while is the syndrome of practicing too much, not playing enough. I see lots of posts here that go like "I do 45mins of scales, 30 mins of tapping,...." I never see anything like "45 mins of playing songs (whole songs, not peices), 45 mins of learning songs (whole songs, not peices)". I haven't spent much time with the power pratice lessons here, but, if they are anything like the others I've seen, the can be very valuable to any guitarist. use them to get the most out of your practice time so you can free up time for playing. I have known "bedroom gods" who couldn't play a lick with a band if thier lives depended on it. remember you practice to make your playing better, but, if you don't take time to play....


you tell people you play the guitar, not, practice the guitar.

[Levinson Blade]

I found playing with other musicians a great help i jam at least once a week with 2 guys one plays guitar and the other plays bongo and man its great just to go with the flow and see where it takes you

[sula]

As for the suggestion of playing a simple song, that seems to work for me. I got a guitar for my birthday 3.5 weeks ago from my friends and they gave me a simple song, 3 chords, to play. I managed to get through it, and now can play a four chord song, though not the middle part. that is counting crows "round here". I can strum a little and it's quite boring to listen to, but yeah, find something simple, open chords not a lot of movement up and down the fret board (for me NO movement is good movement). and then relax, take it easy on yourself. Every time you learn something new, you always reach a plateau of no improvement. just stick it through. (honestly, you can't be that bad if you play as much as you do)

[fizz]

Yea - you tend to learn things from other musicians when you jam with them.

[iommi]

I haven't got any chance to jam as of yet..But i am continuing to learn stuff with as much interest i previously had..After all who cares if i can play songs or not..i need to compose songs :)
Thanks for all the replies

[Black Star]

Originally posted by iommi
I haven't got any chance to jam as of yet..But i am continuing to learn stuff with as much interest i previously had..After all who cares if i can play songs or not..i need to compose songs :)
Thanks for all the replies

excellent attitude man, composing is where it's at. i mean learn parts of songs to gather ideas and create your own, but just learning a bunch of songs is a waste of time IMO.

[55'gibby]

I have to agree that learning songs just to learn songs isn't a great way to use your time. but, there is no better way to learn composition than learning songs. there has to be a thousand ways to put together a simple 1,4,5... and by looking at different ways someone else has put then together is a great way to see how you can put them together.

also you have to remember that the one of the main objectives here is to play music... either on stage or for your freinds. they want to hear songs. If you wrote them all the better. almost every band I've been in has done covers of other peoples music. learning composition has and is a big help in doing some re-arranging so you can make that song your own.

I write about 40 or 50 songs a year, and, I find this more rewarding than learning this solo or that riff. so your right, composing is where it's at for me. I have to admit about 90% of the songs I write are garbage. but that gives me 4 or 5 good songs to add to my play list. remember you can play a gig for a night with about 40 songs. what better way to spice up a play list than adding a new original.

[eische]

hmmmm, I may sound wierd, but try and give yourself at least one day off and then start anew......it happens to me sometimes that I'm working and working on a song and nothing improves, always the same mistakes......but after a day off, it suddenly falls into place - it mustn't be 100 percent correct then, but it normally is much better than before......sometimes the learning needs to settle in an undisturbed mind.....

[The Fury]

Yeah eische, I do that too. When I get stuck in a rut, I take a few days off and then things seem loads better once I start again. I don't really know why though.

[gck]

I think I can help you a bit with your problem with bends: if you can't hear that you've bent to the correct pitch, just repeat the "target" pitch of your bend on an adjacent string: for example, if you fret a G on the G string, 12th fret and want to bend it a step to an A which would be on the 14th fret, bend the G string up and then play the 10th fret on the B string which is also an A and check wether the bent pitch and the clean pitch on the B string crash or not: if they crash, your bend is off. Adjust until the two strings sound totally unison.
I'm sure you will develop a "feel" for correct bend intonation soon, where you just know that you've hit the correct intonation, partially because of the feeling in your hands, and, of course, you *hear* that the pitch is correct. But until that comes (which takes different amounts of time for different people) crosscheck wether you are bending correctly with the above trick often.

[iommi]

@ gck:

SOrry abt takin my time to reply.....I generally take time to check out things ....

Can u just tell me what crash means?well when u bend d'ya no longer think abt the pitch and stuff like that?Does it come naturally?Do u push the same amount for various strings to get the desired pitch?
I have absolute no musical background and i couldn't differentiate the guitar and bass sound till a year ago!

Thanks to all the people for great replies...I wouldn't be playin half as good as i am now without u people

[gck]

Originally posted by iommi

Can u just tell me what crash means?


Yes. By "crashing" I mean the sounding of two pitches played at once where one pitch is very close to the other, but not the same. It sounds like a bit like "swelling" sound. It's kinda hard to describe, but simply try it out by playing an the 5th fret E on the B string and the open high E string, then bend the B string sligthly (less than a halfstep) to know what I mean. That's what I mean by "crashing".



well when u bend d'ya no longer think abt the pitch and stuff like that?Does it come naturally?Do u push the same amount for various strings to get the desired pitch?


No, I don't think about hitting the correct pitch any more when I bend. It's hard to explain, but you will start to simply "know" you are at the target pitch, but it comes more from hearing what you play rather than knowing the exact amount of bending pressure. It's like a combination of those two, you know the approx. amount of pressure you need to exert, and get the "fine-tuning" of your bend by ear then, but it comes very naturally soon. But I'm sure it comes more from hearing the correct note, because when I'm doing pre-bends i.e. bending before plucking the string, I'm often off for a quarter-tone or so and have to adjust once I pick the string.

[Chris Allen]

Hey Iommi,
There's really NO big secret other than PRACTICE, PRACTICE, PRACTICE! Eventually it'l come. Believe me, if there were a "Guitar Player's Steroid", Id be take'n it! Just put in your hours, have FUN, FOCUS,Keep try'n things you think you cant do (practice slow at first getting it down perfect and increase your speed later) and one day youll realise youve gotten much better.

Keep Rock'n!, Chris
the CHRIS ALLEN Power Trip (http://artists.mp3s.com/artists/391/the_chris_allen_power_trip.html)