Feeling a little bummed about my playing right now

[Dinosaur David B]

 

Yeah. What worked best for me was when I got GuitarPro. This was mostly for lead things like licks and runs, but it would work for rhythm work too. I resisted buying it at first, but when I finally bit the bullet, I found that I made more progress, faster with GP than with any other system I'd ever tried in my prior decades of playing. And I had tried a lot. Tascam Guitar Trainers that would slow down audio files so you could learn the licks (almost useless), straight clicks, drum machines that played backing tracks -- these are good, too, for the practical application side. They all had uses, but none of them made the impact of improving my playing that GP did. 

You can get GP TAB, or manually TAB out what you're working on, and GP will play the notes back to you (in metronomic time). You just play along with the notes at any tempo that suits you. For me, it feels like you're just playing along with target sequence of notes, but the click is always there for reference too. You can start it as slow as you need it until you get comfortable with the sequence, then increase the tempo as needed.

For me, this was a big upgrade over just a click. You're not actually reading the TAB in real-time. But if you can hear the target notes played back to you -- the way they're supposed to sound -- in-time, you can play along with them by ear. And unlike with just a click you can hear whether you're nailing it or not because you're playing along with a correct target. A few months of this will improve your timing dramatically (even if that's not your primary goal).

[Tatosh Guitar]

 

Yeah. What worked best for me was when I got GuitarPro. This was mostly for lead things like licks and runs, but it would work for rhythm work too. I resisted buying it at first, but when I finally bit the bullet, I found that I made more progress, faster with GP than with any other system I'd ever tried in my prior decades of playing. And I had tried a lot. Tascam Guitar Trainers that would slow down audio files so you could learn the licks (almost useless), straight clicks, drum machines that played backing tracks -- these are good, too, for the practical application side. They all had uses, but none of them made the impact of improving my playing that GP did. 

You can get GP TAB, or manually TAB out what you're working on, and GP will play the notes back to you (in metronomic time). You just play along with the notes at any tempo that suits you. For me, it feels like you're just playing along with target sequence of notes, but the click is always there for reference too. You can start it as slow as you need it until you get comfortable with the sequence, then increase the tempo as needed.

For me, this was a big upgrade over just a click. You're not actually reading the TAB in real-time. But if you can hear the target notes played back to you -- the way they're supposed to sound -- in-time, you can play along with them by ear. And unlike with just a click you can hear whether you're nailing it or not because you're playing along with a correct target. A few months of this will improve your timing dramatically (even if that's not your primary goal).

 

Thanks. Great suggestion. I still have GuitarPro around. I remember I liked it when I used it, but that was a while ago and I don't think I ever saw the benefits you describe. Once I found out you could vary the speed on YT videos, I moved to those. Now I am rethinking my approach LOL. 

 

[Dinosaur David B]

I sometimes vary the speed on the YT videos when I'm playing along with a YT backing track, but it isn't the same as just looping one sequence in GP and playing along with the target notes until you really get it down.

But if it's something like licks, once you have it mechanically in time and up to speed in GP, you still have to do the practical application part of trying it in real world scenarios against backing tracks (these days I use YT because I'm on the laptop anyway) of varying tempos. Because any given lick is only going to sound right/good against certain tempos and time signatures. And it's up to you to figure that out to where it's instinctive, and you only bust it out where it works. Backing tracks let you do that trial and error work. For example, you may find a lick works great between 120-180bpm, but sounds lousy or foolish slowed to 80-100bpm. And on the other side, you may find I can only play this lick up to about 140 before I've hit my speed limit. And that's just tempo.

If the time signature has a different feel, you'll have to adjust for that too. But once you can play it in GP, you'll be able to move it around till you figure out where you can and can't use it.