I’ve been playing the guitar (both electric and acoustic) for quite a while now. Come to think about it, I think it’s over 10 years when I bought my first guitar, a horrible Jackson/Charvel superstrat with an awful Floyd Rose-type tremolo. I’ve been playing ever since, but sometimes weeks if not months have passed by without me even touching my guitars. My level as a guitarist is nowhere near where it should be considering the amount of years. I really struggle with leads/solos and my chord strumming is erratic.
For the last year or so, however, there’s been a noticeable growth in my guitar-slinging skills, as we started a (cover) band with a couple of my colleagues. We rehearse weekly and it’s the best thing that’s ever happened to me as a guitarist! Seriously, the best way of learning to play is to play with friends. In our band the only one who really can play is the drummer, and I tend to think that having a good drummer who stays in time really helps me to keep nmy strumming in time as well.
Anyway, that’s a long introduction to the beef of this post. Yesterday I happened to stumble upon a YouTube video about pinch harmonics, a skill I don’t yet master. Even though the quality of the video is sub-par, the content was great, and through that video I ended up on the website of the guy behind that video, justinguitar.com. He has a lot of great stuff there, just by watching (a good deal of) the videos there I learned more on music theory and guitar playing in general than I have learned in the past 10 years combined. Time well spent.
But just watching videos or reading about theory doesn’t help you to ace those soloes. Time to rehearse!