Hardest thing you learned/perfected on guitar?

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mooncobra

mooncobra

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I have been playing since around age 10. I am 40 now. I used to practice like a madman!! I would do finger exercises for at least an hour, sometimes two before I actually started jamming along to a record or learning a solo, or something along those lines. I have worked on many solos, riffs, slide stuff, finger picking, sweeps, etc. over the years. But to me, the thing that took me the longest to get where I was happy with was good vibrato on a bend. To make vibrato sound really good when you are doing a bend took me years before I was happy with it. I am talking about bending up, not back. if you are just putting vibrato on a note, or bending the string back towards the edge of the fretboard, that is a lot easier to put good vibrato on, at least to me. What I mean is if you are bending the B string upwards toward the thicker E string.(just to make it clear or if I am confusing someone) It took me a long time before I was happy with mine. A really long time. Out of all the things I have learned, to me, this was the hardest to perfect.

What about you guys? What did you try over and over again? What took you weeks, months, or even years to perfect?? Post it, I am curious. I know a lot of you guys will probably think, "vibrato? is he serious?," but I am not joking. Maybe I am too anal about things. To me, there are only a handful of top guitarists who make it sound truly amazing, with a lot of feel on it. Of course, there is a difference between good vibrato and truly mind boggling vibrato. it is such a simple concept, but man, the second you hear vibrato in a lead, you can usually tell who is playing. Vibrato is very distinct from guitarist to guitarist. Well, I always found it difficult to get vibrato I was happy with.
 
I can agree with the vibrato. There will always be things I can not master or pull off and things I don't even try to learn.

Vibrato however is something I have been doing for a very very long time and still feel it is a weak spot.

I do it alot in the sense of using it with a pinch harmonic. I can do them, I can get them to sound good but what I can not do is to bend them so widely and fast such as someone like Adam Dutkewitz from Killswitch Engage or Zach Wylde. Those guys do it so well. I have been playing for about 20 years, learned the pinch harmonic maybe 16 years ago and still can not and probably will never be able to do it like those guys.
 
I've recently been trying to adapt more with playing without a pick. It takes some getting used to but I feel like I get a lot of touch sensitivity(no pun intended) with playing sans pick.
 
Vibrato wasn't that rough for me...I just started doing it and doing it and pretty soon it was on everything I wrote...I could always hear in my head where I wanted it to go, and now it's pretty much 2nd nature.

What worked me over for the longest time was really fast gallops, cleanly and precisely, at like 180-220 BPM (think Disposable Heroes by Metallica). I could hear it on records but couldn't do it for a long time...it took me what felt like forever to be able to do it in the rhythms I wanted to use, but it's one of those things about guitar that once you get it, it's there forever and now I can't NOT do it.....it's pretty much a part of every metal riff I write....might take a while to build up to it, but they're always in there.
 
Phrasing and vibrato to me is what sets guitar players apart !!
I think the thing about vibrato is that it has to be felt !!
Many fast players with no heart and soul they got no real vibrato !!
Vibrato comes from deep withen !
Love that sound when a player really digs in !!
 
Timing, I have severe white guy syndrome. I can't keep track of a beat in my head and play at the same time to save my life. My foot speeds up and slows down as I play. It's so bad that I can't even free lance any playing on the go with a drummer. It has to be a song I know and have played with a record a million times, or forget it, it's that bad.

I hate to say it but "playing" the guitar doesn't do it for me anymore. It's the chase of cool/collectable gear that draws me in and keeps me involved in the hobby.
 
I'll just echo everyone else. Vibrato and timing. Truly great vibrato and timing can make even hack phrasing and licks sound incredible. And there are many different types and colors of vibrato.
 
+1 on timing. Played bass first, but rarely with a really good drummer. By the time the mid 80's rolled around and I switched to thrash rythym guitar, I got one of the first cheaper drum machines. Woodshedded for 2 years with it and had it down pat. I dont really have the swing or feel I had as a bassist (I.e. before/after/on the beat). I am more of a mechanical/machine type player now having 30 years of playing thrash with a drum machine.

Tuning by ear to a "perfect" 440 A that I could hum off the top of my head took a couple of years to acquire. I know that sounds crazy, but being able to pick an A out of the air is an acquired skill.
 
For me it way Yngwie Malmsteen technique. When I first started guitar it was EVH and RR for me....I had Eruption down after in my first year of playing and a bunch of EVH and Rhoads solos under my belt. In order to play up to speed I cheated a lot with my pick hand and used a lot legato, even in places where it wasn't required. Then Yngwie comes out and makes me look like an idiot as I never played flowing sweeping arpeggios or fast, muted and alternate picking stuff.

I decided to learn Yngwie's "Far Beyond the Sun" which was nearly impossible for me at the time with my poor pickhand technique. I made a conscious decision I will not cheat and just rely on the speed in my fret hand. I used this track as training...I tabbed the entire song out and began memorizing sections of it in slow time. I also began playing scales/modes with a metronome focusing on my pickhand and alternate picking and gradually upping the bpm's. I'd do 3,4 and 6 note sequences and every possible combinations. This worked wonders for me. It took a long while but I accomplished what I wanted. Even when I wasn't playing shreddy stuff if I felt my technique was losing something (you do lose if you don't use) I'd practice with a metronome and get er back up to speed in no time.
 
For me it's the bendy, heavy feel type licks. I can play them but have a tough time memorizing it. I can memorize leads and runs that use modes,scales sweeps and all of that for days. But trying to memorize Angus leads or Allman Brothers stuff is hard.It's like you have remember the feel of it, or it just sounds like bend, bend,double stop bend, bend ect. Ive been trying to nail the Blue Sky lead for probably a year. I have the notes memorized, just not the feel and phrasing.
 
Shawn Lutz":2l2u8c7g said:
For me it way Yngwie Malmsteen technique. When I first started guitar it was EVH and RR for me....I had Eruption down after in my first year of playing and a bunch of EVH and Rhoads solos under my belt. In order to play up to speed I cheated a lot with my pick hand and used a lot legato, even in places where it wasn't required. Then Yngwie comes out and makes me look like an idiot as I never played flowing sweeping arpeggios or fast, muted and alternate picking stuff.

I decided to learn Yngwie's "Far Beyond the Sun" which was nearly impossible for me at the time with my poor pickhand technique. I made a conscious decision I will not cheat and just rely on the speed in my fret hand. I used this track as training...I tabbed the entire song out and began memorizing sections of it in slow time. I also began playing scales/modes with a metronome focusing on my pickhand and alternate picking and gradually upping the bpm's. I'd do 3,4 and 6 note sequences and every possible combinations. This worked wonders for me. It took a long while but I accomplished what I wanted. Even when I wasn't playing shreddy stuff if I felt my technique was losing something (you do lose if you don't use) I'd practice with a metronome and get er back up to speed in no time.
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After your first year of playing you had eruption down? Wow. After my first year, I was nowhere near playing eruption. And I played a ton, easily 3 hours a day. I didn't attempt solos at all actually, I was busy learning riffs and songs. I guess I thought there was an order to things. Once I did start finger exercises lead work came much easier.
 
Shawn Lutz":3f9pjy74 said:
For me it way Yngwie Malmsteen technique. When I first started guitar it was EVH and RR for me....I had Eruption down after in my first year of playing and a bunch of EVH and Rhoads solos under my belt. In order to play up to speed I cheated a lot with my pick hand and used a lot legato, even in places where it wasn't required. Then Yngwie comes out and makes me look like an idiot as I never played flowing sweeping arpeggios or fast, muted and alternate picking stuff.

I decided to learn Yngwie's "Far Beyond the Sun" which was nearly impossible for me at the time with my poor pickhand technique. I made a conscious decision I will not cheat and just rely on the speed in my fret hand. I used this track as training...I tabbed the entire song out and began memorizing sections of it in slow time. I also began playing scales/modes with a metronome focusing on my pickhand and alternate picking and gradually upping the bpm's. I'd do 3,4 and 6 note sequences and every possible combinations. This worked wonders for me. It took a long while but I accomplished what I wanted. Even when I wasn't playing shreddy stuff if I felt my technique was losing something (you do lose if you don't use) I'd practice with a metronome and get er back up to speed in no time.
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Oh yeah, if I don't keep up on exercises, my technique suffers for sure. I had a bad car accident, and when I was trying to throw myself out the window when the car was rolling down a near vertical hill, the car rolled over my forearm, and it was my fretting hand. My arm was still attached, but just barely, skin was holding it on, that's it. After that, I had to relearn a lot of stuff. My muscle memory was way off. It took me a long time to get back to normal, but I am still probably only around 85% of where I used to be. I am cool with that though, my greatest fear was that I would not be able to play guitar again. That would have truly been horrible. When ever I pick up a guitar, its the most fun and time consuming thing I could do. I can play for hours and LOVE every minute of it, even warm up exercises. There are not a lot of hobbies that you can do from childhood to old age. Guitar is one of them. You can always earn more, and I have never felt like I hit a plateau. There is always an interesting lick, riff, technique that I am itching to investigate or learn.
 
Bends & vibrato was not that difficult .... It is when you do both at the same time it gets complex.
 
stephen sawall":2amjgrnt said:
Bends & vibrato was not that difficult .... It is when you do both at the same time it gets complex.
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That's exactly what I am talking about. Bends on their own are easy, but to put good vibrato with good feel on it, very difficult. Here is some vibrato that is think is KILLER!! DR has AMAZING vibrato!!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ttb-vCzAKB0
 
Yes .... Getting full control of that takes some work. Being able to control the width, speed & clarity .... It can make very melodic vocal feel. Most guitar player regardless of how long they have played can not do it all. I have been working on this technique for 33 years..... I usually can do it..... Other times it flubs on me. I consider it my trademark sound. There is so many variations that can be done.
 
Yep, vibrato.and bending to pitch. Worked on it for years and still am very cautious of it while I'm playing. If there's one thing I can't stand listening to its the "nervous" sounding vibrato with no soul and out of tune bending.

I'm still trying to perfect vibrato during bends. still haven't nailed it where I can hit them consistently.. Doug makes it seem so easy!
 
For me the hardest thing was the transition from playing in rehearsal/live to recording in the studio. Vibrato, timing, and bending are good examples of this (since everyone else is mentioning this). While playing my amp in my space with my live settings for delay and walking around my rig I got used to certain feel, attack, depth and definition. Recording dry through the mics, into the interface and computer, and back out the monitors changes that feel, attack, depth and definition. My vibrato and bends sounded completely different...almost as if it wasn't even me playing and it just sounded wrong. I couldn't recreate these things when recording and I became very conscious of how bad it sounded. I ended up "shrinking" my vibrato and bending much less. I tried adding plug-in delay while tracking (while still recording the dry tone), but it wasn't the same.

Now that I've actually been recording in my own basement for the past 6-7 years has certainly helped, but it's still not the same. At least now I don't have to pay to record my bad vibrato and lame bends. :lol: :LOL:
 
I'd have to say, how to get paid enough to make a living playing the thing. Definitely a separate art than becoming proficient on the instrument.
 
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