Hello Everyone. Just thought I'd say hello and a few lines about myself. I've always wanted to play guitar, but never really got serious about it. So now I'm just about 40 and I've decided to put some hard work into it whenever I can. I'm an old metal head at heart, but enjoy all kinds of music, rock, blues, classical, neoclassical and the list goes on. I work away from home, so when I'm back home on a month's leave, I've decided to put 2 or 3 hours a day into learning what I can. To me important is to learn it right and not how fast I can play it at first. Any advice is most welcome, cause it's kind of hard to know where to start and to self assess myself as far as my playing abilities are concerned.

The gear I use:
Gibson Flying V
ESP LTD
Epiphone LP
Washburn Acoustic
Cube 80 XL Amp
Pandora synthesizer

As far as my musical goals are concerned: I'd love to understand how music theory works and its building blocks and be able to comfortably apply it into my playing. I've learned a few songs and scales from tab, but don't have the understanding of how it was built and why it sounds the way it does, as if everything is in the right place, "if that makes sense".

I've always loved music and it has been a huge part of my life, ever since I have been about 11 years old. I enjoy listening to artist such as:
Judas Priest, Iron Maidon, Accept, Megadeth, Metallica, Stone Sour, G&R, Helloween, Merciful Fate, AC/DC, Alice in Chains, Amorphis, Jeff Loomis, Neurosis and many more. I really love the style of Neoclassical Metal and I do have a goal of being able to play canon rock smoothly some day.

Welcome to GMC man Looks like you've got quite a collection! It's good to see you have an interest in a wide range of artists and styles. If you go to the guitar lessons tab, you can view lessons by genre or difficulty

Welcome, Kal!

Thanks for the warm welcome. I'm sure I'll get used to navigating round the site and am beginning my first lesson from it today. Considering that it'll be after my shift at work, "yep, brought my guitar with me to Ethiopia", it'll only be about an hour, but that's more than no practice at all. Greetings from the Primal

Absolutely right! One hour is precious as hell when You don;t have too much free time One hour of good practice everyday is quite nice comparing to how much time per week spend some of my friends

Welcome to the site, Kalkilla! Hope you enjoy your stay

Welcome to GMC Kalkilla, see you around the forum!

Hi & welcome to the site! If you check my lessons, I mostly cover the style of different bands and give my approach of how I analyse their music to create music of my own. This is the topic for this month at my Vchat sessions so check the front page schedule and be sure to join one of my sessions.

These are some threads that you should check:

Mentoring program:
http://www.guitarmasterclass.net/guitar_fo...showtopic=43110

REC program:
http://www.guitarmasterclass.net/guitar_fo...p?showforum=152

Theory guide:
http://www.guitarmasterclass.net/guitar_fo...showtopic=47852

and Marcus Lavendell lessons to explore Neoclassical style:

http://www.guitarmasterclass.net/instructo...rcus-Lavendell/

Welcome to GMC! This is an amazing community of guitar players. I"ve yet to find any place that compares to be honest. Also, you sound like you are on the right track with your plan. Putting in time each day to get better is really what it takes!

Todd

If there's one thing I regret, it is not practicing (almost at all) in the last 5-6 years if not more. So much wasted time that I could have spent on getting better!

Hello and thanks for the input.
I shall certainly look into it. It felt different, "more disciplined", sitting down yesterday to practice. I started off with a good warm up, then one position of the E Harmonic minor and actually learned a simple melodic solo from the site which really left me feeling good about it. I really look forward to learning and eventually advancing in my playing.

Rock on

Glad to hear you are already working hard That sense of accomplishment that we get at the end of a day, when someone would ask us: 'hey, what have you learned today?' and we can just pick up the guitar and show them, is totally amazing. I think that you should be able to do this every single day in which you practice It doesn't have to be something very complex, necessarily, but it has to be something. A chord, a phrase - anything

Welcome to GMC - great musical tastes, if I may say so !!

You're doing the right thing. Giving yourself bite size little chunks to learn. That way you can keep feeling the sense of achievement without overloading your shoulders with too much.

Whenever you feel ready to start tackling vibrato and string bending get in touch.. I've got some lessons that bust the techniques down to ultra manageable