My immediate goals on guitar is probably to get my alternate picking more fluid. At the moment it sounds kinda stacatto and choppy at times. Would also be interested in learning scales and how to apply them to create simple leads. This will probably be enough to keep me occupied for a while haha.
Quick question- do you guys recommend tackling more than one lesson at once? I mean should I be simultaneously practicing various lessons or should I be focusing on one lesson at a time
Tackling more than one lesson at once is ok as some lessons might take some time to settle in. In order not to get bored, it is perfectly fine to rotate several lessons and work on them in parallel. For example you could be working on a solo lesson and a few technique/exercise based ones in parallel in order to get the chops up for use in the solo lesson.
My only suggestion here would be to practice a number of lessons which feels comfortable and fun to you. If you start feeling overwhelmed, try cutting down on amount of things you are working on. Another suggestion would be to pick a lesson which feels doable and fitting your level of playing. This will allow you to focus on it and get down all the details. You could maybe submit one of those lessons in the
REC area for feedback? I'm suggesting this as details matter and it is what takes our playing to the next level. Having this in mind, maybe it is best to mix doable, lessons fitting your level of playing with more difficult, cool sounding "goal lessons". This way you both push your self and work on the details.
About alternate picking, staccato and choppy usually comes from the fretting hand not moving from one note to another in a smooth way. What happens is that you lose pressure on the previous note (fret) when going to another note. This cuts down the vibration and you get a small "pause" in between two notes. Maybe focus only on what the left hand is doing and practice this at a really really slow tempo? The goal is to keep the notes sustained and not make a pause when going from one note to another. Another issue might be synchronization between picking and fretting hand. In case they are not perfectly in sync, it is possible to get this "choppy" vibe when playing as the pick in not picking the note at the right moment left hand is fretting it. For example you can get slightly ahead of the picking hand and just pick a "dead note" or be too behind it so you get to hear a bit of "hammer-on" before you pick the note. Don't worry, this will come into place with some practice. Please just skip to low tempos in order to be able to clean up your playing and focus on details. Hope this helps
When it comes to getting started with leads, one way would be to learn a single scale - let's say a minor pentatonic and then search for a lesson which uses it so that you can learn some licks in that scale. You can first learn the lesson as it is played by the instructor and then just jam over the backing track mixing the licks you learned, putting them into different places and just playing around with notes from the scale. Over time, you'll start to make up your own licks which make sense. Usually there is a phase when leads just suck
....and then they start making more and more sense musically. The more licks you know the easier this transition will be.