QUOTE (Gitarrero @ Jun 27 2008, 04:16 AM)
My weakness is speed when playing solos.
I`ve played rhythm guitar for the last 14 years to all kinds of music, so no problems there, not even with the metal stuff like constant downpicking or galloping.
BUT
when it comes to soloing (which I just started) I have serious speed and picking problems. Legato and tapping stuff sounds good when I do it, so the left hand speed is there. The right hand speed is also there when I play rhythm. But combining the two to create fast runs is impossible at higher speed. One hand is always quicker than the other (but never the same hand...). I don`t know why that is, since I don`t have this problems when I play rhythm with fast chord progressions.
My slow solos (Frusciante-style) sound good, I can even play all three solos from Metallica`s One, even the third one sounds pretty good since it`s mostly tapping and legato, but runs in the style of Zakk Wylde or Paul Gilbert or John Petrucci are impossible for me.
I think I just have to start with slow metronome speed and increase it constantly...
It sounds like you just have a syncronization problem, typically rhythm patterns tend to fall on normal parts of the beat where solo aspects play thru those. Hope that is not too confusing.
Its all about training your right and left hand to play nice together, and after playing rhythm for so many years your hands are trained to work in a certain way.
Here is an example of what that training can do, a funny story about me, not related to guitar but relates in the way you train your body.
I hade been taking martial arts for a number of years, it was 1 on 1 training with the instructor, suffice to say i got my rear end kicked for a couple of years but you learn fast when you don't want to get hurt, anyway back on point. During this time we did alot of balance drills with walking on pegs in the ground and stuff like that, my balance was so good i could actually fight on those poles. Here is where it gets funny.
One weekend my girlfriend at the time and I decided to go bowling, i hadnt been in years and neither had she so we thought it might be fun. My first time up to the lane with the ball, i do my normal approach, but when i went to release the ball instead of doing the "Bowlers slide" my body said ok, firm balance (just like in the Martial arts drills) and instead of sliding my whole balance of my body said STOP and because of that i lobbed the ball into the next lane and sprawled out face first onto the lane because the ball pulled me. Needless to say embarassing.
Anyway my point in all this is that you have trained your hands for so many years to play in a certain fashion, and generally speaking Rhythm playing usually uses a hybrid picking style its never just straight AP or Legato. So your hands never had to work on being syncronized in that fashion, i bet you can play lead stuff that requires hybrid picking very easily.
Just keep working with a metronome with your AP skills until your hands get used to playing nice with eachother, you have been playing alot of years so i won't insult your intelligience and give you drills to do, i am sure you can come up with your own.
Daniel
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