I was thinking about this the other day, why do we practice using exercises?
I can achieve a certain bpm doing fairly common patterns which people use to practice picking:
Things like 9-10-12 or 12-14-15 etc.
but I cant play any actual licks at that speed and I certainly cant improvise at that speed.
So I was thinking, instead of using exercises..why dont we just practice our technique by learning licks?
Of course, licks which are a bit beyond our technical ability..so that we have to slow them down and build up to it. This way you increase your technique (by playing things which are abit too fast for you) and also your vocabulary. I think Im going to start doing this from now on.
What are your thoughts on this?