Revelations Whilst Learning

[IKnowALittle]

Two breakthrough moments for me
1. Learning how to use fingers instead of a pick
2. Being able to see chord forms all over the neck when soloing (in addition to scales)

I play pretty much anything with strings. In my "gigging" life I play electric, acoustic, banjo, dobro and lap steel.
I play all with a thumpick and fingernails.
For most it isn't easy ... that's just the way I learned.

 

[CVS]

I play pretty much anything with strings. In my "gigging" life I play electric, acoustic, banjo, dobro and lap steel.
I play all with a thumpick and fingernails.
For most it isn't easy ... that's just the way I learned.

For the record, I can't hybrid pick ! I pretty much taught myself when I was young and I have an unorthodox way of holding normal pick in my hand which makes it difficult to hybrid pick, so I had to learn how to use fingers to do some solos and when play chords. Sounds like you were deep into bluegrass and country given your instrument list. I was much more into the blues and Latin music.

 

[JSanta585]

People have spoken about theory already, and for me it was pattern recognition when learning scales and modes. It becomes easier once you realize that one scale is the same pattern as both the same scale in another key, or part of a mode.

This is not so much a revelation, but something I learned the hard way. When I was 16 or 17, I got into Dream Theater something bad. And all I did was alternate pick fast. No method to the quite literal madness. It wasn't until a good friend of mine whom is a superb drummer said to play it exceedingly slow on the metronome and work on bringing things up to speed did I really start to pay attention to what exactly I need to do.

Last thing, I took jazz lessons for a few years with a superb guitarist. Biggest lesson? Listen more than you speak. I suppose that goes for a lot of things in life, but learning how to listen to him, both his voice and playing opened my eyes.