compare Paul to someone like Yngwie though. Compared to Yngwie, Paul is an open book
odd, the only piano book I ever bought was pure exercises lol. I forget what it was but it was a famous one
Well, despite claims of being tight lipped and the whole premise of CTC that his technique was āundecipherableā, he did make that early VHS video with close ups of his technique. And there were a few really good vids he made for the Japanese market in the 90s.
I contend that if you hunker down exclusively will all his recorded videos and learn a handful of his songs, you will end up a very accomplished player.
On reflection, Intense Rock and Rock Discipline were two videos that dangled a (frustrating) carrot in front of you without being all that useful. Its all about the songs.
ā¦but, similarly, Iād wager heavily that every single one of those guys also spent time practicing exercises, and that there are hundreds of thousands of guitarists who spent just as much time as those top players learning covers, and also never got to their level.
At the end of the day, do what works for you. If working on covers gets you there, then right on. \m/
Hey Tommo, how is learning āDaydreamā going? Is that the song with the fast acoustic guitar solo at the beginning? Can you play that acoustic solo?
The following question is for anyone in this thread who learns technical guitar songs:
In general, whose songs are more difficult to play, Vinnie Moore or Tony Macalpine?
Vinnie has lots of weird angular jazzy licks at times
I only have Mindās Eye - the one with āDaydreamā I donāt recall jazzy sounding licks but itās been a long time since Iāve listened to it. Or are those jazzy ones only on other albums of his?
Have you ever tried learning a Tony Macalpine song? GFTPM had a transcription to the unaccompanied solo āQuarter To Midnight.ā Did you (or did anyone here) try learning that?
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no thats the album i thinking of. I remember the transcription to āPieces of a Pictureā and some of the licks were pretty angular little pieces of arps and then of course you hear some chromatics especially in his legato
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The study is going ok thanks! I transcribed the solo with 80~90% accuracy (some runs are simply impossible to decipher - and the tabs out there donāt make sense), but my execution is not very clean at the moment, mainly due to the extreme speed of the solo & the awkward ascending/descending 4s patterns in the main theme.
The classical intro you are thinking of is āSaved by a Miracleā. I happen to have transcribed that part, I think I have it down at least 95% correct. I can sort of play it but again I need to do some serious cleaning up before I can record any of these things.
Incidentally, Iād be happy to share some of these semi-correct transcriptions in here if thereās enough interest! I would love to have a study group on the VinMan 
@JonJon Do you still have the transcription for that Vinnie song? Was it reasonably accurate? If so Iād be very interested in it
@Drew,@ChrisX - Sorry I havenāt yet had time to follow the whole discussion but noticed that Andy Timmons was mentioned. I think some of his tunes, e.g. from the album Resolution, could be ideal for a āshreddy but musicalā study group. I donāt know if there are good videos or transcriptions available, though.
Bruh that was almost 30 years ago lol
do people just despise songster versions or what? (no clue just wondering)
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Iām not overly interested in a āmusical study group,ā exactly, butā¦
ā¦the nice thing about Timmons is, thereās a LOT of good quality video footage of him playing most of his well known tunes on Youtube, including a full concert of the āResolutionā album Iāve seen somewhere, hosted from Portugal, I think. Heās done a lot of clinic videos, playthroughs, gear demos, etc, so thereās plenty of footage to check fingerings, etc.
Also, if you ever get a chance to do so, catch him in a clinic. The guy has a great ear and is a walking songbook - the time I caught him at Mattās Music outside of Boston, heād be talking through something or other and mention say a Beatles song, and then break into it, often arranging the changes, melody, and harmony on the fly, while copping a pretty good take on the vocal inflections, to boot. This was before he did Sgt. Pepperās, making it even more impressive - the guyās ear, and ability to translate that onto the fretboard, are really pretty remarkable.
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All comes back to practicing and learning songs. Exercisesā¦ pffft!
So I STILL have no clue why you think songs are ipso facto better than exercises, based on this conversation, and Iād really like you to explain, because when you offered up an example of a song to learn, you chose The Glass Prison, precisely because it had so little āfluffā like melodies and motifs, making it basically one giant exercise. Weāre all here because we want to learn, and if youāve got some useful insights Iād love to talk through them and better understand where youāre coming from, and for a while there I thought I did and thought you had a pretty good point until you said that, no, it wasnāt the phrasing that was valuable, in learning the melody lines in a song, because that made you sound like a clone. So, Iām back to square one and have no idea where youāre coming from here. 
Butā¦ to this specific pointā¦ I disagree. What was impressive about Andyās playing in that clinic wasnāt āOMG thatās a song heās playing!ā but rather the fact that he was pretty clearly arranging this stuff on the fly. He was playing the vocal melodies as guitar melodies, his phrasing was doing a pretty good job of replicating the feel of the vocal line, he knew what was going on harmonically and occasionally would be just demonstrating how something resolved that either was going on in the rhythm section directly or was being implied by the combination of the chord changes and the vocal line, etc. Or, in short, what was so cool about watching him talk through and demonstrate this stuff was it was pretty clear that he hadnāt spent time ālearningā these songs, but that he had a good enough grasp of harmony and ear for melody, and a (frankly, exceptional) faculty for phrasing on the guitar, that he was able to just work this stuff out off the cuff, and that there seemed to be little to no filter between what was going on in his head, and his ability to execute that on the fretboard. Anyone can play someone elseās song if they study it enough - it takes one hell of a musician to recall a vocal line in their head, and in real time pull off a convincing job capturing the nuances of that line (not just the raw notes, but the slurs, the dynamics, the overall feel) as well as demonstrate how it fit in to the overall harmony. And this definitely wasnāt pre-rehearsed stuff - there were a few, āwait, thatās not quite right, I think it actually goes like thisā moments, or a couple points where someone in the crowd would mention a song and then Andy would work it out more or less flawlessly in front of us. The songs themselves werenāt impressive - his ear and ability to translate melodies in his head authentically on the fretboard, on the other hand, was incredible. Not because heād practiced this stuffā¦ but because he clearly hadnāt.
Youāve got this totally dogmatic āsongs good! exercises bad!ā thing going, and Iād love a proper articulation as to why you believe that, but so far you havenāt really put one forward, which is making having a serious conversation about this increasingly hard.
Its because the point of learning guitar is to perform music. Learning pieces that can be performed, and performing them 100% perfectly is the goal.
If someone practices exercises, it does not contain the vital skills of endurance, memory, and complete accuracy required to perform a complicated piece. Knowing 70% of this, 80% of that is a failure. You canāt just perform 70% of a song unless your musical vision is limited to riffing bits and pieces in a music store.
The ābasic unit of currencyā as a musician is the ability to perform songs.
IME, it is a rare exercise that actually improves oneās ability to learn/perform music (when that time could actually have been spent on a song.) In the process of learning a song, there will be difficult parts that you may need to break out and expand, create an exercise if you will, but its in service of the song.
Hey, awesome, thatās something we can actually discuss - thanks for explaining! 
What about traditions that are rooted in improvisation, then? Most of my lead playing is improvised, I got my start playing blues, really, and still carry a lot of that over with me today. In my own music I donāt really āwriteā solos, I have a solo section in mind, have a rough feel or vibe or structure in mind, and then improvise itt.
Or what about songwriting? Iāve certainly learned a few songs and solos note for note in my day and every once in a while Iāll play one for fun but generally when I do itās more to figure out, harmonically, why a solo works. Rather, my focus is more on writing my _own_music - coming up with a few melody lines that work well together, a cool set of changes, a memorable riff, etc, with an eventual aim of recording that song. For me thatās way more of a focus than learning someone elseās songs.
Idunnoā¦ Listening to you explain this, I think the biggest difference in what weāre thinking here is we just have different goals. Iām not overly interested in being able to play a Yngwie tune note for note. Iām VERY interested in being able to show up at a blues jam and take an improvised solo that turns a few heads, or to write and record a piece of music that can resonate with and move someone else. I think learning other peopleās music can be a good way to get insight into another personās composition process or get new harmonic ideas or push myself out of my own comfort zone and potentially identify areas of weakness that I wasnāt aware of, but itās definitely not the only way Iām going to grow as a musician, and honestly one of the best ways to push myself compositionally Iāve found is to simply sit down with a guitar and start making up chord shapes and bouncing them off each other until I come up with something that sounds pretty cool, then figure out why thatās working, and see how I can build a melody that works with it. Thatās sort of a mix of free-form improvisation coupled with applied music theory, I guess.
Either way, if being able to perform songs that someone else will know is a primary musical goal for you, then no arguments - youāre way better off teaching yourself songs than practicing scale patterns. I just think that if thatās not one of your goals (and my two main goals are to write better music and to become a better improviser), itās not the only way to grow as a musician, or even necessarily the best.
EDIT - idunno. The short version is I donāt think thereās only one answer here, and the right answer for you is going to depend hugely on your musical goals. Iām not saying youāre wrong to focus on learning songs, far from it because for you the ability to play recognizable songs is an important part of what it means to be a guitarist. I just think that there are many other visions of what it means to be an accomplished guitarist, and for some of those other visions it may not be the best fit or the fastest way to get there. Does that make sense to you?
Obviously there are differences in approach, but the general trend of failed players is that they spend more time on exercises than on songs. I also believe that learning songs implant the templates for writing music.
And when I say āexerciseā, I am talking more generally about wasted time where your fingers are moving buy you arenāt developing musically.
If someone tells me they are stuck at 70 or 80% of a song, that tells me they skipped some stages in development. If they had previously worked out a similar but easier song, they would have developed the fortitude to push through and nail it 100%.
This is such a basic concept. The problem may actually be that people who arenāt musically accomplished, who canāt really perform and arenāt respected as musicians, are setting up shop and trying to sell their vision of music education.
Looking back, āSpeed Mechanics for Lead Guitarā was basically some industrious high school kid who got the idea to brainstorm on hundreds of picking exercises outside the context of anything that was actually useful.
We see something similar these days. High school girls make youtube videos of themselves in yoga pants and bill themselves as āpersonal development coachesā or some such nonsense. Owning a videocamera does not make one a guru.
Eh, with all due respect, I disagree with you that thereās any such thing as a āone size fits allā approach, and as youāre not exactly coming across as being willing to engage, exactly, so much as preach and make wildly unsubstantiated claims, I think weāve reached the limits of fruitful discussion. Iām happy youāve found something that works for you, however.
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Can you tell us how you came to this conclusion? What data is it based on?
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How many failed players do you know that can perform a ton of songs in their style? None.
At the point that someone has learned and can perform many songs in their style they are a success.
Being able to play any songs in your style is what defines success. A shredder who canāt play songs by MAB or YJM or PG hasnāt made it.
But how did you decide that they failed to learn songs because they were working on exercises?