Question:
I can play various styles very well (finger and flat picking, blues, rock, country, classical (good acoustic teacher)). But electric guitar is starting to bug me. I've been getting more and more frusterated lately that I'm not as good at electric guitar sorta stuff as acoustic stuff. I like both equally, and want to play both equally great. My picking isn't all that fast (although its not slow at all), I don't know how to play anything else but blues while soloing (and not very good, at that), and notes just don't seem to land right. I need to know what I'm doing (wrong, right) and improve the right and get rid of the wrong. I know my major/minor scales pretty well, should I keep practicing those (I do on my acoustics mainly as a finder strengthening exercise)? Maybe I haven't learned enough songs? I can pretty easily, but I've been lazy and haven't learned any for a long time (I only know a couple all the way through, and a heck of a lot of parts of various other songs). Is that a good step? Take time and learn a lot of other songs? What about picking speed and accuracy? (and any other technique builders?).
Answer:
I started with acoustic and moved to electric as well. The transition will take some time and effort, but is within the relm of months, not years - you aren't starting from scratch. Here are my suggestions: Electric guitar is NOT all about speed. If you like blues, don't try to learn Van Halen - focus on technique, not speed. Master techniques for the electric: Hamer on's, pull off's, vabrato, bends (of two steps or more). Blues masters agree that it is key to have good slow bend and vabrato techniques - this is where a lot of the feeling enters the music. The electric requires a lighter touch. If you apply the same force to fret a note as you do on the Acoustic, you will most likely make the note go sharp on the electric - loosen up. When playing solo/lead, an amplified electric will be less forgiving when moving from string to string. When you lift the finger off a string the string may be left ringing. It may not be loud enough to be heard as a definite note, but it will be loud enough to make your playing sound less clean. You may have to retrain your way of playing the notes - try lifting the finger, but not removing it from the string right away. This will deaden the string. Meanwhile, your other finger is fretting the note on the new string and you are picking that new note. Done right, your transitions from string to string will be clear, smooth and clean. Of course, this is only one of many techniques one uses to help deaden unwanted strings. These techniques become more important when playing with higher gain on your amplifier (distortion, overdrive). Of course, if you put on a lot of gain to get the crunch of a hard rock sound, this will serve to cover up sloppy techniuqe. Practice using the new techniques described above. Make sure your string to string transitions are clean and smooth. Play the notes in the scales using hammer on, pull off, slide or bend techniques. My personal belief is that accuracy and clean technique is what makes a good guitar player (electric or acoustic). Speed is not a necessity - but it will improve over time. Look at it this way: if it is played clean it will sound good slow or fast - if it is played like shit, it doesn't matter how fast you play it - it's still shit. Even if speed is your ultimate goal for a particular piece of music, start by learning it slow. Once your brain has been trained to play each note right, then you can move on to improving speed. This will require patience, as we all want to sound exactly like the album right away. A lot of hard rock guitar players get away with sloppy technique by covering up with massive distortion.
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