improving by learning songs

[nemesis]

hi guys, i have become bored with playing exercises and such in my practice sessions so i have decided to improve my technique by learning songs. so far im torn between anything from ozzys first two albums as well as bark at the moon, eugenes trick bag(steve vai), and anything from joe satrianis crystal planet album. i know that the decision is up to me but any suggestions boys? any other song choices would be cool. Any body on site seen improvement using this method?

[Mateo150]

Best way to go in my opinion, exercises are just that exercises, people get good by doing, not by practicing. Practice doing.

[debaser]

It's good to have a song in mind when learning a technique for the first time. Some techniques may be sufficiently challenging that the movement needs to be isolated and worked on its own, without the distraction of playing a song at the same time. In other words, if you're learning the solo to Bark at the Moon, there will be some difficult picking passages. Don't make the mistake of glossing over the areas that you don't play correctly and going straight to the next phrase. It would be more effective to create an etude from a section that you don't play well, practice it, and then reintroduce it to the entire solo/composition.

[nemesis]

bark at the moon definitely has some cool passages that would help picking tech plus the song rocks. thats one of the reasons why i tend to gravitate towards that song.by the way should i learn the solos first as they tend to be the hardest part in songs?

[Callisto_Ashus]

Well, one thing I've deduced when learning songs is that you WILL come across parts that are difficult at first. This is where the improvement comes - you tend to gravitate towards things you can do when playing your own stuff, or even exercises after you've been doing the same ol' for awhile. Songs are a whole other world of guitarists. No matter how good you are, chances are you'll come across somebody who can do a certain this or that better. In this way, songs really are sort of exercises in themself, and obviously worthwhile.

About those songs, ETB is a good one to bust your chops on, as it's mainly technique created in some sort of song format. However, keep in mind - do what you want, that's key. It's gotta hold your interest. I think I suffer from a kind of music ADD, myself, heh. If you find a song that you really enjoy or can't get out of your head lately, learn whatever part you want first - I mean, the structural, logical approach is to learn the rhythm and then the lead, but if you can maintain an interest, you'll accomplish a lot more than starting with a part you don't really want to play... and knowing us egocentric guitarists, that's usually the rhythm : p

Hopefully maybe that'll help you out a bit. I'm hardly good at the instrument but I'm more of a philosopher, methinks