Yes, you’re absolutely right. I used to say it would be a torturous job to have to transcribe Van Halen note for note with accurate rhythms 😂 When you know he wasn’t approaching it that way!

@@jamierobinson777 I’ve found tabs that don’t work, because the recordings had a slightly out of tune guitar. Frusciante has a few.

Thanks! 😁🙏

Glad it was helpful!

I can’t imagine learning that note for note 😂

All my lessons are online but I haven’t accepted new students for a while only because the schedule is full and there’s a long waiting list. That’s why I started the Patreon page. To reach a wider audience with lesson videos, respond to people’s questions, give people a chance to connect with me directly without it taking up all my free time!

I'm talking about learning the recorded (studio version) solos note for note. Petrucci may improvise them slightly when playing live. But it definitely wasn't fully improvised when it was originally recorded. Which makes it easier to learn since it was worked out ahead of time. Jimmy Page improvises 99% of his solos on the record. Which can make it super hard to learn perfectly exactly what he did.

Just to clarify, I didn’t say beginners I said people who are new to my lessons. Most of the students reaching out to me on social media aren’t beginners who are new to the instrument. But if they’re wanting to increase their speed, technique, accuracy, etc. That’s exactly the stuff they should practice to develop it.

@@jamierobinson777 fair point! That makes more sense

Yep and it's comical suggesting that his live performances were somehow him "improvising" and that's why the solos were never the same way twice. Watch the Live Aid gig and you'll see he's apparently "improvising" the entire set rewriting some of Zepps body of work as he goes along. That said, on the record in the 70s they are playing to the drummer - and the drummer isn't playing to a DAW grid. The tempo shifts just as it does in classical music. The moden pro tools ushered in an era where more bands are playing rigidly to the grid losing a lot of feel. There's really no sense where it makes a lot of sense to play this kind of music to a metronome. You'd be better finding a backing track. I think the key thing is to listen to the backing track rather than listening to yourself. In the same way you should be listening to the track as a whole not just listening to lead guitar part. That's how you get in the pocket - you're holding a guitar but you're playing the drums. Sometimes your notes will land on the drum hit and you'll hear how the snare makes your note punch, other times you can be doing counter point to the drums, i.e there's a rhythm created. Similarly the bass player will make your playing big - a lot of people turn up the gain, mess with the bass, or strum hard all these things because when they listen to the record they hear this big heavy sound that they think is the guitar tone but it's the other musicians. People say they can't hear the bass, well buy a pair of 770 pro and listen because one of the best ways to improve your guitar playing is to let the bass player improve it by playing - and unless you're Ted Greene if you let the bass player do all the bass part you can play triads and chord melodies without having to stretch your fingers silly trying to play a bass line. But if your mindset is to learn a riff and then to play that in a particular timing and hope that it magically fits over the top of the drums and bass it won't sound tight. You have to listen to the other musicians and get in a groove with them. And the best way to do that is not to either play riffs with no backing (and never ever play an electric guitar that's not plugged in) nor to play to a metronome. I'd suggest sitting down over the backing track and instead of closing your eyes and trying to play whatever lick you automatically play when you're asked to solo - play the drums. Hit notes on the kick, hit them on the snare...play his fills and build up. Your mindset it should feel like you're making the drum play - and I find I get into a groove where I'm completely in the track not noodling random crap over the top without even listening to the backing as I used to do when I might have roughly followed the tempo and vaguely reflected whether my note choices were in tune with whatever else was going on but I wasn't really playing with the music and my focus was on my noodling. I find another good way of doing this is to play some of your fave riffs over the "wrong" drum beat, i.e you make the riff fit the new tempo and timing and that way you're learning to play the riff along with another musician rather than in a particular muscle memory way that you practised either without a backing or just over the top of one. 'm reminded of a lesson online Satriani has some competition winner there getting a lesson from him. He plays a reasonable facsimile of satch boogie, but then Satriani starts talking to him about swing and how it fits into the groove and how laid back the drummer is. Satriani is listening to and playing to the drummer but this guy has learned a riff from a tab. He's got all the whoops and wails and whammy bar tricks. He's playing the right notes - but he's not playing with the backing he's playing on top of it. Hitting it sometimes, not others. He's rushing because he's trying to keep up at points. He lacks any nuance in terms of realising how much thought Satriani put into where he picked the strings and how. Yet, to most casual observers he's playing Satch boogie. Well, just play the intro to Satch boogie being absolutely as relaxed as you can and fit it over whatever beats you can find. Eventually it gets into your fingers in a much better way than the robotic, play over a metronome, play with some timing in my head thing that ignores the outside world because unless you play entirely solo guitar pieces you have play with other musicians and it's generally not the lead guitarist who picks the rhythm and tempo (although I guess there are a lot of songs that start with a guitar riff - which is often why rock bands end up racing through paranoid or whatever because the guitar player starts off way too fast.

Live Aid is a bad example.. That whole gig was a disaster, Jimmy’s guitar was handed to him straight out of the case so it was out of tune ..The Song Remains the Same is probably a better example..take Dazed and Confused if you’ve followed Zeppelin over the years you can hear how this song developed over time through improvising..Page was more about feeling than say technical ability