tips to get beyond where I am now

[Pitar]

If you don't know where to go then it tells me you have no musical goals. Not talking scales, modes, theory or any of that tertiary stuff that sidelines actually playing the guitar itself like skillfully using your ears and hands to play music. Not talking strumming. Anyone can strum. Not talking flat picking, either. You like singing? Get some vocally complementary finger picking skills.

Cut to the chase. Pick out stuff that you really like to listen to and learn to finger pick it by ear. The time it takes you to achieve that will be far and away better spent than even thinking about scales. And, it will take less time. Scales do not teach truly dynamic motor skills like a score can. Once you achieve by ear what you want to achieve the scales will have insidiously developed themselves in your ear and you will most certainly know where they are on the board. Plus, musical structure and phrasing, so important to ear development, is not apparent in scales.

Get your ear and motor skills challenged.

[RockyRacc00n]

Thanks everyone for engaging and giving me your thoughts. After reading through all your responses, I do feel some basic theory will be helpful.

To those that advocated, "listen-copy-assimilate" approach, I get the "listen-copy" part, which is what I've been doing all these years. And I probably will contine to do that when I learn the next song to sing and play. I guess it's the "assimilate" part that I don't get, or perhaps lack the imagination to apply that in my playing.

To those that advocated learning basic theory, please feel free to PM me any reading material or online resource that helped you.

I like the kind of topic the lady in the YouTube link I originally posted. Not sure how I expect this will help me play better, but I guess knowing for the sake of knowing is not a bad thing and seeing where it takes you. I don't expect knowing this kind stuff will make my playing technique better. Needless to say, knowledge and technique are two different things, and I think we all know that these are 2 parallel endeavors.

[Llewlyn]

Originally Posted by RockyRacc00n

To those that advocated learning basic theory, please feel free to PM me any reading material or online resource that helped you.

Sorry for not PMing.

If I were you, I'd learn the major/minor pentatonic scales. Then, I'll play the scale changing them a bit (= improvising) under a blues progressions. You can then try to visualize the riffs you like on the scale and "change them a bit" Wikipedia/YouTube will help you fine with this task but if you want something more structured check out justinguitar website.

Ll.

[paulp1960]

I would suggest learning major scale patterns all over the neck for a particular key such as C. Record some I IV V progressions (eg C, F and G chords) and get a feel for those notes. You should be able to tell which are notes in the scale (and in those chords) and which are outside and sound "off". Sometimes "off" is good but not to start with. Once you learn the major scale note positions for one key you will then be able to move positions to play in any key.

Pentatonic minor and major are useful but I feel I should have focused on the major scale first and now most of what I play doesn't suit minor pentatonic scales.

If you can't hear well enough to copy melodies or guitar riffs and solos it would help if you can find another resource such a guitar tab, video instructions, or sheet music to help you learn a song or part of. I use sheet music if I can find it but I can read music fairly well.