sloppy playing

[Afrodisiac]

I am a good player once a week. I play my riffs with no errors. But 98% of the time I'm sloppy as ****. Can anyone give me tips on how to rectify my sloppiness? I have been playing guitar for 1 and a half years, but I only recently started playing more, because I gained new motivation. Do scales help? I play major/minor pentatonic scales, chromatic scales and blues scales when I feel like it. I usually doodle with some metal song and call it a day. Should I restrict myself to a strict diet to improve my playing? I am willing to do anything.

[Schenker93]

A great skill to have is the ability to use any of your fingers with the same efficiency. To work on finger strength, first use a clean setting on your amp. Start at the first fret, and hammer on with your index finger once on every string - make sure you can hear the hammer on! Go up all the strings from bottom to top, and then repeat with your middle finger. Once again hammer on the first fret - this time using the middle finger - going up the strings until you get to the top string. Repeat with your index finger and pinky. Again make sure you can hear the note you're hammering on! AND NO DISTORTION - that's cheating. Repeat the hammering process going up all of the frets, and withing weeks, you'll notice a dramatic difference in your ability to hammer on, bend, and overall you wiill notice that playing riffs soloing is much easier. I would also suggest practicing barre chord changes, including changing barre chords over different strings. Don't FRET (ha I'm so funny), every time you sit down (or stand up) with the guitar you get a little better - this will just help you practice the skills needed for playing rapid licks and solos.

[Afrodisiac]

Sweet advice. So you are basically saying, slam the strings (clean amp) as hard as you can and try to get a sound out of it. I will do. I always thought it was finger strength. There are some riffs that just kill my fingers. Should I do it on my acoustic guitar? Will it help me get stronger faster? I try learning my riffs on the acoustic to make it "easier" on the electric, but the necks and feel are so different between the two that I just mush everything up.

[Schenker93]

Electric and Acoustic are slightly different, but in the concept of getting up your finger strength, I would say do it on a clean sound on your electric, but preferably do it on both. Basically, if you go up the neck once or twice, every fret/every string, before you really sit down and play, you'll notice an improvement in no time. The key is to not bore yourself to death with repetitive exercises and just sneak them in here and there. Don't worry, you'll get it.