Improvement

[blahblah]

I'm pretty much new to the guitar. Bought my first one 2 years ago, a cheap strat copy which was rather uncomfortable to play and sounded pretty bad too. I dumped it aside and never really played any guitar except maybe 1 or 2 chords until a few months ago when my interest was revived as i was exposed to a whole new bunch of great guitarists like Satriani and such and moving away from the E chord slamming alternative stuff. so i bought a Fender Strat (mexican) and started taking lessons towards the end of April. so far i've learnt some simple blues licks using a minor pentonic scale. anybody has any advice on what i should do next to progress further? my fingers aren't that strong yet so could you guys recommend stuff that wont kill my fingers? all suggestions are more than welcome !
thanks.

(yea i know the first part has nothing to do with the latter part basically, just thought i'd share my experience [img]images/smilies/icon_redface.gif[/img]

[blahblah]

I could do with a mentor or something if anybody's kind enough to lend this novice a helipng hand [img]images/smilies/icon_mrgreen.gif[/img]

[VHF]

That Mexi Strat is a very comfortable guitar to play so you are in good shape there. Make sure you have a tuner and keep it tuned all the time.

I would download a few of these backing tracks from this site that are designed to play lead over. Figure out what key they are in (ask for help if needed) and practice that 1st position penatonic scale over them. If it's "A" start at fret 5, "B" fret 7, etc.

Then branch out to move out of that first position box just up or down a bit.

Good luck! [img]images/smilies/icon_thumb.gif[/img]

[blahblah]

could ya kindly tell me the title of those BTs? thanks for your advice! t'is greatly appreciated

A recent one posted is called "Walk with me" or something like that, posted by guitarwizard. That is a nice track to practice over. Most of the tracks, actually, even if they are for a specific song, allow you to jam and improvise over.

You could also learn some more scaled perhaps, do a google search for "Guitar scales" or something and you should get a tonne of decent sites that show and play the scales for you.

Keep learning songs. That i where i went wrong recently. I stopped learning songs for about 2 months and my playing deteriated a lot. Just learn songs, practice daily, even if its only 30 mins. Just sit there with your guitar improvising and doing scales.

[Dong]

yea, i wanna be ur mentor. haha. maybe, do chromatics for an hour a day. they helped me move up from 140bmp to 170 after a few days. always use a metrochrome though/[img]images/smilies/rock.gif[/img]