The "1hour Breakdown" routine...

[Suckbird]

Well, i didn't see much of an improvement practicing scales i decided to just break down harder songs, which i think will learn me much more...

anyway, i would like suggestions on songs to breakdown, and that actually needs to be breakdown(ed?).

The song i'm doing now is:

YYZ - Rush, can do it pretty well, but hell yeah i wanna play it perfect(almost).

Scarified - Racer X, i've just started work on it and can do the main riff pretty well.

Also, what do you think about this idea of practice?
When practicing scales it was just the same as playing a pattern at the same direction back and forth, not what i call building dexterity..

[CJK84]

I work almost exclusively on songs, but apply theory to it.

Right now I'm working my tail off learning Brian Wilson and The Old Apartment from BNL's great Rock Spectacle album. Jim Creeggan's double bass lines on these tunes seem really cool.

I pursue note-for-note duplication on particular songs like these (on others I merely make up my own lines and that's fun too).

I'm putting lots of hours into working out a precise plucking order and the most efficient fretting-hand fingering and positioning.

And I'm not mindlessly playing notes. I make sure that I know the tonal center, chords, applicable scales, etc... of all the sections of these songs.

In this way, I'm applying scalar theory in the "real world". Although I once practiced scales a lot, I just can't do it anymore outside of the context of a song.

I feel that this is a fairly efficient way to learn, but some may disagree.