How to get better at guitar

Each interval has a unique "flavor" and once you can hear them you should be able to hear multiple intervals at the same time, which effectively identifies the chord. (Admittedly for complex jazz chords it can get very difficult and you probably need more powerful tools, I can't say.)

Stopping and working slow is the only way you'll find and improve hard things. If you just blunder past them each time, you're only learning to blunder. Able to play the easy things but never improving the hard.

But if all you do is stop at every mistake, all you're learning is how to stop at every mistake. Live music doesn't stop, you need to know how to pick up and keep up, no matter what. (This was my mistake for decades.)

There's a lot more to learning a piece of music, but I think both kinds of passes are necessary. Well, unless you're good enough to fly through that piece prima vista with results that you're happy with. Then you get to hone the expression or interpretation or just cash in, I guess.

Even if they're not exactly what was played, you'll be able to get to a working version with the right idea.

In any case, theory and experience will narrow the field down a great deal so you're not just stabbing at things in the dark.

This applies to most skills. How hard it's going to be or how far you'll go with sane effort may vary.

- Don't tense up and play the most relaxed you possibly can. it's very hard to unlearn if you start off that way like I did

- Be kind to yourself since playing guitar is an unnatural thing to do (wrist position, hand strength required, calluses, etc.), so it takes time.

- Play along with songs as much as possible. Slow it down if you need to or just do a simplified version at first, and just focus on improving/learning one thing each time you play. This is also a great way to get comfortable with improv.

- If you're struggling with something, break things down to the smallest possible parts you can, play it really slow and repeat, until your muscle memory takes over, then slowly speed it up and put it back in context.

- If you're playing an electric, turn the volume up enough and let that do the work instead of your picking

- If you catch yourself noodling instead of playing consciously, stop playing. It's OK to noodle sometimes but if you do it a lot you'll get used to going on autopilot and your skills can plateau

- Don't be afraid of the upper fretboard. You can play super slowly up here and as long as you can at least fake being confident/intentional it'll sound nice. If you have smaller hands and have trouble with stretching your hands on lower frets, this can work to your advantage.

- You can get a solid guitar for $400-500. Spending more money up to about $2-3k will get you a nicer guitar, chasing that extra 1% of tone and have a nicer feel in your hands, but it's diminishing returns the more you spend.

- Same with pedals. Yes you can spend lots of money on fancy/unique pedals, but there's nothing wrong with sticking to cheap ones, especially Boss. A lot of great 80s/90s music was recorded with them, and bands frequently use the cheaper/commodity ones while touring instead of fancy boutique ones.

- Per Nile Rogers: "It's not about the shit you play, it's about the shit you don't play" (especially for funk stuff)

- Also for funk (and post-punk and experimental) stuff, a guitar is also a percussion instrument if you want it to be.

- Once guitar playing gets to a certain level of virtuosity (Steve Vai, IMO), it paradoxically can become extremely boring. Playing simply but with the right emotion channeled into your picking hand is much more interesting than super technical stuff.

- Related, remember that Bill Withers was in his 30s when he started making music and chose a very simple way of composing things, but was still able to do amazing things