The real burning desire to be great isn't something teachable. I've read a fair number of interviews, and the people at the top of their field are, kinda like, insane. John Petrucci talks about his filing cabinet - he has a whole one just dedicated to lessons, ideas, columns in magazines. And every day when he's not on tour, he opens it up, and takes out four lessons or articles about four separate subjects. I don't remember exactly, but it's like a chord lesson, a speed lesson, some music theory, and something else. Then he goes through the lessons until he's mastered them. If it takes all day and night, oh well. And the next morning he does it again. And again, and again.
Allan Holdsworth has a really unique style, even bizarre. He sat down with a big stack of paper, and drew up every possible combination of of nine or less pitches within an octave, then he discarded the ones that had four notes all in a row, like D-Eb-E-F. And then he went to work on them. He says it took him about two years just to work out the fingerings and the chords built off of them, and another five years before he could play them all inside out, backwards etc.
I read an interview with John McLaughlin from the late 1980's, and he mentioned that the thing that bothers him the most about touring was that it interfered with his practicing and writing - what with all the airplanes and eating and stuff, he was lucky if he could "only" get in five or six hours of work a day. This is on top of playing the concerts! And, this is like after he invented fusion with Miles Davis and his own Mahavishnu Orchestra, invented world music with Shakti, after the the turbo-flamenco guitar trio with Paco DeLucia and Al DiMeola and after he'd written and recorded his first concerto for guitar and chamber orchestra.
No. You won't catch up. :laughing3: These guys, they don't have children, they don't take vacations - what ever for? :icon_biggrin: They want to play music.
