[solidwalnut]

Interesting twist to this thread Stickman and Live Stone...

I think there's a middle ground here. One of the best goals in learning how to play to my mind is learning to sound presentable...Stickman's approach is very much like mine has been for many, many years.

I have always preferred to learn parts, put them together and then play them rather than improvise. For better or for worse, this is the style of player I became. It helped me become a good studio player because I have learned to concentrate and execute every playing nuance in a song...

Although Kirk and many others prefer to improvise and to play on the fly all the time, this doesn't mean that stopping to learn and to concentrate on parts, and learning to play them well, before they're presented is a lesser skill. Improvising, and learning to improvise well, is obviously an awesome approach; one that can carry a player far but PERHAPS for the player who is just learning they might be better off concentrating on the rudiments (the arpeggios, the pentatonics, etc.)

And it's just an opinion, but I believe that a guitar player does well to learn how to do both at the same time. Obviously, only the guitar masters know how to 'do it all' while most of us generally learn to only do one or two things well. There's a difference between trying to learn to do it all and actually learning how to play, and each of us must find the approach that works for us.

This is important, because too many players miss the boat on understanding how to learn to be technically good because they're informed that all they need to learn to do is to improvise. Learning how to play a parallel harmony part to a melody is often NOT accomplished by just winging it.

Steve