And you metal heads can take that to the bank. LT's pretty good at this stuff. Both the blistering and the editing parts.

HA! I dunno, some days my editing game certainly makes up for my poor guitar game! 

Actually I tend to think quite a bit more "music" is being made without a performance at all.  The copy/paste crowd, the sample crowd, the loop crowd.  ...and if you can only play 2 beats without a mistake, that can easily be enough to complete a "take".... with judicious assembly.  Then there are the guitar 101 ability crowd, that with their D and G chords performed nicely, with good sound and a pleasing vocal over it...  well... YouTube will show the zillions of examples.  Oh...and all the "dudes" thinking they're the next Randy Travis.

Lord Tim
I'm definitely in "The End Justifies the Means" camp when it comes to doing things.
 
The only person who will know/care that you spent all day trying to nail your part in one go is you. The person who is listening to your mix at the end only cares about how that performance makes them feel, not how you did it. So if it takes 20 edits, or a bit of Melodyne to fix a bum note or timing or whatever, do it. The goal is to get the vision down for me, rather than the mechanics of it all.
 

 
Tell that to Glenn!  
 

 
Anyways, all that may be true as long as you don't tell anyone.  I'm finding the metal genre, in general, is less forgiving about corrections and "enhancements", which this essentially is - a way to record something that we can't actually play.  Taken to its extreme, I could punch in two notes at a time for an hour and end up with a crazy fast guitar lead that I can't actually play, and was never actually played.  It never happened.  And that does seem to matter to some of us. 
 
Anyways, not really disagreeing with you as much as just pointing out an exception in the metal crowd.  Especially when you get into progressive this and that, the fans don't appreciate it much.  If it came out that Animals As Leaders quantized, corrected and step recorded guitar tracks there would be a meltdown, ha ha!  
 
 
 
 

I posted...then edited it to fix the the Youtube URL and now it's gone...

Voda La Void
I posted...then edited it to fix the the Youtube URL and now it's gone...

 
It's that Aksimet thing in the forum software, when you edited the link it probably flagged it as spam.

Voda La Void
Anyways, not really disagreeing with you as much as just pointing out an exception in the metal crowd.  Especially when you get into progressive this and that, the fans don't appreciate it much.  If it came out that Animals As Leaders quantized, corrected and step recorded guitar tracks there would be a meltdown, ha ha!  
  

HA! Glenn's a character isn't he? Some good advice sometimes, however!
 
I do agree with you though - if you went out live and you're clearly not able to play this stuff, you should probably go find somewhere safe to run off to. Metal fans are... shall we say vocal about something they don't think is on the level. 
 
I think it's all down to your ultimate vision. For what we do, we walk the line between being able to play it (which is important to us - we do tour and we have to stand by what we do), but also not compromising the vision of the final product too. No one cares about a slightly sloppy run or a bit of a flat note at a live show, so long as you're obviously doing the job but that one missed note or bad run will come back to haunt you every time you listen to your album. Do 99% of people care about that? Probably not. Do you? If this is your art that you know you want it to sound a certain way and it doesn't, but you actually have the means to fix you, would you live with that? You could do 9000 takes and kill yourself or reach for Melodyne and get on with the job of being creative. That's kind of what I was getting at. 
 
 
 
 

A lot of good advice above. "Studio" is a double-edged sword, since the best "performance" will most likely come from that realm (and is often the "version of record" others will judge by), but the tools available can detract from improving "live performance" skills. Live performance skill is a massive time-saver for editing, so developing those is never a bad thing and ultimately you must fall into the happy medium where you feel most comfortable and progress from there.
 
Everyone is different, so knowing your own strengths and liabilities is key. Take time to improve things that you can (or want to), and adapt where you must (or don't want to). I think that trying to learn everything may be a bit overzealous, since eating the elephant one bite at a time is more often a better approach.

mettelus
Live performance skill is a massive time-saver for editing, so developing those is never a bad thing 

this.
 

batsbrew

mettelus
Live performance skill is a massive time-saver for editing, so developing those is never a bad thing 

this.
 

Again, this.
But, you also need to be sharp enough to get in the pocket and stay there regardless of your instrument while tracking your part. I've been a part of a band and have seen other bands fall into the trap of playing great live gigs where you felt the band was good and tight, only to get in the studio and find we weren't even close. It's pretty sobering to have a producer or engineer give you "that look" and tell you to go home and practice A LOT more.
 
On the flip side, it's a great feeling when you do get back and find that the work you put in has paid off in making you a better player, and back in the day, saving you a ton of money in studio time.