craigb
Leg one - Knowledge of your chosen instrument.
You should understand how............
I agree, but would also say...- that's a lot to expect of yourelf at once.
Here's 1 small snapshot of my 30 year journey with guitar: The guitar in the picture you see to the left is a 1996 taylor 612 c "cotton". My friend who has been a huge Taylor fan and collector pointed it out to me and said if I didn't grab it he would. He mentioned it had already aged, was probably owned by a collector due to its wonderful condition, and also had a great story behind its inception 20 years ago. That was in march of this year. It was only last night during a practice session, after a few string changes and many sessions (this year) that I started to hear and understand some specific things the guitar did, in relation to how I play and vice versa. We are becoming more "symbiotic".
My point in this is that you can get the greatest setup in the world, and it will simply be waiting for you to grow into it. If you get 20 great setups, you will have 20 great setups waiting for you to spend time building relationships with the tools.
Here's another snapshot: I had been at the instrument for a good 18 years. Then all of a sudden, I went through some life drama, and went into my little music hole. I said to myself, "why aren't you better"? "What if you got really really good?" So - I purposely sought out some books that intrigued me on technique, and completely submerged myself for hours after work every day, either learning from "Jody Fischers 30 Day Guitar Workout", or a bunch of Steve Morse or Eric Johnson stuff... things I really liked. I also started learning songwriting and production "Cakewalk". The nuts and bolts of how I operate guitar and teach it are Directly Related to this period of my life, and equation - the wisdom of these authors and time I spent in their teachings - multiplied by my own practice.
I realized, not only did I probably incite said life drama, because these 2 questions were waiting for me to ask them of myself, but after a short time, when I saw my ability to operate the guitar, and music in general completely evolve that I was on a destinationless journey, and that I could go as far as I wanted, and now I knew how much time it would take to get real results... something that I had never known over my 18 years of playing guitar, countless gigs, and tours. Now I knew how to be patient and faithful in my practice. Faithful - meaning that if I kept pressing into the wall, eventually something would come out the other side.
craigb
Leg two - Music theory.
...........
Yes - and I don't want to say who cares, but - let the theory you learn serve you - not encumber you with things you won't employ.
craigb
Leg three - Ear training.
This falls into two camps: Absolute pitch and relative pitch.......
Absolute pitch meaning "perfect pitch"? I wouldn't waste one second of your life trying to develop perfect pitch if you were not born with it. I would spend your time learning relative pitch as it is the most useful tool you will ever learn...
Relative pitch is about "relationships". Unless it is a solo... there has to be some kind of relationship. It should be at the VERY CENTER of how you process melodic and chordal relationships.
craigb
Leg four - Song theory.
This area includes song structure, verses, choruses, codas, bridges, intros, outros, time signatures, melody, harmony, soloing, song writing, orchestrating, etc.
Sure - this is kind of music theory though... once you get through how whole notes work... youll want to put that all into a song structure=-)
One thing that I didn't see in your original post was the Study of Time. When it comes to technique, nothing will get you there faster than the study of technique and time. Here is an article I did talking about this
http://www.guitarworld.co...-drummers-art-recovery