its the same thing that happens with rock guitarists. we learn a buncha licks off of records and end up repeating them in everything we do. that's not what it's supposed to be about.
i'm really very focused right now on learning music "the right way". breaking out of that "guitarist" rut i've been in for the past 18 years, and finally becoming a musician who plays the guitar. but that doesn't mean i have to sit here and play Sweet Home Alabama either.
I think a lot of people hit that point eventually, where cranking out stock licks and minor variations of them doesn't work any more.
For me, it was when I was about 27 years old, after I had been playing for 13 years or so. I had been playing blues rock and classic rock covers and throwing in my own improvisations on solos at a pretty high level, but I started noticing that there were certain songs that I inevitably played wrong sounding notes on, or always stopped the solo on a wrong note.
Also, that I could not alternate pick or speed pick worth shit, and all the virtuoso players I was into like Yngwie, George Lynch, EVH etc., were routinely doing stuff that was completely beyond my abilities.
This led to an intense year of study with a monster jazz player in town who taught me basic jazz theory, picking studies, playing over changes, metronome drills, how to identify all the notes on the fretboard, etc., etc., all of which has helped immensely.
The main thing he taught me was how to effectively drill on a particular thing and measure progress, which I had never done in any kind of formal manner. The closest I had really ever come to that before was to listen to parts of a song over and over with guitar in hand and keep playing with it until my part sounded right.
I'm still not where I want to be (may never be), but I am certainly a lot better musician for it.
In the last rock band I was in, the singer used to introduce me as the "lead guitarist" to everyone. I had to explain to him that I just play the guitar.
