Firstly I would scrap Tab all together.
Here at IG we provide tab along with music notation in the lessons, as you know. In the music industry however, you will never be handed a tune with tabulature on it.
Reading and writing in Tab can be helpful in the beginning but the sooner you can get away from it, and just focus on reading and writing your ideas in standard notation, the better.
Reading skills are more important in some areas than others. If your interested in playing classical music or doing session work where all the guitar parts are pre arranged. Those players who can read well will usually get hired before those with mediocre reading skills. When your being paid by the hour, no one wants to wait for you while your sitting there trying to get your head around the music in front of you.
If your into Jazz or Rock or something a bit more free. Reading is less important but still important. Usually you will find yourself only being required to read from chord charts. Which is still an art in itself but it leaves room for improvisation with voicing’s in some cases.
So having said that. Try and get used to standard notation right away, practice your sight reading daily too.
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Studying scales/chords and harmony are all important.
Learning/transcribing and playing tunes was left out of Vai’s list for some reason though.
The act of playing and listening is the best way to develop your ear’s. If your ears are not attuned to the musical language of what ever style your playing. You wont get far.
Building a large repertoire of music for performance is the best way to go. Just play heaps. Listen and learn everything you can. From TV advertisement jingles and nursery rhymes to Vai solos and so forth.
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There are a million things I could say about this subject. But so far as viewing music as a profession. If your really serious about making the most of your musical interests. I suggest you consider doing a course at conservatory/university or something.
This way you can put everything into it, and experience first hand from professionals what it really takes to get to the highest levels.
There is so much more than just theory and practicing. Its a lifestyle in my opinion. This involves going to gigs, spending time with musicians. Composing (lots of crap music) and just soaking up everything you can.
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Setting goals is great too. Short term and long term.
Short term examples could be.
1) this month i want to learn X song and write a 32 bar original solo for it.
2) also learn the hell out of 4 harmonic minor scales, and maybe write some etude’s based on each key.
3) continue to build my reading skills
4) build my comping skills ( pick 2 tunes with chords im not familiar with and work on them for a month)
Long term,
1) by the end of the year I want to be able to solo over the blues in all 12 keys comfortably and with creativity, not just the same solo in 12 keys.. (this might be a stretch but you get the idea, give yourself something challenging to build on over a period of time)
2) Know all my major scales backwards and be able to recite the key signatures for each one by memory.
3) develop a large vocabulary of lines/licks in a particular style. For example, you could make an effort to transcribe as many Satriani licks as you can and learn them all as time goes on. So eventually you will be so familiar with his little tricks that you can take a solo and deliberately throw in lots of ‘satch signature sounds’ ( these exercises are also great when defining your own sound. You begin to get a feel for the melody’s that really speak to you and the ones that ‘just sound cool’ )
4) learn to play Ornette Coleman – Song X, or something of the like.
Anyway. Ill stop there. Hopefully this helps in some way.
Mike.
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