I have heard this quote attributed to Willie Nelson, as told by Wynton Marsalis: "If you can play, then what the $@#% do you want to rehearse for? Just play."

I guess that's what I do.

But when I first started, I simply kept trying to play songs that were a little too hard to play. After awhile, those songs weren't hard anymore, and and I would go after different ones.

I've never been interested in playing boring runs over and over again...so I became a rhythm guitarist. laugh

But if you want to become technically brilliant, then you ought to practice runs like that, all the time.

One thing I've noticed...the people who get really good are the ones who are drawn to their instrument, who feel compelled to go to it constantly and daily, just to make sounds come out of it. But the people who have to remind themselves to play, who really want to become great, and yet have to force themselves to play on their instrument...they rarely get very good at it. For the people who were meant to be musicians, it's like a magnet. They don't have to be reminded to play...if anything, they have to be reminded to stop.

http://www.soundclick.com/MarkKaufman