Practice

As long as you're enjoying yourself and feel you're moving forward in your skills then you HAVE the right mix.

The general rule of thumb is to always work on three things. One, spend some time working on a new technique. Two, always have a challenging song you're working on. And three, place what you learn into context (Chorus Forms).

David,
Mark Hummel mentioned how his playing really advanced when he found (in my words here) that the notes that can be used overlap from the different postions. Is this basically the same thing as when you talk about using using notes that have "a bit of dissonance" in your theory section? As time goes by I find myself going places during solos that I would not have ventured to before, and doing it without being concious of it . It occurred to me that perhaps I have discovered this and was not really aware of what was going on. Many times i will listen to a part I have played on one of our originals and not have a clue what I did - sometimes I can't repeat it for the life of me. I would like to understand Mark's comment, but have very limited theory background.