Time to actually learn how to play :P

[Johnny Mac]

Have a go at those 'Spider Exercises' they're on a sticky. They will help with technique in the long term. 
There are loads of tuition books on amazon.
Lick Library do loads of DVDs there is bound to be some that appeal to you. It costs but its not going to rape your wallet like a teacher can.
Ask yourself what you want to achieve, find the material you need to practice with and keep doing it. Over and over, the hard stuff takes so much time to get right. The really good players would have sacrificed so much of their time to get that good.
Record yourself.

[Nadz1lla]

Cheers all for the great advice so far! Am taking a lot of it on board.  :)

[JDC]

for fast alternative picking I learnt from michael angelo batios speed kills, although I only ever did exercises 1 and 2 and the practising how fast you can tremolo pick part is useful as that's your speed limit

I've never had a lesson but I used to analysis other people's playing a lot, it's how I got my pinching technique down watching loads of youtube clips of different people's technique and they applying it in my own way

for my own alternative picking technique I use completely stiff picks and hold the pick quite firm but not too firm, just enough so it doesn't flap about hitting the string with a tiny bit of tip showing, basically I'm trying to make sure I don't waste any energy what so ever

I recently got mark tremonti's DVD and that covers a lot and has some good stuff in it

[MDV]

This is incredibly usefull.

Divine every usefull shred of information from it and apply to your practice regimes.

http://www.newenglandconservatory.edu/studentLife/documents/PracticingandCurrentBrainResearchbyGebrian.pdf

[MrBump]

I think that reading about theory could probably help you. 

Search around for some interesting texts on classical music theory - I'm not talking about the neo-classical metal stuff, real classical music.  Start thinking about modal playing, work out what works over what progression.  Technique is something else - practising scale speed with a metronome or a drum machine is fine, if that's what you're after.  But playing something interesting and clever is, I think, more of a challenge - and all of this can be find in classical texts.

Mark.

[Nadz1lla]

Yeah I want to finally crack reading music. My piano teacher and all the teachers for my music course did try to teach me how to read proper sheet music but I could never manage it. A friend suggested I might actually be written-music dyslexic as I literally can't get my head around it at all. I can only just read tab.  :?
 
I'll give it a crack but if still no joy I might have to go and see someone about that dyslexia theory.

Cheers for the links so far too!

[Dreichlift]

I share a similar history, no real formal training, got to a point I was happy with and stayed there etc.

Recently I went on the hunt for a cheap way to improve my playing and stumbled across the Guitar Tricks website. I've found it to be really useful in increasing my theory knowledge, and you can pick and choose the lessons that interest you it comes with tab, videos and often backing tracks for the lessons and it would appear that they've been trying to update the lessons with higher quality videos. Now as with all things there is a catch, this being a subscription, it's $14 a month I believe, which equates to about £9 a month but you can cancel it at anytime and most if not all lessons are downloadable (beats paying £30 per hour when cash is scarce). There are some free lessons you can try, so it's worth a look perhaps.

www.guitartricks.com

Now that I've progressed a bit further I've bought some secondhand books by good old Troy Stetina to have a crack at so we'll see how that goes.

The only thing that I have problems with is sorting out habits I've developed over the years and not adding to them. So far I have a friend who's given me a couple of pointers but I guess if you go down the "No Teacher" route you make sacrifices.

[JDC]

a good website for theory is http://www.musictheory.net/

I found the presentation made it a lot easier to understand over other sites

[dheim]

Hmm having never had a lesson, perhaps I find myself once again in solitude...

At least I don't play a  c**ting tele.

Roo

you're not alone...

[tomjackson]

Stay off the interwebs if you have any hopes of getting good fast. Practice, don't just play, under the tutelage of a good teacher 4-8 hrs every day. There is no easy way.

I think you can get pretty good without 4-8 hours a day of serious practise IMO.  Unless you are training for some kind of speed competition...

Play with as many musicians as you can
Go to see as many guitarists / musicians as you can
mix some fun into the discipline
play clean sometimes

And you'll be as bad as me in no time :D

Git to admit though when you can afford a teacher, even if you only get 10 lessons at some point it will be worth it, until then books/dvd's are the best way forward.

Youtube is good but there are just to many distractions on the web (like this forum and naked women :oops:)

[Ian Price]

Stay off the interwebs if you have any hopes of getting good fast. Practice, don't just play, under the tutelage of a good teacher 4-8 hrs every day. There is no easy way.

I think you can get pretty good without 4-8 hours a day of serious practise IMO.  Unless you are training for some kind of speed competition...

Play with as many musicians as you can
Go to see as many guitarists / musicians as you can
mix some fun into the discipline
play clean sometimes

And you'll be as bad as me in no time :D

Git to admit though when you can afford a teacher, even if you only get 10 lessons at some point it will be worth it, until then books/dvd's are the best way forward.

Youtube is good but there are just to many distractions on the web (like this forum and naked women :oops:)

I pretty much agree with all of that. Learning to play clean is vry important - distortion hides a lot of mistakes.

Another thing I have started doing is playing along with live DVDs as you can generally see some of the chords/notes. It's good for the ear as well!

[Nadz1lla]

Cheers guys! yeah I am definitely going to look into a teacher when I get a job. That playing clean thing is so true! The amount of times I don't sound a note correctly when I play something clean is a big eye-opener.

[lulusg]

Most important you got the Hunger! That will help you out get the job first, then everything else will fall into place! That Hunger to learn is the drive! 

[dheim]

Youtube is good but there are just to many distractions on the web (like this forum and naked women :oops:)

agree on naked women... ;)

and i'd add even full dressed girlfriends who don't care too much about your playing skills and kill you if you vaguely think to spend a couple of hours with your guitar instead of being with them...  :?

[Matt77]

Just You Tube. "Paul Gilbert lesson" he has so many DVDs and lessons on it you can't fail if technique is what you want