What helped you get a lot better?

I'll second that about recording yourself. I found that I was hearing what I meant to play when I played it. When I played it back I heard how I really played it.
:lol:

My biggest jump in rate of improvement came when I realized that every little imperfection is a barrier to playing better, so if I want to play well, I have to slow down and focus on doing everything right.

That is the answer! Your brain is the most amazing computer. Don't program it with mistakes! Take your time to do it right.
Practice with a metronome, it drills perfect timing into you.
Play with others, always try to play with people better than you.
And there is NOTHING like playing the street to learn how to perform.
You get instant feedback, (and paid for practicing!)
You learn how to have contact with your public.

:lol:

once I started using a looping device and making tracks on it everything broke open. before, I needed other musicians or members of the band(s) I had been in. Once I started looping tracks I improvised over different progressions, taking the progression beneath solos of cover songs and what not, and everything opened up.

What did you use for a looper?

...Yeah, we were too dumb to know we weren't good enough to play, so we did anyway. And it helped me improve quick. And I learned to learn a WHOLE song and not just bits and pieces.. ..

Sometimes, an innocence, and a desire to play is all it takes. We often hear about people who have done amazing things simply because they had no idea how "impossible" such a thing was.

Later,
Ghost 8)

...playing out most definitely helped me. before then my friends told me i was good, but they're my friends so i wasn't sure. first time i played out was not great at all - i was a bag of nerves, but i knew what i did wrong. so i went back kthe next week and get a rounding applause. since then i've had some great nights which has also boosted my self confidence - this can do a great deal to improve your playing... believe me!!! Once you believe that you are good enough and can overcome little difficult playing challenges, you really let your light shine.... but you've got to get the basics down first of course:-)

My biggest jump in rate of improvement came when I realized that every little imperfection is a barrier to playing better, so if I want to play well, I have to slow down and focus on doing everything right.

I used to play through a song accepting a little bit of slop here or there as I tried to learn the whole song.

Now, I take it one measure, or even a part of a measure -- sometimes one note -- at a time until it I can play that one thing perfectly, then I move on to the next.

I used to spend a few days "learning" a song. When I started this attitude towards practice that went up to a month or more for a single song. Since then I'm back down to about a week per song.

You will play how you practice, so if you practice accepting slop, you'll play with slop.

The other thing that helped me a lot, aside from simply demanding perfection in my play on songs while I practice, was realizing the value of etudes designed to train specific techniques.
Be careful not to give starting out players the impression that every pick scratch on a note-for-note is mandatory to play it "correctly". I have reached the level where I can look at it and play it right away, even the solo if it is not too tough (and I know how it goes) but I got there through understanding the progression and structure of the song. There is a good lesson on it here in guitar noise on "wish you were here" strumming patterns.

Every pick scratch note for note is mandatory for playing correctly. Especialy, for new guitar players. If you just want to play the song, then perfection is not important. But if you wanna play and practice effeciently, you MUST play every note as perfectly as possible. Its a terrific habit to form.

Another reason for practicing for perfection is b/c you never play as good for a crowd as you do for yourself. So, if you achieve perfection with the song in practice, youre are gaurunteed to play it satisfactorily for a crowd.