Originally Posted by: schmangeAgain..a lot of beginners fall into this trap of gaining speed and doing scales. Instead of always thinking about that, think about accuracy, clean playing, style, muting unplayed strings, using feel, originality and melody as well.

Couldn't agree more. If you can get the accuracy down first, you can always, always learn to play it faster as time goes by. It's a lot easier to learn something slow and build the speed up over time than if you can play it fast but not clean; it's a lot harder (and VERY frustrating) to go back and reteach your fingers the precision side of things.

Most of the guys and gals you see playing fast have spent hours of practising daily for years. Keep at it and it'll come to you, be it speed, understanding the theory, thinking ahead of yourself or anything else you might want to be able to do. Practise, patience and perserverence, them's are the key...