I strongly suggest getting a good teacher. For one thing, teachers can help you to avoid bad habits/technique (sloppy left hand positions, finger angle, right hand picking techniques, etc.) and believe me, once an error becomes ingrained, it's really hard to correct! Also, it might sound simple, but don't practice mistakes! Mindlessly repeating a passage is worthless and once again can ingrain a problem. Analyze what makes the passage difficult or not sound good. Is it a position shift? Awkward chord fingering? Lack of smoothness? I had one of my students videotape his picking in a difficult riff, then he slowed it down upon playback, which revealed inconsistent attacks: he basically wasn't holding his pick firmly enough! Before this level of analysis, he just kept repeating it and it never got much better.
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