I've got a few arrangements cooking at the moment, "If You Leave Me Now" by Chicago, based on a video from Naudo, "Band on the Run" by Wings, based on a video from Jake Reichbart, and "You're So Vain" by Carly Simon, which I heard on the radio and it got stuck in my head. The ones where I see one of my mate's videos and then have a crack are often "more or less" what they did. These days I don't attempt to completely transcribe, but since they have done most of the heavy lifting I leverage off it! I'm also continuing to re-arrange and re-learn "Never Tear Us Apart". It's getting a bit smoother now.
I find if I play through my learning pieces at least once every second day - not trying to nail it, just trying to push it into my brain - it works well. If it's just fingerpicking in chords, easy. I remember chord progressions pretty quick. If it is chords put you then pick around out-of-chord notes, not too bad. But when it is non a normal chord it is hard to push into my brain. For instance imagine F, thumbing the bottom F, but change the top F to a G. Or a C# maj 7th but with a G# bass. Or the worst one I have at the moment, it's a G7 but put an A on the third string. I really struggle to get the brain to suddenly switch to those crazy shord, the 'ole CPU glitches for a bit before it throws the fingers out.
Maybe if you were a master of the fretboard, and every jazz chord out there made sense, you'd be fine. It's the bane of teaching yourself - you only focus on the fun stuff, leaving big glaring holes in your musicianship! Oh well. One of these years I'll get around to it.
Oh, I've been playing my Esteve for 10 years now. Time flies! It's actually 18 years old now, being a 2002 model. Yep, it sat around for 8 years before I purchased it. It is still a great guitar and remains my main weapon of choice.
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