Hey & welcome to GT!

Originally Posted by: dmartin022

When learning a song, do you try and memorize the tabs or play and follow along as you go? Seems very difficult to play as I go.

This is a multi-step process. It's especially difficult if you are a beginner & still just learning to play guitar! So be patient with yourself. :)[br][br]I encourage students to watch the video playthough of a section. Listen to it several times until you can hum it to yourself. Then watch the breakdown section. Then stop the video in order to try to play small increments of the part. How big an increment depends on your skill level & the difficulty of the song section.

Sometimes you might be able to do 2 or 4 measures if the notes/chords, rhythms & technique used is basic enough. Other times if the notes or techniques used are more difficult then you might have to just work on a measure, or even a part of a measure.

I think it's important to separate 2 steps here:

1. Watching & listening to the instructor breakdown.

2. Trying to play the part while you are learning it.

Eventually you might be able to put together all the parts enough to play along slowly at the end of a song lesson section. The instructors usually repeat the section taught a few times at the end of a lesson.

But even then, you might need to spend time away from the video, from the computer, from everything else & just focus on playing the parts over & again until they are second nature.

This process takes a different amount of time for each individual depending on their skill, how much technique they bring to the process. But the same thing has to happen with everyone: in order to play a song in real time all the physical motions have to be completely automated. You have to practice enough that you can just play the part like second nature.

When you are playing music in real time there is no time to second guess, or think about the part while you are playing it. You have to be thinking a little ahead of where you are in music so you can just think of what is next & those hours of repetitious practice take over, your brain sends the signals to your hands & muscle memory takes over.

Hope this helps! Please ask more if necessary. Best of success with it!