When you’re trying to learn a difficult tune, I don’t want you to automatically start at measure one every single time. Why? Because you’ll get “1 2 3 4” feeling pretty good, but measures five and six are still a mess—and by the time you hit the end of the form, it can turn into a disaster. So in this short I’m reminding you to start in different places: take measures three and four, take five and six, and make yourself comfortable jumping into the song from multiple spots. Then I give you a handful of techniques that speed the whole process up. Put on the recorder (yeah, I know you’re going to hate that) so you can hear what you’re really playing, and even video yourself once you’ve got something together. Another great trick is to put the guitar down, sit with the music, and picture yourself playing it—if your fingers are “stumbling around” in your mind, you don’t have it yet. Finally, write it out, and if you really want the ultimate test, transpose it: now notes become scale degrees and chord factors, and that’s where real understanding lives.