I find learning tunes prity hard, thats to say it takes me a long time.I use a similer technique to ET, entering the tune into Cubase on my old Atari and then recording it on to casette for playing back on a walkman.After listening for a couple of days on and off I'm ready to start playing the tune from the dots.The next stage is to ween myself of the written music and practice till the tune becomes natural and alive. I also play scale and patern exercises, but being a classical player you've probably had enough of all that.

Good luck Pied piper