I guess the first thing with me Peter, is that I don't intimidate easily. If I truly decided that I wanted to learn say Muriel Anderson's arrangement of "Nola" or some difficult Chet Atkins arrangment, I would just do it, regardless of how much time it took.

'Course you have to have the confidence of knowing somewhere in the back of your mind that you're capable of doing it and that your current playing level is somewhere within the overall ballpark of where you plan to go, and that it is attainable. I wouldn't attempt to start working on a complex Lenny Breau or Kotke arrangement, because I'm "not there" yet or even in that ballpark and don't delude myself.

The most difficult things I've learned have been from tablature with accompanying videos. I use both, but tab really slows you down, especially when figuring out finger positions....but you gain some insight into why the composer or performer chose the route they did, in figuring out how to handle a given section. One of the intersting things I discovered about Chet, is that more often than not, he only frets the strings he's going to pluck with his right hand at any given interval. No excess energy wasted in either hand.

My process is to go at it 4 bars at a time, from start to finish and then chain it all together. By the time I finish the song it's also memorized from the repetition of working on it. I tackle the most difficult sections first, to get them out of the way. Then the easy sections become the perks as sort of a home stretch reward.