Thanks! Although I'm cringing somewhat now that I watch my playing that song. It certainly needs more work...
Anyway, I don't think I hit on any secret to learning a new song other than an incredible amount of repetition.
I watch Neil's videos very carefully paying particular attention to what he suggests as well as his finger and hand positioning.
Then I start attempting to play the tab. I try to work on songs that require some particular new technique that I have yet to learn, so usually it's very slow going at first.
Since I've become very adept at reading tabs, I don't worry about trying to memorize the song. I've found that the only way I can get good at playing something is by developing the muscle memory through repetition.
Once the muscle memory starts to work, I find that I've already memorized the tab because I've played it so many times. It feels almost like cheating because I don't work at memorizing the song and instead depend on repetition to learn it.
The downside to this technique is that I generally work on one song at a time. By the time I've learned a new one, I've forgotten how to play every other song I've ever learned.
For example, I've been working on 'Mood For A Day' for over 3 weeks now ... and have probably played through parts A-D many hundreds of times. But, I can barely remember how to play the song that I most recently learned before.
I'm not sure what my long term strategy is going to be. I think for the immediate future, I'm going to continue working on new techniques that I have yet to learn. Then I need to work on theory and hopefully some improvisation. Then, someday I'll hoping to spend a few months going back over the dozens of songs that I've learned in the past and try re-learning them so that I'll eventually have a repertoire of songs that I can play.
Good luck ... and keep repeating!!!
-Tom