So... hard...

I really need to learn some music theory... chord composition and such... learn to recognize different kinds of chords by ear, and learn how to pick what fingering to use for each chord (short of brute-force trial and error to see what combinations work best). There are a lot of songs that I want to learn on guitar, but so far the few songs I've learned have all been from tabs (aside from a handful of mainstream songs that use only super-generic chords). Even sites that give chords along with the lyrics, plus fingering diagrams for the chords, don't help me that much, since I still don't know which variations/fingerings to use, let alone which strings to pluck. Bah. And for the songs I've been wanting to learn this past year+, basically no tabs exist (that I've been able to find, anyway). ... This is probably why I've learned pretty much nothing new in many months. It's frustrating when I think about it, because once I have a tab, it generally doesn't take me that long until I've committed it to memory; playing it fluidly is a different story, but at least at that point I have something to practice instead of learn.

Sigh...

So I've begun trying to figure out a song by ear, tabbing it out as I go. This is the first time I've attempted (beyond like five minutes) to do this, so who knows how long it will take me... For a lot of the chords, it's hard to pick out what notes they consist of. I really like this particular arrangement though, so I am determined...