I learn guitar primarily by ear, with the occasional bit of tab or a video to help me out.
Recently though, perhaps as a result of having less time available to play guitar, I've become conscious of just how long it takes me to decipher and learn parts. It has occurred to me that perhaps my approach is too 'slavish', in the sense that I'm not happy to proceed to the next bar until I've sussed out every nuance to the best of my (limited) abilities – not that the result necessarily comes out perfectly when I play it back – but I try!
Those of you who learn by ear, what's your approach? Does the end result have to be as near as dammit verbatim to the recording or are you happy to use a bit of 'artistic license' by making the thing ultimately recognisable, but with your own embellishments, touch, whatever else you want to call it? 
To put some numbers on this, it has taken me the best part of 4 x 1hr sessions just to 'get' the intro to Hendrix's "Little Wing"... 
, and I still haven't gotten to playing it consistently smoothly, which seems a bit poor for someone who has played guitar for a quarter of a century! No doubt I'd have it down a little quicker if I weren't so out-of-practise (stopped gigging about five years ago).
So yeah, no right or wrong answer here, but interested to read about how you approach things, and your opinions
P.S. WTF is with these new emoticons?!
One-armed Alec wrote:...are you happy to use a bit of 'artistic license' by making the thing ultimately recognisable, but with your own embellishments, touch, whatever else you want to call it?
...
That's closer to my usual approach - I go for as accurate as possible within reason. Don't get me wrong, I do try to learn things correctly and accurately, but time is a factor so sometimes I just have to be okay with "close enough." It depends on the artist and genre, too. Some genres, like blues, I don't want to do everything note-for-note (although it's good to learn what was actually played on a given recording). That's not the spirit of it. I may want to do some signature phrases note-for-note, but doing an entire solo or something just would't be right. If it's a song I'm learning to do as a solo-acoustic piece, I'm not going to be too worried about learning every single guitar part note-for-note because that's not what I'm going to ever play. I'd be a good excercise, certainly, just not the best use of mylimited practice time.
I've also noticed that a lot of times I *think* I have it right, until the next day when I listen again I realize I was just not hearing it right and have to go re-learn it the "real" right way. Definitely a skill I need to keep working at.
billybilly, I find the same – by-tab stuff rarely sinks in, while by-ear stuff tends to stick... almost as if I don't really know how most parts sounded in the first place until I've learnt them by ear. Incidentally, the first half of my CN solo is 'reasonably accurate' and the second half is 90% improvised
BydoEmpire – totally agree with your point about the blues. In fact, I don't think I've ever learned a whole blues solo note-for-note. "Steal licks, invent licks and improvise" is my approach (and improvisation is the ultimate expression IMHO).
Some parts, I reckon, just have to be spot-on though... e.g. "Sultans of Swing" or the catalogue of Shadows instrumentals that I murder on a semi-regular basis...
Help Desk