You own the song already. You’ve been singing it for so long, mentally. You’ve been performing it, mentally, for an audience of you and your multitudes. You own the song but you can’t play it yet. There are too many bass-walks and hammer-ons. There are upstrums.
Soon as you get past the first couple measures you lose yourself in your own imaginings. The song is no more — just stumbling chords. Wanting audience you become it, again: the fretboard is an ego trap. Here comes doubt and past failure. You’re sinking.
But you keep at it, take out the hammer-ons and the upstrums, break it down. Then you realize it’s not in the fingers — it’s in the foot. When your foot has started keeping tempo the meter lines up: you stay in the song. You realize you haven’t been forgetting notes. You’ve just been going off song. You’ve been putting yourself ahead of it.
You’re not playing the album version or even the YouTube lesson version. You’re playing your own version. Play it until your foot is tapping. Find the tricky meter and play it over and over. Let the song own you back.
the Budafoki amended 