Well would you believe it.

New Years should be a good time for us if all goes as planned.

Thursday night we will finish up the last of the family Christmas parties at my house.

Then New Years Eve we will attend a rather early Service at a small log Church not far from us. It is not a "watch service" (will not go through midnight). I am planned to play a few songs with my wife and lead in the congregational singing using the guitar.

Which means, you've not wasted time- learning.... anything is a good thang!

Derick ,  I listen to the song in whatever means I have available until I've got it familiar in my brain.

Then, if I learned the song not from watching a video and I could not see the chords, I look up the chords, usually on the Ultimate-Guitar website.

Then I play it in original key to see if it fits my vocal range.  If not, I change the key until it's in my range.

Then, if it's the type of song I can fit picking the melody for a part of the song, during the song or for the intro or whatever, that I almost always just figure out by ear.   I tried using tabs for that at one time, but it seemed to take longer to try to figure out how to read the tabs than to just figure it out on my own.  lol.  I know how tabs work, but they just take too long for my brain to translate.  lol.

Then, I take it out of the oven, let it sit for 5 minutes........waitaminute.........that's not right..........what was this the recipe for again?  

Derick, TonyKgull, seagullplayer, aristophon, I do a google search for lyrics and chords and go from there. I will listen to the song on you tube to refresh my memory for the melody-
once I find the key I like to play/sing in I do it over and over and over until I get the cadence I want with the phrasing I like- however, I find, that over time I wind up doin a song a bit different than the first few times I did it-

Yessir!