Last week, about mid-way through practice, I finally found the rhythm to Mazurka! WOOHOO!!
There's an ever-so-subtle emphasis on the third beat that gives Mazurka the flair it needs to sound like the Polish dance that it is. Once I found that, it was simply a matter of incorporating it into the feel of the piece, and voila! Get off your arse, grab a pint, and party!
(Thanks, Michael, for pointing this out to me earlier. The piece kept sounding kinda drap until I'd practiced it enough)
hehehehe
Caprichos continues sounding better and better, though there's still a couple of measures that are giving me trouble.. My teacher has me working on page two of that piece now.
I've noticed something fascinating in the time I've been studying guitar, and music theory along with it. When you start to learn a new piece, your focus is squarely on learning the foundation of the music and what the notes are telling you to do. There's no feeling in your practice, no developing your technique. All you're doing is translating the blueprint of the piece and figuring out how to play it.
After you've got the basics of the piece down, you start to understand its little nuances, and you begin to more easily identify the patterns that make the music what it is - why it sounds the way it does. You repeat those patterns until you comprehend what the artist had mind when he/she wrote the piece.
Finally, you begin to take what you've learned and apply your own technique to it. This is where your brain switches from the analytical side of learning and moves on to the emotional side of playing. At this point, you're no longer practicing how to play it, but how to use your own voice to express how the piece makes you feel.
I've come to the conclusion that learning new music is a 3-step process:
1) Studying
2) Learning
3) Performing
And those appliy to any instrument, not just guitar. However long it takes for anyone to complete those three steps is entirely up to them. That's one thing that makes music such a wonderful thing to learn how to create. There's no competition.