Learning Songs...not intros

I know the intro or main riff to about a million or so songs. There's a HUGE difference between being able to play a song so someone can recognize it and playing it in time with the original.

I always seem to fool myself into thinking, "Yeah, I can do that." However, I never did, so I never developed a huge part of playing music: time. Now, I can play some songs in time, note for note, but it takes me a long time to get a new song down.

Part of what I'm doing is learning new songs in time with the original studio recordings to help develop my listening skills and so on. I figured I could never really play in a band and listen to changes if I can't play along with a song.

So the second song I undertook was Thin Lizzy's Jailbreak. I wasn't sure if anything in this song would cause a problem, I thought, yeah, I can do that. Sure enough, something did cause a problem.

There's a pause for a beat in the main riff. The riff starts off with an A chord (power), then an E (power chord too). Then it hits an F-sharp. THEN A PAUSE. What I found is that I can come in after the pause on time, 99% of the time. However, if I missed, I was late (or early depending on how I missed) the rest of the time. I wasn't listening and adjusting well.

So I had to literally stomp my foot for that silent note (the pause). Then, naturally, I start using my foot to keep time for the whole song. This is a strange thing for me as usually when I use my foot to keep time I end up tapping along with the notes I'm playing, not the time itself. So, I took steps in the right direction here in keeping time with my feet.

Anyhow, here's the video. It's recorded with a video camera as I was having some latency problems with my audio.