Guitar lessons are not like video games, once you’ve completed it you’re done and you’re ready for the next level. Just because your brain has read/seen the lesson, it does not mean the muscles in your arms and hands have learned them. A lesson is not “learned” until your muscles know them. So yea, it can take a while to “learn” a new lesson.
Kind of like taking a lesson to learn to play a C chord. I’m sure you can follow along and force your fingers on the strings and even kind of make most of the strings ring as they should. So you have made a C chord, but the lesson is not learned until someone can walk up to you and say, play a C and you can just grab it, strum it and it sounds correct. No squeaks, no buzzing. At that point your muscles have learned the lesson, not until.
When I started I was given 3 chords a week to learn, if I had not perfected one of the chords by the next week, I was only given 2 new chords, so I could continue to learn the chord from last week, I had not perfected. C, F and Bm kicked my butt for a couple weeks, but I finally got them. Then I got 3 chord songs I knew from the radio to learn, from there things grew. I was forced to have a good base and to be able to strum the chords before I got songs to play.
The above is not the best way for everyone, but for me it worked well. I was not trying to remember where each finger had to go and what chord to play next, I just had to see or remember the chord I needed to play and my fingers would go where I needed them to. This is a HUGH STEP, being able to think of a chord and play at ringing as it should before moving on.
Simple Math:
Time spent = How fast you learn.
That’s the math, no need to talk more about that.
How you spend that time best can be argued for hours. For me working on something hard for 3 days, then taking 3 days off from it, practicing other things before coming back to it helps. I think my mind works on the problem in the back ground as I do other things, because often when I come back from the break, I have improved or can play what I had worked on. I have had to do this 3 day cycle may times for some things.
Take the time to except the small things you learn along the way and value them. “Learn to value small steps you make” I say a general rule is it takes a new guitar play 6 months of hard practice to become good enough for others close to them to want to listen to them play. It can take a year or more for strangers to want to listen.
This site has everything needed to help you become a great guitar player if you remember the simple math. This is a life journey you are starting, so it has to take a long time. Where you find yourself in 5 years is up to you.
Wildwoman1313 has a few different articles in the Newsletters Articles area on the site that any new instrument player can gain from. Below is a link that may help you as much as anything else you ever read, about becoming a better guitar player.
http://www.guitartricks.com/forum/showthread.php?t=37902