You're welcome for the reply. It's what I'm supposed to do. :)[br]

Originally Posted by: p_p_sSo, aside from working on my muscle memory, and making sure I can pick particular notes cleanly and clearly, when reading the notes, my goal should be to know by heart the correct placement of fingers on the fretboard (and string to pick) just by looking on the notes, and not necessarily the tablature?[/quote][p]You can realistically only look at one thing at a time. Or focus on one thing at a time. Even once you can play all these things with ease, you can only focus on so much at any moment. That's why the overall goal is to work on memorizing, playing & repeating everything (tab, strings, fingers, hands) until it's all second nature.

It is necessary at first to isolate them in discreet parts to gradually work toward memorization. But the goal is to automate everything as much as possible.

Originally Posted by: p_p_sBecause, the way I was practising it now, was basically disregarding the notes on the staff completely (not sure if that's the correct word, sorry!), only looking at the "tab" below...[/quote]

That's fine & necessary to a degree!

[quote=p_p_s] ... now, deciphering tab takes a bit of my mental power, as each time I have to be super aware to think "ok, this is 3rd string, 2nd fret, 3 times, then change to open on 1st string 1 time, and then... etc. etc.". So it wasn't so much about correct finger placement, and muscle memory, as it was about deciphering correct finger placement to play it on time...

Right. And until you have some of that process memorized, automated, made second nature you are going to have that trouble. The process of gradually making it second nature is so you can look or read ahead a little bit & count on your hands to do what they are supposed to do while you are scanning for the next task.

[quote=p_p_s]I am still enjoying it a lot, but for the moment I've got a feeling it's much more mental / focus exercise to me, rather than a mechanical one ;)

There's a lot of rubbing your belly & tapping your head at the same time sort of thing that has to get learned as you begin. :) Best of success!