Interpretation.
Learning how to play songs for your audience.
For as many years as I have been teaching guitar, there has always been this one myth about learning how to play songs on the guitar: "You must learn to play the song perfectly." Nothing could be further from the truth.
There is no such thing as playing a song perfectly or exactly how it was recorded; or how someone else plays it. Interpretation is all about getting it as close as possible to the original, but leaving plenty of room for your own creativity. When you are a beginner guitarist, your primary objectives are to learn as many chords and scales as possible, while also memorizing the structures of hundreds of songs.
Why is this important?
Who are you playing for? Do you want to start a band and play cover songs? Are you simply someone who wants to play the guitar on the back porch for a couple of friends? Do you want to write your own songs? Maybe you want to be a studio musician. What do all of these scenarios have in common? The answer: "They each have an audience." Your listeners are who you are playing for. Chances are, your listeners - your audience is mostly made up of non-musicians who only understand music as something they like to listen to and move to.
Most non-musicians who listen to music, only hear the rhythm, the melody and the lyrics. They are less than interested about which chords are being played, which notes in which scale are being played, or how any of this is being presented to them in the song. Their only interest is enjoying the feel of the rhythm and whether or not they can remember all of the words to the lyrics as they try to sing in their car or in the shower. In all honesty, your audience is mostly clueless as to how the music is being made. They really don't care, as long as it makes them feel something and moves them.
What should be your immediate goals?
Practice every song with a recording of the original song. This is priority #1! I cannot emphasize this enough. You have to practice with the songs you are learning and adding to your repertoire, as a daily ritual, with no exceptions. You must try to memorize as best you can, the entire structure of each song, from top to bottom. Only use your chord charts or sheet music as guides for this memorization. After you've practiced each song a hundred or two-hundred times, you should have it down cold.
Don't practice until you get it right, practice until you can't get it wrong.
Record yourself when you are practicing. Use your smartphone. This is such an important thing to do. There simply is no better way to hear yourself playing. You need to hear your progress. How you play a song when you are just learning it, compared to how it will sound months down the road after you've practiced it a hundred times, can only be achieved by learning and knowing where your strong and weak parts are in every song. The only way that this can happen is to hear yourself playing.
There will eventually come a day when you will be satisfied with how you play a song you have been working on for a long time. Your ears have been trained to listen for all of the parts, all of the nuances and all of the structures of each song. Imagine the moment when you can play each song from the top to the bottom without any mistakes. Nothing in music feels more empowering than being able to play a song all the way through without any mistakes.
But, what about interpretation and getting it close?
There exists not one person on the planet who will ever be able to play "Eruption" exactly like Eddie Van Halen did on the original recording from “Van Halen I”. It is a physical impossibility. Yes, a lot of people can get it pretty damned close, but no matter who plays it, there will always be a few things missing: Eddie's style, his approach, his fingers and his magic. None of that can ever be duplicated by anyone. It may be 98-99% close, but it will never be 100% perfect. This is how you should think of every song you ever learn on the guitar. You can always strive to get it as close as possible, but you cannot be perfect.
Does perfection even matter?
Nope. It most certainly does not; and I'll tell you why. I live by the mantra that there are a trillion ways to do anything and everything in this world, no matter what it is. There is no such thing as the only way to do one thing. Eddie Van Halen once said that he was unhappy with the finished recording of "Eruption", because he could hear the parts where he believed he could have played it better. This is what perfectionists do. After 46 years of this song being played billions of times, imagining Eruption somehow being played different from the original recording, seems impossible to comprehend. Only Eddie had the right to say that he could have improved on it.
This means that the original recording of Eruption was only one of many ways that Eddie could have played that song.
Now, use that same perspective on every song you learn on the guitar. The original way is not the only way. Play the most recognizable songs as close to the originals as you can, but leave enough room to make it your version, your interpretation. There is no law in music that says you can't do this. Music "IS" about interpretation. It is all about creativity. Creativity and interpretation in music is a very personal super power all musicians eventually possess. These super powers develop over long periods of time with seemingly endless hours of unconditional practice. No real musician who possesses these super powers will ever relinquish them for the sake of being perfect.
Interpret your songs and make them yours. You must learn to take ownership of every note that comes from your guitar. Play for yourself and the people who will enjoy listening to your versions of yours and their favorite songs. This is why we play!