Author: Todd Markey

Everyone would like to know they are on the right path when pursuing something important. The following seven items are the most important things a guitar student can do to stay on the road to success.

1) Practice
This is not new information, but any successful musician will tell you that it is imperative to practice if you want to improve. Hopefully you have a love of music and practicing is a joy. Even if that is true, it is still hard to get started practicing some of the time. When working on dry technical skills, it is easy to lose motivation. Always keep the goal in mind. Whatever skill you are working on, try to think of a song that requires that skill and remind yourself how fun it will be to play that song on a concert. Learn to enjoy the small victories you will have during your practice sessions, and know that they add up over time to make you the performer you want to be.

2) Practice Correctly
You should always be keenly aware of what skills you are practicing, why you are practicing them, and what you are going to do to master them. Make sure you focus intently on each skill, one at a time. It is extremely difficult to develop several skills at once. Usually what happens is that none of the skills make much progress at all and frustration can set in. For example, if you are practicing a brand new song, be sure to practice in steps rather than trying to play the first measure as you imagine performing it in concert. Learn the notes slowly first, without allowing other things to get in the way. Work on other aspects of the song separately . . . later.

3) Be Patient
This goes along with the previous paragraphs, but deserves special attention. I believe that impatience is the source of most musicians’ problems. Often teachers are partly to blame as well. If a student has been struggling with a certain song for a long time, teachers will sometimes just call it done and move on to the next (usually harder) song. If a song is not being learned, the student and teacher must discover why. Sometimes the song is too difficult. If that is the case, they should find a new one that is a step down in difficulty or focuses on different skills. Often, the song is not improving simply because the student is not practicing enough, or not practicing correctly (see above.)

4) Listen to Music All the Time
Listening to great performers builds motivation to get in the practice room. Surrounding yourself with music helps you discover what you are passionate about and gives new ideas about your musical personality. Share ideas with your friends and teacher about what music to listen to for inspiration.

5) Be a Part of Something Social
It is very hard to be motivated in a room by yourself, living like a musical hermit. Get out there and play music with and for others. This is one of the main reasons for this website. We would love for everyone to be submitting videos to share with the community, displaying your creative ideas for musical projects, and discussing each others’ work.

6) Perform Frequently

Find lots of ways to get in front of an audience frequently. If you are only practicing by yourself, it will be difficult when you finally have the chance to play in front of an audience. Try to play a little bit in front of friends and family often so that it becomes natural to do that. It may be hard the first time, but it gets easier and easier over time. Before you know it, you will be comfortable playing for a large audience.

7) Find a Great Teacher(s)
A skilled teacher is vital to a student’s progress. Naturally a student doesn’t have the entire path to musical greatness laid out before him or her because he or she is new to music. A teacher can guide you to the next logical step to work on, observe your playing and diagnose minute technical details that need to be addressed, and help you come up with fun, exciting projects to work on. Ideally, your teacher should help you with all the other items on this list. They can help you get motivated to practice, and instruct you on how to practice correctly. They will help you be patient and enjoy every little improvement that you make. They can also lead you to great music on the instrument you are learning, help you find others who want to play together, and find events to perform at.

These seven items are what I consider to be the most important things to become a successful guitarist. Please feel free to add your thoughts. What do you think is the most important? What have you found to be the best way to motivate yourself? Let the community know!

One of the constant challenges as a music student is to make sure to get enough practicing to keep moving toward your goals. Even those who are truly passionate about music can fall short on practicing for a large variety of reasons. Being busy with other things like homework, jobs, and other worthwhile activities can cut into time you have earmarked for practice. Fatigue, boredom, and frustration can also sap someone’s enthusiasm from time to time. As a private lesson teacher, I deal with these problems frequently with students who have expressed certain goals but are not acting in ways that are likely to lead them to achieve those goals. I could very well follow the advice of Lou Holtz, famed college football coach who said, “Motivation is simple. You eliminate those who are not motivated” and simply kick out the students who aren’t practicing at the expected level. There are many teachers who do exactly this, and I don’t fault them for it at all. However, I would like to help that student discover why their behavior isn’t matching up with their stated goals. It turns out, some of the reasons are actually very easy to understand. So let me tell you a story from my days as a double bass masters degree student.

Among the bass students at the University of North Texas, I had a group of friends that hung out, talked about bass, listened to bass recordings and discussed them, and helped motivate each other to become better. Of course, some of our time together was just having fun away from our collegiate and musical pursuits. At some point, one of my friends bought a Nintendo 64 game console and we started playing various games on occasion. Suddenly we discovered the greatest game the universe had ever produced (or so we thought at the time) GoldenEye 007! Looking back at it now, its laughable how simplistic the game is, compared to what is available today. But we were absolutely hooked. After orchestra rehearsals, we would rush over to the apartment to play in order to clear the next level. It became an obsession. Each of the group of friends were assigned duties, certain levels we had to clear so we could continue on with the storyline of the game. We also played multi-player head to head matches to test our skills against each other. The game was addicting and before I knew it, I was finding myself unprepared for lessons and rehearsals because of lost practice time.

Video games are extremely fun and addicting. It’s now a standard thing to have behavioral scientists consulting on the design of the game in order to make it more addictive. Its very easy to get sucked into a world of sitting in front of a screen while your life goes by with nothing to show for it afterward. To be fair, I certainly do have some fond memories of that time with my friends and that should count at least a little bit as a positive thing in my life. However, I regret the time I lost from practicing and studying, as well as the other activities that we did before that had a more lasting value to us but were still fun and engaging activities.

After we finished all the levels in the game, some of them went on to new games, but others, including me, stopped playing. I decided that I would never play another video game and, some seventeen years later, I haven’t. I know its really easy to fall in love with these games, especially since the ones today are so much better. I don’t even want to know how fun and exciting they are because I’ve got some practicing to do! I value my musical skills and other activities way too much to get hooked into playing a pointless game for hours on end. The same could be said for other activities like watching sitcoms on t.v. or browsing mindlessly on social media sites. I strongly encourage my students to not get hooked on activities like these so they can have achievements in their lives they can be proud of and that lead to future success instead of just some empty entertainment.

Let me know your experience with gaming. Was there a game you got hooked into playing? Are you obsessively playing one even now? How does that affect what you are doing as a music student? Do you think I’m wrong and want to defend a gaming lifestyle? Please let me know!

The Reality of Starting to Learn Guitar as an Adult

I have heard and read people claiming that adults struggle when they start learning guitar because children can learn faster and adults can’t learn new things as easily. I disagree with this based on my experiences with teaching both children and adults over the years. However, quite a few of the adults that start learning guitar end up quitting in the first year for many reasons. I want to support anyone who is learning guitar, so I want you to know about, and plan for some of the pitfalls that adult beginners face. Starting to learn guitar as an adult won't be a good choice for everyone, but the following considerations can help you to decide whether to begin and give you a much better chance for success.

Its About the Practice Time!

I believe adults can learn faster than children in general, but that’s not what matters most. It really comes down to practice. A child is often forced to practice regularly by the parents, and as a result they make fairly consistent progress. Parents who spent money on the instrument and lessons expect to see some progress for that hard-earned money. With studio recitals and concerts to prepare for, the student also has lots of short-term goals laid out for them and they practice to prepare for those events. This is not to say that forcing someone to practice is the best way to learn. I believe that having internal motivation and a passion for the art form results in the best outcomes, but just putting in practice time for whatever reason is going to get better results than not practicing.

Adults often don’t hold themselves to the same practicing standard that they demand of children. Even though they are spending their own money, they often let a few days of practicing slide here and there, which then becomes the norm. With too much time between practice sessions, the body doesn’t get the kind of repetitive training at frequent intervals that it needs to start to internalize the subtle motions needed for high quality music performance. Each practice session will feel like starting over again rather than building on the previous practice.

To have a legitimate chance at progressing sufficiently on guitar, you have to commit some time to practicing on a regular basis. If your life is so hectic that you will only be able to practice a little bit every three or four days, I would suggest not starting. Its going to be extremely hard to make progress that you will be happy with. At a bare minimum, you should be practicing every other day for about a half hour. Practicing every day is ideal, but it is often not possible given work and family obligations as well as other important activities you may have. If possible, pick up the instrument and play for even just ten minutes on a busy day to give the muscles that repetitive experience of the motions they need to make.

Understand the Challenge

You also need to have reasonable expectations about your progress so you don’t get upset at how long it is taking. Developing skills on guitar is a very long process because a high level of precision and fine motor control is demanded even for fairly simple music. Understanding that it may take over a year before you are excited to show others what you have learned on the guitar can help you to enjoy the process and not feel like you are a failure or just don’t have the musical ability. This is totally normal. There are no short cuts to developing this sophistication of fine motor skills and if you try to short cut the process, you will actually harm your progress.

On the other hand, if you are practicing daily for an hour and you are taking hour-long lessons with a prestigious teacher, you should progress much faster than this. However, I haven’t found any adult students who have that kind of time and money to dedicate to their hobby, so I’m assuming most of the readers of this article are more like the half-hour-every-other-day type of student. Please keep in mind that the years it may take to build your skills are just an investment that should last a lifetime. Once you have the skill, you can play the instrument for the rest of your life, provided you keep playing and don’t let your instrument collect dust.

Get Started!

If you have the discipline to practice regularly, have reasonable expectations about your progress, and you have fun with the process of learning a great art form, then learning guitar as an adult can be an exciting and rewarding life-long experience. I encourage you to check your schedule to block out practice time, check your budget to get a good quality beginner instrument and good instruction, and get started!