Guitar Lessons in Tulsa | Hitting A Wall In Practice
This content was created for Curtis Music Academy
A lot of times when a student begins a new adventure of taking guitar lessons in Tulsa, the student is highly ambitious at the beginning and they are ready to take on the world. However, through the course of taking lessons for a few weeks or months or perhaps a few years, there usually comes a point where anyone who is learning an instrument kind of hits a a wall. And this is very common. It’s not a surprise when it happens. And this is typically the point where a student will quit taking lessons. And so what I’d like to speak about is how you can recognize when a student is hitting a wall and how to come back. That with encouragement and excitement in the monotony of practicing an instrument. So if a student is having a difficult time practicing in between his or her guitar lessons in Tulsa, then we want to figure out a way to mix things up to allow for a variety of different things for that student to do.
So if the typical lesson approach is to practice scales and then after practicing scales, going into playing a song. And then lastly talking about fingerpicking. If that’s something that you are doing in every single lesson, then you need to, I recognize when it is that a student is not practicing, especially if this is a student that previously used to practice a lot and all of a sudden is no longer practicing. Because if this is the case, during guitar lessons in Tulsa, we want to figure out ways to motivate that student because it should be a red flag if a student practices all the time for a long period of time and then all of a sudden stops practicing because this is a sign that they are hitting a wall. And so we want to address that in a positive way, not in a negative way. If you ever are upset with your students for not practicing, then you are doing yourself a very large dis service.
The students will begin to be apprehensive about attending their lessons because they’re not interested in the content that you’re giving them. And so you need to recognize when it is actually hitting a wall and that’s what we want to address. So if a student stops practicing after a long period of time where they had previously packed, practiced quite a bit, then we need to first of all ask them if there’s anything that they’ve been really eager to learn. Because a lot of times it’s not that they don’t want to practice, it’s the fact that they just need something different to practice.
They just need a break from the monotony, the monotony of practicing scales or something like that. And it doesn’t even have to be a long term change in guitar lessons in Tulsa. Perhaps just a short term to to help their encouragement and get them to go where they’re trying to accomplish. So if you have a student that needs a bit of a change, like I said, ask them what it is that they would be eager to learn. And if they don’t have anything specific, then what we would want to do is provide them with some content that is a little bit different. And this could be a song that you know that they like a band that they like and finding a song within the difficulty level of which they could be learning at and figuring out how you could address this song in a way that they would understand and appreciate.
So for instance, we have one student that stopped practicing in recent weeks and this is a student that is incredibly talented and has so much in the future for their musicality. However, in recent weeks this student has stopped practicing. And to put it into perspective, it is very likely to be the season that we are that we are in. It is the very end of June, which means kids are out of school. And a lot of times kids just want to play video games during the summer. And that’s, in my opinion, very understandable. And from the parents perspective, that’s unacceptable, which is great. It is very important to have parents that are supportive of their child’s success as a musician and for the guitar lessons in Tulsa for the parent to anticipate moving forward with all of that. That is something that you would want to do.
So with this student, we decided that what we would do is find this child’s favorite song, which is a song by the Beatles. And although the song has a very difficult rhythms, it has very difficult parts to it. I was able to actually arrange a specific way to play this song in a way where nothing in this song was of content that this student was unfamiliar with. So we have learned eighth notes so we could use eighth notes in this song. However, we did not know dotted eight to notes beamed to a 16th note. That was something that we hadn’t addressed and although the original song would have that type of rhythm, I eliminated those weird rhythms and replaced them with easier to understand rhythms like straight eighth notes. So that’s one thing that you would want to do. Don’t make something too complex where they get frustrated at the fact that not only are they not practicing, now you throw a song that is way too difficult at them and now they are frustrated and probably even more likely to quit taking guitar lessons in Tulsa.
So that’s something that you would want to figure out. One of the best ways that you would be able to do this is to arrange a song on your own. If you’ve, you’ve try and find an arrangement from someone else, a lot of times that arrangement is a little bit too difficult or perhaps a little bit too easy, which is fine. It’s better to have a song that’s too easy in this context than a song that’s too hard, but if you arrange it yourself, you have in mind this student that you are arranging for and you are going to be able to provide an arrangement that is far superior to someone else’s arrangement simply because you understand what that student knows and what they’re capable of. Perhaps you don’t have the software or musical knowledge when you’re teaching guitar lessons in Tulsa to arrange a song on your own and that’s where research is going to be very vital for you as an instructor to find a piece that has been written for your guitar student to be successful with that song. And that’s what we want. We want our students to be successful with any piece of music that is to them so that they can feel encouraged and enjoy playing the music that is with them.
If a student is having a difficult time understanding music or practicing or whatever difficulty they are experiencing in this season, we would want to address that and move forward with helping that student anyway we can so that they can be successful. And some musicians, some students just are unaware of the amount of practice that is required to learn an instrument. And if that’s the case, then your goal as an instructor is to help that student be encouraged throughout the course of the guitar lessons in Tulsa so that they don’t get discouraged with the amount of practice and the amount of work that it requires to learn an instrument, but that you can help them feel successful and feeling encouraged throughout their course of taking lessons with you.