Guitar Lessons for Children | Recognizing Your Confidence
This content was created for Curtis Music Academy
So they’ll come in and they’ll say, I would like to learn the piano and take guitar lessons for children. It’s just been a dream of mine. But they all probably never visualized themselves doing it at a level of a year from now, which is fine. But most people, they just have this idea that it’s going to be a struggle. And I’m a little bit embarrassed about how poorly I’m doing. And I just want to not come into agreement with those thoughts. So even if we have a lesson with a lot of mistakes, it’s still a positive lesson because you’re moving forward in the piano.
And so that’s another thing, too, about just goals in life, is I heard one time recently about people who want to lose weight and if they constantly release negative words over themselves and over their bodies, like I’m overweight, I never do it right.
All these negative types of words, it’s actually really difficult to lose weight and it kind of has to do with what was believed. What you believe in your heart with confidence will become its own self-fulfilling prophecy. And so if you don’t believe you will ever lose weight, even though you try to go on a diet, that’s what’s going to happen. You’re never going to lose weight. And so I like to encourage my students just to be positive during guitar lessons for children.
It doesn’t matter if you make a mistake. And I do understand their point of view as well, because they might have practiced all week on a certain song and then they come into a lesson and they are playing it for another person, which is me, the teacher. And so many students have told me, like I played it well this week, but I think I’m just nervous playing it in front of somebody and I totally get that.
That’s kind of a separate issue. That’s just kind of more normal. But I remember feeling that way when I was a student myself. But the bottom dollar is if you’re doing it, if you feel like you’re making a lot of mistakes, don’t release negative thoughts or words over yourself, just come into agreement with your positive belief and begin to visualize your future as a piano player taking lessons in Tulsa, Oklahoma.
Begin to see yourself one year down the road playing the piano and enjoying it. Maybe you have your family come over and they say, Oh, you’ve been taking piano or guitar lessons for children, can I hear you play? And you play a song and everyone just says, wow, that is just wonderful. Or the positive future thinking could be just you by yourself in the living room playing and enjoying songs that you never thought you’d be able to play. So beginning to engage with those ideas in those thoughts of success rather than capitalizing on failures. That is one of the biggest things you could do to help yourself as a. Thank you for joining and I will see you at the next podcast.
Playing Chords on the Piano
This content was created for Curtis Music Academy
I didn’t like playing them. But they’re actually very, very important. Another couple chords are augmented and diminished chords. OK, going on. We’ve got the circle fifths. We’ve got heat signatures. Understanding the key signatures is so crucial, understanding how to play in the key of F versus the key of A and understanding how the scale relates to that. We learn all of that in guitar lessons for children.
It is very, very important. Another thing that I like to do is work on transposing to any key. And this is one thing that playing in a worship team really, really helps people, because transposon can seem really overwhelming to a musician, especially if you’re just used to reading sheet music and you’ve never had to transpose. Transposing is really used in my experience, and that is why I focus on it in guitar lessons for children. If you want to go to a different key because the song is too high or low for your voice. OK, I’m going to go with another story. One time we did kind of like, you know, how high schools sometimes do nice things for communities. Well, our high school sang at a nursing home one time and just visited with some people.
I think I was in 11th grade and there was one I think another student, he was in 10th grade and he had his guitar and he was going to lead people into singing the Star Spangled Banner at the nursing home. Well, he was a great guitar player. He still is. He’s a fabulous musician. And he’s actually better than me in a lot of ways. But he didn’t consider starting off in a doable key. And I have never heard people sing that high in their life. And it was really funny. So that’s what you don’t want to happen. That’s why you transpose to a key that’s a little bit more doable. If you’re singing really, really high in the key of G, you might want to say let’s try it in the Q and that might make all the difference. Transposing in guitar lessons for children is very important.
And then people can sing it easily and everything is great. Another idea is writing out chord charts by ear and hearing a song and learning how to write it out. That is another challenge. Another thing to do is playing with the metronome improvisation with a backtrack on a major or minor of skill. And lastly for note, major minor chords, blocked and broken chords. Those are actually very difficult for four finger strength and things like that. So those are some ideas that we have for playing chords on the piano. And if you can do all of those things, you are a great pianist who can play any sort of band. And I’m excited to see what intermediate chord playing will bring because we are actually developing some curriculum right now for that very thing in guitar lessons for children. Thank you for joining and we will see you next time.