Guitar Lessons In Tulsa | Advice
This content was created for Curtis Music Academy
All right. And this podcast, I am talking about, advice for beginning students taking guitar lessons in Tulsa. All right. My name is Steven. I have been an instructor for about six years going on six years now and I’ve loved every bit of it. I’m also an instructor at the Curtis music Academy and have been for 11 months and have loved every minute of it. It has been a great experience. I’ve learned so many things, under the leadership of Ron and Kelly and I’ve just learned so much when it comes to different ages, about maybe methods of teaching.
I’ve learned about how to teach at different ages as far as like five years old to, you know, 50 years old and all the challenges in between there as well. There are many challenges. There are many reasons why you should change your approach or change the delivery of your guitar lessons in Tulsa based on the age. Maybe the circumstance, there have been many students in my experience where they have had autism or they have been half a blind or maybe they’re handicapped in some way, shape or form. And I’ve needed to shift and change my approach just a tad to kind of fit the circumstance for this particular student.
And so as long as you’re willing to be flexible and do what’s necessary so that your student can be the best they can be, can be the most successful they can be, then you should have no issue being a great instructor and a great communicator. And so without further ado, I’m talking about advice for beginner students taking guitar lessons in Tulsa and mostly guitar lessons in Tulsa. And so I’m a guitar teacher, like I said, and some things that I’ve learned during my, you know, five going on six years now of teaching music is going to be, you know, learning at the pace of no mistakes.
I cannot stress enough how important it is to learn at a pace where you are not constantly fumbling over your fingers or you’re constantly messing up or you’re constantly hitting the wrong note or you’re constantly hitting the wrong string. You’re constantly plucking the wrong string, strumming the wrong direction. You know, there are many different symptoms that arise whenever you are going too fast, simply too fast. And so what I want to get across today is just that it is imperative that we learn at a pace where we are able to execute at the very best level. And sometimes, you know, and this, this podcast is focused on beginners.
today and so I’m focusing on the beginning students, I would say it’s important to be patient with yourself and learn at a pace where you’re not constantly messing up. Instead at a, you want to learn how to pace where you’re constantly hitting the right notes over and over the correct way, the same way so that you can begin to develop muscle memory and familiarity with the fret board. And so it’s very important that we one, learn at the pace of no mistakes. We want to instead learn at a pace that is going to allow us and assist us in being successful with hitting notes the right way. With that as well. You want to make sure that, you know, as you’re going at the pace of know mistakes in your guitar lessons in Tulsa, you are hitting the same.
No, it’s the same way. We want to develop a type of muscle memory with our scales, our chords, our songs, our rhythms. We want to make sure that we are developing muscle memory and a muscle memory is just a pathway right from start to finish. It’s a pathway and we want to make sure that we develop some familiarity with that pathway. And so we want to continue to hit the same point, hit the same destination every single time, hit the same chord the same way we want to end the right way. The right way is the standard. And so we want to make sure that, the strums that we make, that we learn first, what is the right way to do this?
So as a beginner student, a lot of times throughout your guitar experience, I would ask your instructor or ask yourself, is this the right way? Is this the standard way? Is this the very best way to accomplish this? You know, because if it isn’t, it might develop some other issues later on down the line that will hinder your ability to maybe Strom as fast as you want to or play as fast as you want to in some way, shape or form. So in some very, very important that we taken into consideration and, and understand what is muscle memory. Muscle memory is a pathway.
Kind of like a neurological pathway or a psychological pathway or you know, some or even just a regular pathway, you know, a street, it starts at one end, ends at another and if we take the same pathway, we get very comfortable. We would get very familiar with that path and we can easily navigate to from where we are to that destination each time. And that’s exactly what’s happening with your fingers, your fingers. Remember they have memory once you have you ever, have you ever done something to where with your hands where you’re like, Oh man, my hands just automatically went there.
Maybe you’re driving and you hit a certain point and the in the city and you just like automatically turn or you use your hands some way. Or maybe just whenever you have a pen in your hands, you automatically start to flip it around. That started somewhere. You know, maybe your leg, whenever you’re getting, whenever you get nervous, you just start to tap your leg. That’s muscle memory. You know, whenever, you know, say in music, when you learn a scale and you, you, you turn your mind on autopilot and you stop thinking and you just, just do your fingers naturally hit the right notes.
That means that you’ve created the correct pathways and that you’ve hit them, you’ve drilled them into your fingers. We want to drill for skill. That’s what we’re trying to learn, right? We’re trying to learn a skill. Music is a skill and we want to drill for skill. So our next point is practice a ton. You want to practice anywhere from two to three hours a week. I obviously encourage high levels of practice for beginners. And the main reason for this high level of practice is because in the beginning stages you’re trying to develop muscle not only muscle memory, but also you’re trying to build calluses. And so the more you play, the more your fingers will feel sore, which means that the quicker they will start to begin to a dead end on the ends and begin to develop tough skin. And so that is a good sign.
That is not a bad sign. I know that I used words like dead in or you know, the skin dies, but the skin begins to harden and that is a very, very good sign. And so we want to develop those callouses as fast as possible. and so in order to do that, we must have a high levels of practice. Last but not least, it is so vitally, vitally important that you begin to have fun, that you remember that the reason why you play this instrument, the reason why you play guitar and that you’re taking guitar lessons in Tulsa because you want to have fun, to have fun, doesn’t really require effort. But when there’s a learning curve, you start to have fun.
Whenever you begin to be, begin to be able to do whatever it is you want to do and you feel like you can achieve that, you know, there’s no hindrance in between you and the, the activity. There’s no debilitation. There’s no handicap between you and that ability or that you and that activity. And so you begin to easily have fun. And so that’s the importance of high levels of practice. That’s the importance of learning at the pace of no mistakes.
It’s very, very, very, very important that you take the instruments seriously and it will become even more, more and more fun as you begin to play. The more and more you play, the more and more fun it becomes. And so that is my podcast for you today. I hope you have learned and I hope you implement this advice. Go learn at the pace with no mistakes. Practice a ton, and have lots of fun.