Guitar Lessons in Tulsa | Keeping Track of Progress
This content was created for Curtis Music Academy
One of the things that a lot of people have trouble with as they’re taking guitar lessons in Tulsa is recording their progress as they take lessons. So one of the things that I encourage every single one of our students here at Curtis and Music Academy is to take weekly progress, if not even monthly progress reports for their own progress. This could be as simple as, setting down your iPhone and pushing record and then playing through whatever it is that you’re practicing for that week that your guitar instructor in Tulsa gave you to practice. It could be even just setting your phone down and recording a video of you playing through what you’ve done. Another way that you could keep progress is actually through a journal and having a practice journal in which you write down whatever it is that your instructor in Tulsa had asked you to practice, and then when you write it down, you will have over the course of a year, essentially probably 50 different pages of the progress that you took week by week. Now I say 50 even though there’s 52 weeks in a year, nobody’s going to be taking lessons on Christmas and nobody’s going to be taking lessons on thanksgiving. Now, unless you’re the rare person who is the Bah humbug and you don’t like Christmas and perhaps you have no family, so you’re not going to be hanging out on thanksgiving. Well I’ll tell you what, you can come to our studio and knock at the door, but no one will be here unfortunately. So I say 50 weeks because that is likely to be the case. So you might have 50 pages of all of the different things that you were assigned to practice and that’s a great way to track your progress. So through those different methods, whether it’s an audio recording, a video recording, or even a
journal entry, you’re going to have a detailed progress of your learning as a guitar player. So the reason why it’s very important to have, progress is so that you can look back and see how far you’ve, obviously, if you’re a beginning guitar player, you may not have any experience taking guitar lessons in Tulsa. So you could come to me and you could say, Ron, I don’t need to keep track of my progress because I know where I came from. I came from nowhere. So wherever I am today, put that against nothing. And that’s the, that’s my progress. But the thing is you, it’s just a good thing to be able to know. Last year I knew nothing but six months ago I actually knew quite a bit. And then now, six months later, I know even more. And so it’s just the continuation of progress and not just from A to D. You know, you’ve got all of those different layers throughout.
So that is a huge thing that you’re going to want to do as you’re keeping track of your progress. And a lot of our instructors actually require a notebook and although some students are not that interested in keeping a journal, that’s totally fine. It’s also a great place to put some of your songs that you’ve worked on. So if you’re a guitar player, you could put your core charts inside of that journal. You could have a three ring binder in place of a journal in which you place your songs and that way, you know, six months ago you may have learned a song while taking your guitar lessons in Tulsa that was really cool that you genuinely enjoy the plane and you’re totally forgot about it because it was six months ago or six years ago, who knows? But if you have that binder, you’ll be able to turn back to things that you previously worked on and that you enjoyed playing. And so that’s going to be something that you should definitely consider as you are looking to do that.
Lastly, the other way that you could keep track is by describing it to a friend. This is probably the strangest way to keep track because it requires your friend be alive. Now, if it’s an imaginary friend, it’s not going to be very helpful. But what you can do is find a fellow guitar player and find out how you match up against this player.
So for instance, in your mind, you can put yourself in a position where you are comparing yourself to him. You’re, you’re checking to see whether or not you are better than him. How much better is then you and then because this is America in 2019 chances are your friend probably isn’t going after guitar as hard as you are. The reason I say that is because statistically there are far less guitar students that take private lessons. Then there are guitar self taught people. So the majority of guitarists learn the guitar through being self taught. So if you are actually taking guitar lessons in Tulsa, you’re already ahead of the game. So when I’m saying is because in theory you’ll be growing at a higher increased rate of learn. They in your buddy who’s also playing the guitar, you can actually use that person as your basis of progress. Now as your friend is playing the same songs over and over and over, and the songs that he does learn new are no more difficult. They’re pretty much the same thing. There’s not a challenge in his music. He’s going to stay about the same place. And so then as you are far, far less proficient at guitar than him, what you’ll notice is as you continued to take lessons at Curtis Music Academy, you will grow as a musician and you will start to close in on the progress from your buddy. And so he may be way better than you at first, but as you take lessons, you’ll get better and better and better. And you can use your buddy as a reference to how good you came from.
Again, I really think this one’s a little bit less concrete. I think you should absolutely do the other ways of, of keeping progress. But this certainly is one way to do it. And in fact, this is precisely one of the things that not, not just helped me to keep progress, but it actually helped to motivate me as I began taking guitar lessons in Tulsa. And what happened was one of my buddies played this song Blackbird by the Beatles way before I even picked up a guitar and played a string and put my finger on the fretboard way, way before. We’re talking two years. And he played blackbird for me and I was just so impressed. I couldn’t believe that guy was so good and he was awesome. So what ended up happening was years later I started playing the guitar through different circumstances. But as I started to learn the guitar, I remember my buddy playing blackbird. I always remember that. And so when he was playing Blackburn, I decided if I ever learned guitar, all know that I have made it as a guitar player the day that I can play blackbird, when I can do that, I know I’ll be a great guitar player. And so years after I had learned the guitar, there was one day I sat down and I said, I think I’m ready, I think I’m ready to learn Blackbird by the Beatles. So I looked up the music for it and it only took me about 10 minutes.
it’s funny how using the comparison of that friend, it made me realize how much I had progressed as a guitar player. And I didn’t even know it because I thought it would take me a really long time to learn this song. I thought it would take months of just practicing and practicing, and it only took me about 10 minutes and I had this song down and it was awesome. It was a great experience. So those are some ways that you can keep track of your progress as you are taking guitar lessons in Tulsa.