Music Lessons Tulsa | Advice For Beginners
This content was created for Curtis Music Academy
In this edition of the Curtis music Academy podcast, we are going to be discussing, and I’m going to be giving you advice for my beginning students in music lessons Tulsa. This is some advice for really mainly just for the beginners. If you can eat the hay and spit the sticks, if you can, can, you know, really if you’re not a beginner, if you are a, an intermediate player, if you’re in advanced player, I believe you will be able to take some, some nuggets from this as well for music lessons Tulsa. Remember, no matter how good you get at anything, we never get beyond the basics. And so I would highly suggest people who are not beginners to listen to this podcast or read this transcript because this is advice for my beginning students.
My first bit of advice would be to learn at the pace of no mistakes for students in music lessons Tulsa. My second would be practice a ton and thirdly, to have fun. That kind of rhymed. Without further ado, my name is Steven. I’ve been a musician for 12 years, this coming up March and it is December currently. And I have learned so much about music and I’ve learned so much about performing. I’ve learned so much about people. I’ve learned so much about individual students and age groups. I’ve been a music instructor at the Curtis music Academy for a year now coming up this month. And I have been a music teacher for five years going on six years now. And so there’s been so much I’ve been able to learn and there’s so much to learn.
There’s still so much to learn and a man I, this new, we’re coming up on a new decade, 20, 20, and I want to definitely have some 20, 20 vision coming into my, my new decade, this new decade that we’ve been given. We will be given hopefully. And I’m just expecting great things. I’m expecting more intentionality and two my time and the things that I do more, more vision, more, more focused in focus goals. I think that is really my goal this new decade, is to stay laser focused over the course of the decade, 10 years, you know, and over those 10 years, I want to, I have goals of financially, my family, my F six goals. And I’d say for you to, in case you didn’t know what that means, that those F six goals, those F six goals are my faith, my family, my finances, my fitness, my friendships, and my fun.
I want to have goals for all, all of those. And so that is what I’m going to be doing today to kind of, you know, begin a net plan the next decade for my life and my wife as well. It’s important that we stay progressive, you know, we’re not perfect people, but we can be progressive people. And so let’s progress. Let’s get better. Let’s not be stagnant, you know? And so without further ado, this is advice for beginning students taking music lessons Tulsa or anywhere in the world. And so my first advice to beginners would be to learn at the pace of know mistakes. In my experience and the times I didn’t learn at the pace of no mistakes, I was stumbling over my fingers often. I didn’t play songs very well because I would try to learn them too fast and ended up not being able to really perform them well when it came, when it came time to play them for my friends, my family or you know, for a coffee shop gig or a bar gig or, or American idol or on TV, you know. So luckily I caught it before I was on American idol or TV.
So one tip for you is to catch things early. So learning at the pace of no mistakes, what does that mean? How can you do it? My action step for you would be to purchase or download a free or costly metronome app on your phone if you don’t have a phone but you have internet. I would look it up on the internet and I would just type in metronome and the first thing that will pop up is a number and then a plus and a minus sign and the play button. And that will give you a metronome, no matter where you’re at, whether you have a laptop or just a phone. Thirdly, if you don’t have either one of those, I would say find a way to get one. If you don’t have those, then you know, I, it’s kinda hard to know what to tell you other than to get one of those because that is the world we live in and we live in the age of phones and cell phone service and Google and you know, YouTube and things like that.
And so if you don’t have that, then man, you are probably living under a rock if you don’t have access to one of those and, probably are not progressing as much as you could or would. And I want you to progress as a, as an instructor, I want you to progress as a human being as well. And then, you know, so a metronome, so I mentioned the metronome, the metronome is going to be huge and setting the pace for your music, it’s going to be really key that you, know a pace and establish a pace that is going to be, great for you to start at and very beneficial for you. It’s important that you know what pace that is and that you kind of stick with that pace until you can nail something or execute something very well. It’s important that you know, you set a pace such as 40 beats per minute on a song or a scale that you’re learning so that it isn’t too fast or too slow, but it is right in the middle and it gives you plenty of time, plenty of, time to think about what you’re playing next.
Which it really has all to do with just establishing muscle memory is what we’re trying to establish here in music lessons Tulsa. The goal is to establish muscle memory and if we can only establish muscle memory when we repeat the same thing over and over, not different things over and over. That is why speed is going to be very, very and a very important asset to us. My second point would be to practice a ton. What does that mean? Well, I would ask what does practicing a ton mean look like and mean for you? You know, we all have different seasons. We’re all in different seasons of life. We’re all in different, have different jobs, have different schedules, have different situations. And so what does practicing a lot mean for you in music lessons Tulsa? Does that mean an hour?
Does that mean two hours, three hours a day, you know, four hours a day. It doesn’t mean one hour a week, three hours a week, five hours a week, 10 hours a week. Man, if you’re doing 10 hours a week, that’s pretty awesome. That’s more than I’m doing right now. Probably. But I am a music instructor and so I play four hours a day technically. You know, I would, I would sit down and ask yourself, what does practicing a lot mean to me? And I would nail an a certain amount of hours that you could achieve every single week in music lessons Tulsa. And then take a goal for that goal for the week. You know, the amount of hours, whether that, let’s just say it was, you know, two hours a week. Well you want to break that down into seven days or however many days you want it to break down to some people only work for five days, some six, some seven. I worked for only six days. And so I would break my two hours into six days and that would be 20 minutes a day, you know, so, 20 minutes a day if I’m playing, I’m playing well over that. And so I’m probably doing more like four hours a week is what I’m doing. And at that pace, you know, I’m, I’m closer to reaching that 10,000 hour master Mark.
And so, it’s really gonna be crucial that we do that. And then my last point is having fun. If you aren’t having fun while you’re doing it, that doesn’t mean you shouldn’t do it. That just means that you really haven’t found joy or excitement or fun or enjoyment in what you’re doing in music lessons Tulsa. And I would say seek enjoyment. Find out what you, what can you enjoy? What part of learning music and playing music or performing music can you or do you enjoy? And that my friends is just really my advice for you beginner students.
I hope that you advanced and intermediate students have been able to take some golden nuggets out of this. But, to just recap my points today, we’re learning at the pace of no mistakes. My action step for you was getting a metronome and putting it at 40 beats per minute and learning at that pace, practicing a ton, asking yourself, how many hours a week do I want to practice? Because it looks different for everyone. And thirdly, have so much, so much fun about it in taking music lessons Tulsa.