Music Lessons Tulsa | Confidence
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In this edition of the Curtis music Academy podcast, we are discussing how you can have confidence when performing on the guitar. So without further ado, my name is Steven and I have been a musician for 12 years and have been a music instructor at the Curtis music Academy for one year. Now. It is December or on. I’ve been at the Curtis music Academy for a year and so soon, I think at the beginning of the year I’m going to do an analysis of everything I’ve learned and everything I have pulled and everything I’ve taken away from this past year at Curtis music Academy teaching music lessons Tulsa. I am really going to implement any new things that I have learned and even up my learning, my personal learning and self-education up times 10 because I want to be the best of the best. I want to be an amazing teacher, communicator. I want to be an amazing artist.
I want to be some something people remember, you know, so and it takes work and I realize that it takes work to become an artist. It takes work to become a great musician in music lessons Tulsa. Should we get them? Great. At anything, there is a cost and you have to ask yourself, are you willing to pay the price? So without further ado, we’re discussing how you can have confidence when performing guitar. So from my own experience, there has been many, many, many countless, performances I’ve been able to do. You know, as young as, when I was in church, I really started in the church and then from the church to another church, from that church to American idol, from American idol to other competitions in bars and in coffee shops and other performances on TV, on the news channel six in Tulsa, Oklahoma. And you know, it just, there’s lots of performance tips that I could give you.
There’s many. I will. And so without further ado, how you can have confidence when performing. I think one of the first points I want to give to you guys is competence through your repetition. For instance, in my own experience, when I was practicing for, to play on TV, the news, when I was practicing to become one of the American idol contestants, I practiced three songs over and over and over. This was for American idol. They asked that I perform three songs or have three ready. And that they may ask me to sing only one of those songs. They may ask me to sing all three of the songs. So what did I do? I prepared three songs. And so with those three songs, I kept it really short.
They asked that they’d be, you know, 30 seconds, 60 seconds each. And so I just did a snippet of each one of those songs and it was awesome. I really, really had fun, preparing and I had to get it right, you know, to get the songs right to make it sound like what it was on the radio or, or really to make it sound more like what I would do if it was, if I was the one that created the song, I first, you know, would take my guitar, choose the song I was going to be playing, pull out the chords, pull out the lyrics, and I would start learning first the courts. And really before all of that, I’d say you need to have a good understanding of what the song sounds like. And if you don’t know what the song sounds like, then you’ll need to listen to the song 10 times back to back so that you have a good idea of the melody line. And and then after you’ve listened to just the melody line 10 times, then listened to it another 10 times for the guitar part, which is what you will be playing and really get down that guitar part in music lessons Tulsa.
And so that is kind of my method is I kind of break down these things and then I didn’t, I don’t listen to it so many times, you know, 10 times for music lessons Tulsa. That’s a lot of times if a song is five minutes, you’re talking about 50 minutes, you’re talking about almost an hour of listening just on the first 10, you know, to get down the melody. And so the next 10 would be getting down in the guitar, but I wouldn’t do 10. I’d do probably more like five times through, listening to it and then listening to other instruments as, as you need to. But really your focus was, my focus was guitar.
And so I listened to the guitar parts for, you know, let’s see, one of my own songs that I had recorded, I mean I wrote the song, I worked straight at the song so I know what was in it. And so I listened to the melody, pull out the lyrics, pull out the chords, and I would just perfect every transition from court record throughout the entire song, every transition through the sections of the songs from first to pre-course to chorus to bridge to the ending. I would nail it every single time and try to do it the exact same way every single time so that it became muscle memory and that I didn’t have to.
And so that I didn’t have to think about it while I was performing in front of the executive producers. So all that to say you’ll have competence with repetition and you, we have to have the repetition before we can ever become competent. And where there’s no, no shortcut unless you have a chip put in your head that you can just download, you know, programs and you know, techniques and learn Kung Fu or you know, download the Kung Fu app or Kung Fu, any, you know, master, I dunno, fighting styles in your brain or amazing Tommy Emmanuel licks in your brain. Unless that is a thing you’ll always have to next do simply repetition, which is the work.
You know, you’ll have to do the work. And so I would, you know, try to narrow down that work as much as possible and so that it can become measurable in music lessons Tulsa. And when you, when it becomes measurable, it becomes manageable and scalable. And so if you can nail it, you could scale it. So competence through repetition. My second point is confidence. My philosophy is that competence creates confidence. And let me know what you think about that. But competence comes through repetition and then confidence comes through competence. So how do you become confident? Pretty simple question, right? Competence comes through repetition and competence produces confidence. So really it’s repetition plus equals competence. Competence equals confidence encompass.
What is confidence? I think confidence is a few things. I think confidence is, you know, belief. Faith in yourself in music lessons Tulsa. I think it’s really just belief in yourself. Belief that you can do something. So we have beliefs, so we have non beliefs. You know what? We don’t believe. Maybe we don’t believe we can do it. And if we don’t believe we can do it, are we really confident? Well, if we believe we can do it, are we, are we confident? Are we? What about, what? About being like overconfident is, it’s like knowing, it’s like you’re not even nervous anymore in music lessons Tulsa. It’s like you just got this, you know, so, and then, you know, whenever we’re prideful or arrogant, it’s like, takes it a step.
It takes, it takes over confidence a step further and says, I’m better than everybody at this. You know? That’s, that’s kind of, it’s not true. You know, we shouldn’t think of ourselves more highly than we ought to. And so confidence, in my opinion, is healthy. There are healthy and unlevel unhealthy levels of confidence in music lessons Tulsa. My dad used to say, if you’re nervous, he said, if you’re scared, then you’re unprepared. If you’re nervous, then you’re prepared. But it means also that you respect the opportunity and that you, you take it seriously. And then thirdly, if you’re overconfident, if you’re, if you’re over prepared, then you might be over overconfident or maybe even a little arrogant about it.
So we want to stay nervous. That’s what I thought I’d tell my students, let’s stay nervous. Let’s not be scared. There’s no reason why we should be scared unless we haven’t prepared. So it’s important to be nervous because that means that you take, actually take the opportunity or whatever you’re doing seriously enough to where it’s still jitters you in the, in the inside, but you’re confident that you can still nail it and that you have a chance to impress yourself and others because you’ve practiced. And lastly, having more fun. We’ll also give you confidence when you’re performing, but they’re all linked, you know, competence. The repetition equals confidence. And then having fun in music lessons Tulsa. That is how you can have confidence when performing.