Tulsa Guitar Lessons | Setting Musical Goals
This content was created for Curtis Music Academy
All right. So today’s topic, we’re going to be talking about setting musical goals and how to reach those musical goals with the students. So first we definitely want to engage with that student and ask them early on, and this is about really the first lesson, because this is where this happens is we’re going to ask them questions about what their goals are from a personal example. As a personal example, I have a list of five to six questions that I ask my students that really hone in on figuring out the goal of a S of a student taking Tulsa guitar lessons.
The student’s goals when wanting to take Tulsa guitar lessons. It’s, it’s, you know, they’re very inquisitive. They’re very, they really dig at the goal, trying to figure out what exactly is their one they’re wanting to accomplish with taking music lessons or Tulsa guitar lessons, why they want me to be their Tulsa guitar lessons teacher. And so I will, help them to set the musical goals if they don’t know kind of what those goals are. And so one way that I will go about helping them discover the goals is of course asking those six questions. And those questions could be, Hey, where do you see your guitar skills say one year from now? And they may some say something like, Oh, I just, I want to be amazing.
You know, a year is a long time. And so to them they might see themselves as wanting to be amazing in a year, you know? And so that’s really important. Important important question and which really gauges, how fast do you think, and they think that they can learn something and reach their goal. If they say a year, that’s very normal. That’s very good. That’s very great. If they say six months, I just want to be awesome at six months, that’s definitely possible.But I think that might be a little bit, to be, you know, a certain amazing technically is going to take some time during Tulsa guitar lessons.
You know, it’s going to take a few, few more hours than just, you know, six months worth of, of practicing here and there. It’s going to take a little bit more rigid, a little bit more consistency on their part. And so, anyway, that is the time question. The direction, you know, are we wanting to learn to become a musician, like a famous musician at Tulsa guitar lessons? Are we wanting to make a music career out of this? Are we wanting to play just for, you know, a talent school talent show or talent shows? Maybe TV show, which is also a part of like a music career wanting to make it music career or are we wanting to maybe just play in front of the family, maybe play with the family.
Are we wanting to play just for ourselves or are we just wanting to play for our friends or maybe just for church, you know, these are things that we can, we want to ask to kind of discover what exactly would, would hit the nail, what would really hit and drive home the goal? One, we want to hear the answer. Yes, that’s it. I want to do that. I want to be in the music industry. You know that those areas, the different areas, whether that’s in a music career with Tulsa guitar lessons, whether that’s just playing in front of the family or that. All right. So we definitely want to continue to ask many questions. Another question would be who are your top three musical influences and why? This is a great question to ask. If your student is not sure if maybe what type of music they like, maybe they may know what person they like or when the last time they saw said person sing or play, it made them want to learn how to play guitar. Asking as many questions as you possibly can will help you to know how to better develop a path to their goal. It’s important that we developed this path and know where we’re taking the student so they at the end of this journey feel satisfied with the destination from Tulsa guitar lessons.
So we really want to tailor these questions to the guitar, you know,professionally, not professionally for fun, for leisure, for a hobby, for church, you know, those are important aspects that we definitely want to cover. So another question would be how or what is your greatest challenge in learning guitar currently? You know, this is a question that kinda hits at, you know, what they are wanting help on. Maybe they’ve hit a plateau and need to kind of break through, break through the ceiling so to speak, and go higher in their levels, in their skill level.
You know, that you never know unless they tell you at Tulsa guitar lessons. So we’ve got to ask probing questions that really help uncover and discover what those goals are. My second point is about how to reach the goal. Those musical goals that our students have. We want to think of teaching as like a journey with our students. We want to take them, they’re asking us to guide them to the destination because we’ve been there, right? As a guitar instructor, I’ve been to their destination if they want to play for a music career.I’ve played and made money playing music before if they want to play at church. I’ve been a part of, I’ve been a worship leader for 10 years, you know, if they want to play for family and just for fun.
I’ve played with my siblings, I’ve played with my aunts and uncles, you know, if they want to play for fun and for themselves, I can help them, we can help them. We’ve played in our own rooms before, our own bedrooms, quiet, just ourselves as a, as a means to have an outlet of just creativity and a creative outlet. And so this is very important. It’s very important that you can, the end that you are, you know, 10 steps ahead of your student if they’re wanting to go play and in bars and they want to be good enough to play in bars, you have to understand and maybe have been there and done that before, even if you don’t know or have not been there before.
If you can help them to, to develop at least the skills to be good enough to do that, then you have helped them reach their destination. So helping them reach those musical goals. Whenever I have a new student and they tell me their goals, whether that’s to play for a gig, let’s just say they want to play at bars and they want to make money. Okay, well I just have to take that after the lesson. Break that down into, okay, what does it take to get from where they are now?A beginner to where they want to be. Someone who is sounds good and can play well enough to get paid for something.
They are an advanced player. Well, what venues, I guess I would ask, what types of venues would you want to be playing at a bar? Did you want to be playing at like a church that will pay you to play a certain times, you know, or certain certain services. There are churches that do that. Do you want to play, you know, at a coffee shop. Those are all different venues and they all require different types of repertoire. And so there are some songs, you know, in the Christian world, which is a lot easier. Churchill, a lot easier than playing at a bar. You know, you wouldn’t play the songs you’d play at church in a bar. So there’s different weapons are different levels of skill, different vasts of knowledge, you know, that’s acknowledged that you’ll to have in order to play and skills you’ll need to have in order to do that.
So one way you can do this as just breaking things down constantly until they can not be broken down anymore. I like to take it like this. If my student’s goal is to play at a bar, I will say, I will ask myself what, where are they right now and where do they want to be? And then break that down by saying, okay, you don’t need to know blues and some rock, maybe some jazz. And so we’ll be going into music theory. Most definitely. And of course the scales, the major scale, the minor scale, the pentatonic scale, the blues scale and how to throw in some jazz in there as well. Some seventh chords, right? And fifth chords. So that’s a good start. And we could start with just the musical alphabet, breaking it down further. You know, before you get to scales, you have to get to the alphabet and then build up to those scales and then begin to apply those scales.