How Not to Quit Learning a New Instrument
Many times, beginners will quit or get discouraged. I often find that the trouble is one thing: not getting results fast enough.
Having realistic goals is a good place to start. You won’t learn to play like someone who has decades of experience in a day, week, month, or even a year. So don’t compare yourself to anyone when you first start. Even if you’ve been at it for a while, it is still unhealthy to compare yourself to others.
Here are three key points to keep in mind:
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Practice daily.
If you don’t practice daily, you’re not really committed. Everyone can find at least 30 minutes a day to practice. On the day you have your lesson, you don’t have to practice. So you should be practicing at least 6 days a week. At the very beginning of starting your instrumental lessons, it is crucial that you practice every single day. Not doing so will directly affect your possibilities for success.Fun fact: It takes 6 hours of continuous playing at a single speed to create permanent muscle memory for that task. With that in mind, if you practice 3 hours daily, by the 3rd day you’ll start to see some results. If you’re practicing 2 hours daily, you’ll start to see results on the 4th day. If you only practice 15 minutes on 3 days out of the week, you will increase the time it takes for your body to remember what it needs to do exponentially. So, by not practicing, you are already setting yourself up for failure.
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Take your time.
Learning an instrument is not a race. Do you remember what it took you to learn how to write? How old were you when you first wrote your name? What did it look like? I first wrote my name at age 5 and it was messy. My penmanship has not improved much in terms of tidiness, but it is smaller and more controlled now. In my three decades of writing, I think there has been some improvement. I’m right handed, so I’ve always written with my right hand. If I were to try to write with my left hand, it would look like what my right handed writing looked like when I was five. The point I’m trying to make here is that we all had to write the letters of the alphabet repeatedly to become any good at writing. So, when you start learning a musical instrument, repetition of movement plays a big part in your effort to learn. We’re all built differently, so your development is tied to your physiology. Everyone will develop differently and at different rates. It is natural.
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Have fun and enjoy the process.
The journey of learning is a lot more interesting than the destination. The feeling of accomplishment is your own doing. No one else did it for you. You had to put in the time and effort to learn the mechanics and then the aesthetics to ultimately arrive at a point when your playing sounds pleasing.
I’m happy to help anyone interested in learning music. Please feel free to contact me through my website.
This was originally written by Jose for Tutors in HK and posted on www.tutorsinhk.com in April 2014. Reprinted and updated here.
(Update 2016: please note that Jose does not offer lessons in person at the moment, but will gladly help you with specific questions through email)