Learning on your own can mean a lot of re-learning

Guitar is by far the most popular musical instrument in the Western world. Millions of people want to play it. And they do. There is no mystery – anyone can play it. However, the only way to get there is by learning. I have been talking about learning the guitar almost in every post. Recently I explained why making plans is such an important thing and who’s responsibility that would be.

Let’s now see it from another angle. The traditional and most effective way of learning to play any musical instrument requires a student, a teacher and study material. You interact with your teacher as well as the study material that your teacher has prepared in order to make the lesson effective. All clear. But how many of you who crawl around the web have professional guitar teachers? Most of people study on their own and there is nothing wrong with that, except…

When you use a book or any electronic study materials to study on your own, you remove the personal connection. The teacher who has designed the material doesn’t know how you use it and, more importantly, you will never know whether you are getting it right or have you lost your way. Imagine learning to swim or to play tennis from a book! No matter how good the book is, without professional feedback you get nowhere, especially if you are a beginner.

To put it very short – you may have good study materials. It means that the plan is good. But a plan without constant evaluation is not enough. Student (and any person) has only limited abilities to reflect his/her own actions. Also, it takes a lot of experience and skills to give useful and constructive feedback.

The GuitarSchool.ee project has now over 6500 online students and many of them have discovered that the teacher’s feedback feature helps them a lot. In fact, this a part of my PhD study so I can assure that there are good reasons for that. So don’t just sit and think that time and practice will get you there. It may take more.