music stage empty

You’ve got this dream of ripping through an electric guitar solo with your band during the climax of the song in front of a sea of your adoring fans. Or maybe you’ve dreamed of playing Beethoven on piano in a packed concert hall. Or maybe you’ve dreamed of playing a slow aire on the bagpipes from atop a castle wall, overlooking a forested valley.

For most people, playing some form of musical instrument has been a dream, but many people never moved further toward their goal than listening to tunes with their headphones. This is somewhat understandable, because there is a rather large gulf between just listening to music and actually playing it yourself on an instrument. To someone without musical training, watching someone play complex melodies or rhythms on an instrument can seem like magic. Yet each of those musical magicians was once a beginning student, so if they can do it, so can you.

OK, then. How do you start learning music?

Just like learning to write software or becoming an artist, there is no one way to learn music–people might prefer some routes more than others. For example, probably the most common way to learn music is from a music teacher. You may live local to other music teachers, but thankfully the Internet also makes taking lessons remotely a possibility. But though having a great instructor sitting right in front of you, listening to and watching like an eagle how you play, is ideal, you might not have a good fit with your instructor. Personalities or teaching styles or something else may cause a clash. Unfortunately, a bad experience with an instructor early in the learning process can shut down any desire to play music in some students.

You still may be able to learn to play music, though the road may be a little harder. Other learning alternatives include learning from books, DVDs, online courses, or just watching YouTube videos and playing along by ear.

Personally, I’ve tried all of the above, and my experiences have given me wisdom and motivation for my current learning strategy.

When I was but a small lad, my parents signed me up for acoustic guitar lessons. My instructor was kind and knew how to play the guitar, but on looking back, he was not the best teacher for me. He taught me how to play songs based on something called tablature–a music notation scheme that is different from reading standard music notation in that it is very easy to learn, yet learning it, um, does not teach you to read standard music notation and doesn’t even teach you the tempo and timing of how a song should be played. You learn to memorize the notes, but that’s it. I also didn’t learn about music theory, or song structure, or about playing with other musicians, or…

My lessons with that guitar instructor didn’t work out. Again, in hindsight, I grew bored with just memorizing how to play a song without being given any understanding of what made the song the song or the underlying principles shaping the song. That teaching approach might have been fine for some people–it was a quick way to begin playing immediately, and that’s often just what beginning students want. But my young engineering mind wanted to understand the music behind the song, not just how to memorize the notes.

Unfortunately, as a kid, I didn’t know I had an engineering mind. I only knew that what I was learning had little content, and so, bored, I moved on to other interests. It was years before I ever again had the desire to play music.

But eventually that desire to learn to play music crept back into my mind. Feeling burned by the whole process of trying to learn music from a music teacher when I was a kid, I went on a long, winding path of trying to teach myself to play. I tried learning to play ukulele from books, electric guitar from DVDs, Irish whistle from audio cassette, and even keyboard from a software program.

I acquired a drum kit and managed to put it together all by myself. But, unfortunately, that didn’t turn me into a drummer.

Once, in a short, blissful interlude in my musical quest I did find a wonderful teacher of … Great Highland Bagpipes. And with that wonderful teacher I made progress, filling my house, neighborhood, and county with mournful, graceful, and sometimes even quite peppy tunes that thankfully sounded better the more I practiced. My dogs howled right along with me as I piped and marched through the house. Eventually I got good enough to even play in a few weddings (without my dogs)!

Alas, though this success again filled me with the enthusiasm for learning music, the skills I had gained in playing the bagpipe did not transfer over to the guitar.

There were more experiments, though more significant progress was not made.

Flash forward to us here, today.

I’m ready to once again tackle my dream of learning to play the guitar, only this time I’m armed with a better understanding of how and why I learn. Other people may be motivated by different goals in learning to play music, and they may prefer different ways of learning, but here are some fundamental components of my music learning strategy that are key for me:

  1. A good teacher. I had tried learning guitar from an instructor before, but that one didn’t try to teach me music, just how to memorize the song notes. I didn’t know enough about music at the time to ask for or want more. Now I’m going to find a teacher who emphasizes performance, yes, but who can also teach the theory. I want not just the how, but the why. I want to learn not how to play a song, but how to learn to play a song. I also want someone to point out my mistakes and to help me be more efficient with my practice time.

    • An emphasis on performance. When I was a kid I only played the guitar in my room. As a result, the only feedback on my playing came from my instructor–I had no other motivation or accountability to influence me. Growth was not important, it wasn’t fun, and boredom led to the early death of my musical interests. In hindsight, it was a big learning failure. But especially from my experiences playing the bagpipes a few times in public, for me there is no greater motivator than having to perform in front of other people, whether I’m playing as a solo performer or playing in a band.

      • An emphasis on theory. I was never taught scales, intervals, song composition, how to read music, and how to improvise when I was young, and this left me feeling that what I was learning was empty, devoid of real content. Now I have a better understanding of the bigger picture of what music is all about, thanks in part to my bagpipe teacher, and I know now to demand a teacher who can teach the theory in addition to the notes.

So after all my experiences with trying to learn music, the above are essential components for how I’m going to start learning music. I’ve got a new teacher, a new guitar, and a new outlook on learning music.

And hopefully from all my trials in learning to play, you can see that how you learn music is shaped by your own experiences, goals, and desires. There is no one way to learn to play, so if something you try doesn’t work, don’t give up. Instead, seek out a different way of learning–try something new, even a new instrument to give you a different perspective if you need to. Don’t worry about how fast you progress, just make sure you are making progress. Eventually, exactly what you need to fill in the holes in your music education will become more obvious, your focus will become more exact, and the way forward will become more clear.

Keep pushing, keep learning, keep playing. It will come. But you do have to start.