Bad Guitar Student?
Stop being a bad guitar student!
You can waste years of valuable time, thousands of dollars, and frustration to become a great guitarist if you don’t learn how to listen and learn from others. You can be a terrible student as a beginner and intermediate player. If you try to teach yourself or if you take lessons and then just don’t listen, both methods can be detrimental to your learning.
BIG Results Quickly?
Some of us want to get big results from guitar lessons but we want those results as soon as possible. It just doesn’t work that way. And sometimes the biggest part of the problem isn’t who is teaching you. Sometimes the problem is the student. You could be studying with the worst teacher, but you can still progress if you do the work and what the teacher tells you.
You Know Best?
As a student, you may think you know what is in your best interest to learn. You may think you should be the one to tell the teacher what to teach you. Quite possibly, you may think it’s the teacher’s job to teach you whatever it is you want to know whenever you ask for it. And of course, you may also think you have the right to tell the teacher how and what to teach because you are the one paying for the lessons. It just doesn’t work like this.
Learning the guitar is a long-term challenge.
No great guitarist became great by thinking they can learn on their own or tell someone else how to teach them. There is a long-term learning process in the guitar. And if you don’t adopt that outlook, no teacher can really help you.
There are four simple steps to become a great guitarist and if you follow them, and have patience, you really can achieve greatness in your guitar playing:
- Find a great guitar teacher
- Tell that teacher what your long term goals are
- DO what the teacher tells you to do to reach your goals
- Continue to repeat step 3 on an ongoing basis
Share in Knowledge
A good guitar teacher will share their knowledge with you and give you the tools needed to learn and how to use them. They will become your mentor and true mentors don’t just give you a handful of seeds. Experienced find the seeds that are already in you and marinate them in fertilizer. Some days the seeds need to be watered, other days time and sun just need to do their part.
Learning from Your Mistakes
An average teacher can help a good student much further and much faster than a great teacher can help a mediocre student. You need to learn from your mistakes but be smart and listen to who is teaching you. You will make much less mistakes if you follow this simple rule from the start. Don’t be a bad guitar student and you will do just fine!