… and how to easily fix them!
The Original Music School (OMS) spent countless hours and dollars researching and developing methods of music education and how it will be delivered to the next generation of great musicians.
From these studies, came our “Guaranteed Musician,” a new exciting program that works on any instrument including voice.
We then compared our systems’ results with those of the, commonly understood, best music teaching methods.
Our conclusions shattered old ideas once thought to be common knowledge.
Here, as briefly as possible and in no particular order, are 9 things keeping you from being the great musician you know you can be and how to obliterate them!
1. You Quit Too Soon!
This might seem like a no brainer, but many potentially great musicians quit before they even give themselves a chance to learn.
Nothing worthwhile happens overnight.
Greats like Michael Jackson, Jimi Hendrix, and the Beatles spent endless hours developing their talents. They had teachers, and they needed to practice just like you.
No one is born a great. It takes time and practice to
become a genius at anything. The following tips will help you shorten that time.
2. You Misunderstood Words
Teaching is communicating. If you do not know the meaning of words the teacher is using, the lesson material cannot be explained clearly.
You simply cannot be learning in that environment.
We often take for granted that we know the meaning of words we hear. But if we are asked what a word means, we define it!
If you can’t define a word, you don’t truly know it’s meaning. It is important for you to know, for sure, the words used in your lessons.
At OMS, we fixed this problem. We give our students a list of keywords that will come up in their classes. These keywords are clearly defined using pictures or video.
Students then pass an exam on these words. The result is a more confident student, better communication in class and infinitely better and faster results - a guaranteed musician!
If you would rather take lessons on your own, keep a notebook and a dictionary handy and when a misunderstood word pops up, look it up and learn it’s meaning.
3. The Learning Curve is Too Steep!
No matter your skill level, if you receive too much information too quickly, you will miss things.
Soon, you will get frustrated and maybe quit trying to learn altogether.
Often times, good intentioned teachers book one hour lessons and cram as much information into the lesson as possible.
While this may seem beneficial to the students , it is not!
Most of that information will be forgotten.
Students should learn new musical ideas in each lesson. They must also master applying the lesson on their instrument, which includes playing the part in time and in key.
Another reason to avoid hour lessons is the fact that both the teachers and students tend to lose their energy and attention span after 30 minutes.
That is why at OMS, we offer multiple half-hour lessons per week in our programs. Each lesson contains one or two musical ideas. Then we apply the ideas on the instrument.
Students goes home having created some muscle-memory with the exercise and have a solid understanding of the material.
A day or so later, the students are back in class learning
and mastering something new! At the week’s end, our students put in more time than an ineffective hour session.
4. You Are Not Practicing Enough.
In the words of the great Arnold Schwarzenegger, “You can’t be great at anything you don’t do everyday.”
So, what’s the magic number? See the chart below.
Really great musicians practice all the time.
Jimi Hendrix carried a guitar with him everywhere he went. You can find pictures of him out and about, always with a guitar in hand.
In OMS music programs, students get practice time with a group, which is more fun and engaging than doing.
Teacher monitored practice ensures our students are practicing correctly and making progress at a freakishly fast pace.
You should set a time of day in your smartphones’ calendar for the alarm to remind you to practice.
Then, set a timer for the amount of time you want to practice. Be determined that no matter what happens - the house could fall down around you - you will not stop practicing until that timer goes off.
If 30 minutes seems too long, set your timer for 15 minutes.
When you are done, take a break.
“Like” The Original Music School on Facebook. Then set your timer for another 15 minutes and you are now practicing for 30 minutes a day!
5. No sense of accomplishment.
If you don’t feel you are winning, you won’t be motivated and you will quit.
Humans have a very short memory. Crooked politicians can be in the news for doing bad things, and six months later the public re-elects them!
Likewise, as we grow in our abilities, we forget how horribly we struggled just a short time ago. Even while we are making great gains we may feel inadequate and unaccomplished.
I recommend you test yourself or have your teacher test you often, as you progress through your learning.
Also, go back to what you were studying a month ago, two months ago and so on and look at it.
If those lessons look similar to what you are now studying, it isn’t working. But if they look simple compared to today’s lesson, you may be surprised at how far you’ve come!
At OMS, you will learn quickly and prove it often with regular testing through our program.
Each time you pass a test, you will get a certificate of your accomplishment. We’ll take a photo of you, post it on our Facebook page and add a quote by you and the whole world will know of your success.
6. You are taking private 1-on-1 Lessons.
For years, the gurus have been saying that 1-on-1 lessons give you the highest value for your dollar but that is simply not true.
There is often a “him against me ” feeling.
When you are alone in a room with just your teacher, real or imagined, you may feel he is harshly judging your every move on your instrument.
You imagine he is fretting over the lack of practice you put in last week. You dwell that he might be upset at the time it is taking you to master the lesson.
That is an unpleasant experience to say the least!
Time is wasted with pleasantries like, “how was your day,” and other small talk common when two people greet each other.
It’s great to be cordial, but it is easy to lapse into time wasting chatter when it is just the two of you.
In fact, that is a common technique I’ve seen kids perform on teachers when the student has not practiced for the lesson.
You can feel very alone when you are struggling to learn a new musical idea and applying it to your instrument in your lesson.
You may feel like you are the only person in the world, or at least this room, who can’t get it!
You lose motivation.
You feel like the teacher doesn’t understand you because he can play it just fine. Alone in your struggle you ask yourself, “what’s the point?”
At OMS, you won’t have these issues because our lessons are taught in very small groups.
You get the benefits of the attention had in a private lesson without the drawbacks.
This new system gives you have the added benefit of learning with a peer group who understand your struggle. They are going through it too!
You support each other and you are part of a team that is learning together.
7. You Chose Your Teacher Because He Is a Superstar.
This happens often when people choose a teacher and it creates a teacher-centric mentality.
Half of your first class is spent having to sit there listening to the teacher tell you how good he is and who he’s played with. Then he wastes more time proving it by playing for you.
You’ve just paid for a concert instead of a lesson and besides that, his playing ability proves nothing!
Just because he can play doesn’t mean he can teach.
Babe Ruth - perhaps the greatest home run hitter in the history of baseball - did it so naturally, he would have been a horrible teacher.
He never had to have it taught to him. He just did it.
Likewise, if a teacher can play an instrument, it doesn’t mean that he can teach you to play. They are two separate skills.
That is why OMS has the “Guaranteed Musician” curriculum - a program that puts all the attention on the student - not the teacher - and has been proven over and over to deliver results.
8. You Avoid the Metronome.
To be a great musician you need to have a great sense of timing and meter.
You will need to play to a click track (what we call a metronome in the recording studio) when you are performing as an artist or a session musician in the studio.
You need a great sense of time when you are playing live to keep you from speeding up or slowing down. Imagine playing a wedding and the tempo is all over the place! That would be embarrassing for everyone.
At OMS all of our lessons are taught and practiced to a metronome. We even tell you what BPM (beats per minute) setting for each lesson.
Our students start with the metronome set at slower speeds and we speed it up as they master each lesson.
Do this and your timing will improve quickly. Keep notes and measure how much you’ve improved each week.
9. You Don’t Sing.
You may not consider yourself worthy to sing or perhaps you just don’t want to. I have two thoughts on that.
First, you should know that singing musicians get more gigs, so learn how to sing!
You don’t need a great voice to sing backing vocals or even many lead vocals. You just need to be able to sing on key.
Second, if you sing the parts you are learning on your instrument, you will internalize the parts better and learn them faster.
You may even become a bit of a singer since you will learn notes, scales and melodies and how to produce them with your voice.
An Invitation
Every day, The Original Music School empowers people like you to become guaranteed musicians of every type and style.
The body of our experience and the efficacy of our systems can only be hinted at in the space available here.
So, I am extending a personal invitation for you to come in and try a lesson - free of charge and with no further obligation.
Learn for yourself why hundreds of aspiring musicians, songwriters and producers have chosen OMS to acquire the skills needed to become movers and shakers in the modern music industry.
Even if you would be more content just playing the piano at home or strumming a guitar by a campfire, The Original Music School can give you the gift of music that you will enjoy and share with your friends and family for a lifetime.
Simply fill out the form below and we will be in touch with you within 24 hours. We look forward to calling you a musician -guaranteed!