• The Top Five Things New Musicians Struggle With
• Author:Francis Beaudry

As people enter the world of music, there are certain things every musician struggles with. Some people are able to overcome these struggles more easily that others, but everyone faces these struggles. Knowing what these struggles are can help you prepare for them and overcome them more easily and quickly. So, what are these struggles?...

1. Not Knowing How To Practice
Practice makes perfect, right? No. Perfect practice makes perfect. If you practice something incorrectly, you learn the incorrect way to do it. When I started playing guitar, I just picked up the guitar and ¡°messed around with it.¡± Eventually, I got to the point where I could play several songs and felt pretty good about my guitar playing. I continued on for a few years like that and after a while I realized that 1. most of my songs sounded annoyingly similar and 2. I had a lot of trouble with a lot of songs. Then I found out I wasn¡¯t strumming properly. For years I¡¯d been practicing the wrong way and now I had to unlearn years of practice and practice a new way. Not an easy task.

With poor practicing methods, new musicians will often get frustrated at the difficulty of music or the length of time it takes them to learn a song. Using the proper practicing methods, they may find that they learn songs much more quickly and some of the really hard songs, weren¡¯t really so hard¡­if you knew the right way to play them. So, what are these struggles?...

2. Lack of Understanding of Music
What¡¯s a staff? Why is an ¡°F¡± a lower pitch than a ¡°G¡± (within the same octave)? Why are there only 8 notes that keep repeating? A lot of people are attracted to music after hearing performances or listening to the radio. Then they start to dabble with music either vocally or with an instrument without any real understanding of what is happening to create the music, how to read music, or what all the instrument parts are and why they are there. That¡¯s fine if you just want to have some fun. I know a lot of people who just mess around with music because they enjoy it, but they have no desire to ever do anything with the music, especially not perform in front of people.

However, if you want to get serious about music, improve your skills, and possibly perform, then understanding music is very important. Without the proper understanding of music you are like a scientist just mixing random chemicals trying to find a great discovery. Sure, every now and then you may get something pretty interesting, but most of the time the mixture will blow up in your face.

Understanding music allows you to understand the relationship of different notes and why some sound good together and others don¡¯t. It allows you to learn other people¡¯s music by reading notation and share your music with others through that same notation. It also allows you advance in your skills with your instrument as you understand why things work they way they do and understand the proper way to play your instrument. With out a good understanding of music, your growth in your musical skill will be slower and limited.