The Top Five Things New Musicians Struggle With

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.

3. Listening to Friends and not Critics

Have you watched American Idol? Even people who don’t like the show have probably seen some of the terrible tryouts that begin each season. Sure, some are just people who want to get on TV, but others are people who truly think they are great singers, but we can all hear that, no, they are terrible, even painful to watch. So, why would someone humiliate themselves on national TV? Why would people who sound so bad, think they are so good? A lot of time it’s because they have only listened to their friends and not any critics.

These days we’re all taught to be nice and uplifting. “If you don’t have something nice to say, don’t say anything at all.” Everyone gets a trophy even if they loose. People, especially family and friends, are too concerned about being nice and not concerned enough about being honest. The truth is that no one ever becomes great without being criticized. I’m not talking about being made fun of, I’m talking about someone giving you an honest assessment of what they hear, telling you the ways that you are messing up or sounding bad. That way you can learn what you are doing wrong and fix it. You discover what areas you need to work on and what you are doing right. Listening to critics is the only way you will grow.

4. Unreal Expectations

Pavarotti, Eric Clapton, B. B. King, Yo-Yo Ma. These people are great musicians, but they didn’t become great musicians over night. They worked for years learning their instrument. They practiced hours a day. They had to start, where every new musician starts with training exercises and simple songs. A lot of new musicians want to be able to play the music that attracted them to music in the first place and can get very frustrated when they can’t play it well or quickly. You can become great, but it is going to take time and practice.

5. Lack of Confidence

I think this is the one struggle that saddens me more than any other. Believe it or not, all the skill and practice in the world are just about useless if you don’t have confidence when you play. Lack of confidence causes poor technique and timid playing, that leads to poor performance. I can’t count the number of musicians I’ve seen who can play a piece perfectly in practice, but when they play in front of others, they crash and burn. I’ve also seen mediocre musicians who perform above their practice skill level because they have confidence when perform. It’s one of the most common struggles for musicians and one of the most crucial to overcome. It’s amazing the effect confidence can have a on a performance

What did you struggle with when you first got into music?