Here’s the hard truth: most people don’t quit learning music because they aren’t talented at it. They quit because it’s unclear. It’s too slow. It’s too hard. And at the start of the journey, you can’t wait to start. You get excited, and it’s fun. But then the motivation slows down and the progress starts to look and feel very slow.
Why does this keep happening over and over again?
Unrealistic expectations. If you just started learning music, you’d want to know that you will actually be able to play the songs you love on your instrument in the shortest amount of time. If I just started out with the guitar, I would want to know how to play my favorite songs in days or weeks. The reality is that learning any type of skill, including learning a musical instrument, is a very gradual process. It’s a long-term journey, and you will get a bit frustrated in the beginning when you don’t see much progress, because it all adds up. You won’t see your progress until the progress starts adding up, and suddenly everything starts to make sense.
Lack of progress. Learning any type of skill, including learning music, is a simple cycle: learn, practice, repeat. If your practice sessions are unstructured and inconsistent, your progress will be unstructured and inconsistent, too. You’ll improve one day, then forget half of it the next.
Lack of a clear direction. This is a result of the two previous problems combined. You’re going at the wrong pace, and you have no idea what you’re doing or where you’re going. This is a very common situation with many aspiring musicians, who jump around from tutorial to tutorial without a plan, song to song without an understanding of technique, and technique to technique without knowing what is most applicable for where you are in your musical journey. You think that learning something new is progress, but you don’t really learn anything when you’re so spread out. Learning from structured lessons is the answer.
The constant frustration with making mistakes. This is a bit of an internal struggle. You want to know that what you are doing is actually helping you get better and you’re making progress. But when you keep playing wrong notes and making a mess, you feel like you’re wasting your time. However, that is not actually what is happening at all. Your skill level is where it should be, and mistakes are exactly how we improve our skills! It’s a process of identifying what exactly needs improving and improving upon that, and so on, until you are better at the thing you started. And you need to accept that early on.
Motivation is also very short-lived. Your motivation will go up and down depending on how things are going. In music, especially, there’s a lot of waiting for progress to happen before you can even start to see how good you are. What’s important is not relying on motivation. You need to get into the habit of showing up and being ready to play, and to make that happen, you need to get a bit of structure in there.
It’s simple: if you’re structured and consistent, you’re more likely to succeed. Those that continue to improve and play music do not necessarily play or practice more, they just continue to get better and stay consistent.
And that is why we’re here. MelodySkillHub is designed to make things very clear for our students. Step by step lessons, practice with guidance, and learning at your own pace in a clear direction and a structured way is what sets you up for the best possible learning experience for learning a musical instrument.
Because learning music isn’t about being perfect. It’s about not stopping when it gets difficult.