Self Reliance

By Mike Philippov

In my previous articles I have discussed some of the reasons why so many people fail to get results from their efforts to learn guitar. In this essay I would like to address another rather subtle issue that is a reason why some people do not reach their goals. And that reason is lack of self reliance when it comes to learning and practicing.

As I mentioned in my earlier articles, the need for a teacher is obvious and finding a good one is very important. However it is also equally important to learn to rely on oneself when it comes to learning and getting better on the guitar. It is important to understand that even though having a great teacher will definitely speed up your progress in many ways, no teacher in the world is going to be more interested in you reaching your goals than you are! What I mean by being self-reliant in your practice is that no matter how many educational resources you choose to get your musical knowledge from (the more the better) the majority of the drive, energy, motivation and WORK must come from within yourself. The resources you use to obtain knowledge (a great teacher, various instructional books/videos, going to school for music etc) are there to help you but ONLY if YOU put forth the effort to extract the knowledge and apply it to your playing.

This seems obvious, however you would be surprised at how many students do not think or act in this way. Instead they choose to whine and blame their lack of progress on not having certain specific things or tools. For example a student will think things like: “I wish I could study with this teacher, or I wish I could go to college to learn music, or I wish I had this book to learn from”. It is great to want to acquire more resources to draw upon for knowledge and you should be doing that of course, however it is not productive to think that your musical future depends on acquiring the next book or going to a certain place to study. Rather focus on thinking about what you can start doing NOW with the resources you ALREADY have (and it is more than you think) to get results while you are waiting to acquire other resources to learn from.

The reason I am saying this is because often students will think that the “key” to reaching their goals lies in acquiring the next miracle book or video that will lead them to their goals. It does not work like that. Pretty soon many students end up with dozens of instructional books (or end up taking lessons with many different teachers) but they fail to actually sit down and focus on extracting the information presented to them in books or lessons. It is common to simply buy a book and skim through it and be disappointed in not having found the “miracle solution” to your guitar playing problems. The student then turns to searching for the next miracle solution and fails once again. Such student thinks that having this book or video will give them all the knowledge and skills they need if they merely buy it. This is not true. Any product is only as good as the person using it. We cannot be passive and lazy when learning something as complex as a musical instrument (especially one as complex as the guitar).

Perhaps you are wondering how I know this or why I chose to write about this topic. This very problem used to limit my own learning dramatically. I was looking for a quick fix to my playing problems and that led me to buy many books and other instructional products. Yet I found that I still was not making the progress I desired. Eventually I realized that the key to progress still comes down to me putting in the time and the work required. So I decided to not buy any more instructional resources (for awhile) and instead focused my energy on mastering the ones I already had. Guess what? My progress, my musical knowledge and playing ability increased dramatically. I have observed many of my friends trying to learn to play guitar and I have also seen their frustration with lack of progress. However only a few chose to take my advice that I described above and their playing improved considerably as well.

So the bottom line is: keep acquiring more resources for building your musical skills, BUT do not forget that YOU are responsible for your own learning. No matter how great a book is or how awesome your teacher may be, you will not become a better player by just reading a book or passively attending lessons. You must become OBSESSED with getting as much information and knowledge out of your teacher or instructional materials as possible and learning to apply it to your playing right away. You must become this aggressive in your learning. The only way to do that is to have a great love for guitar and music. If you have that then you will find the discipline within yourself to go through the work required to reach your goals.

You can contact me at mikephilippov@yahoo.com I would be happy to answer any questions you may have. I reply to all e-mails.

Visit Mike’s sites:
www.enigmatheband.com
www.myspace.com/grimthesweeper