Have you heard about those successful guitar students that keep practicing guitar all the time, they progress extremely fast, and looks like there is nothing impossible for them? Yes, for sure you know such a people. But why are some guitar students not that successful, why they don’t have such a great desire to practice guitar, while you still love it?
Well, I will share a story about two families that I was teaching their children, each of the families had two children as my students, aged between six and nine. At that time, around 2014, I was very busy with the question: “Why most of the students do not practice their guitar”? I prepared a 45-minute presentation, tackling the issue, organized an event, invited all my students, around fifty at a time, and their parents to join. I was hoping that most of them, if not all, will attend. However, the attendees were only the above two families and their kids. I didn’t hesitate to do the presentation, at 7 pm I started my speech, with PowerPoint slides on the screen, it went smooth, a little girl even slept in her dads the lap.
What was the outcome? In the next six months, those four children improved tremendously, performed on all concerts, started to sit for board examinations, they were willingly learning music theory. In other words, the children become successful and that lasted until they were my students. Almost three years later it happened that both families left the country. I am still in contact with them, the children are dedicated guitar students until today.
The problem with, why the students are not practicing guitar, is not only because the students don’t want to do it, but also that we, the teachers, and the parents do not take time to nurture them in this direction. Constant practice and dedication are very delicate areas in music education, to achieve this, most of the students need help. But as I said in other articles the “He needs to practice” thing, doesn’t work in most cases…The students do not practice because they are not taught how to do it, how to get into the state of practicing, how to motivate themselves, how to create and maintain their practicing routine.
Years later I developed this 45-minute presentation, into two hours online course, addressing the adult students who want to play guitar, started their guitar lessons, but struggle to practice. it can be applied to children as well. The course is called: “Motivate yourself to practice guitar” you can check it out here