With the advent of the internet there is no longer
any excuse for not learning music if a person wants to learn. Learning
music online has revolutionized learning, since it is the first time in
history that anyone with a computer can virtually find out anything
they want to know about music — and find out quick!

There are
sites galore teaching everything about music from chords to trombone
lessons to drum lessons to music theory lessons to guitar lessons to
piano lessons, and a whole lot more. Many are free while others charge
a very reasonable tuition. But think what a bargain that is; no travel,
no traffic jams; no rescheduling lessons; no missed lessons; and
because the lessons are online (or in some cases on CD’s and DVD’s)
they can be replayed over and over until the lesson is thoroughly
learned, which is not the case in a personal lesson or a college
classroom. You have one chance to understand, and if you don’t, you’re
immediately behind the curve and have to do extra studies to catch up.
Not so with online music lessons.

Back just 15 years ago if an
individual wanted to learn music, about the only places he or she could
do so would be from a private teacher, a music school of some sort –
private or public or correspondence, or self-taught from a music book.
All of which is fine, but slow if an individual is really chomping at
the bit to learn, and learn fast.

But today there are literally
hundreds of sites on the internet from which any ambitious person can
access and learn virtually anything they want about music. There are
sites dealing with music instruction for beginners as well as
college-level sites that deal with figured bass and advanced music
theory and composition issues, as well as improvisation and arranging
music.

For example, there are piano lesson sites that teach how
to improvise — all styles of improvisation including jazz, rock,
gospel, new age music and more. There are piano instruction sites that
shows you how to play piano sheet music as a map, instead of having to
sight read the printed music as it is written. By learning how to do
this, you can create your own free piano sheet music by creating a song
and then notating it in a music software program such as Finale using
piano tabs, piano chords, and chord symbols. A person can learn to play
piano notes by the fist-full by learning piano chording music styles.

Learning
to play the piano, learning to read piano music, learning piano songs
from classical music to popular music is one of the most fun things a
person can do. There are piano lessons online using major chords, minor
chords, 7th chords, and all kinds of chord progressions. Learning to
play the piano music of your dreams using piano chords & piano
chording techniques is now within the reach of anyone with an internet
connection! And don’t forget harmony and music theory — including
scales and fingering of scale and chord passages in musical scores and
sheet music — it’s all available online. Music history and music
appreciation is important too — guys like Bach & Mozart &
Beethoven & Chopin knew what they were doing — and we can learn
much from them and stand on their shoulders simply by accessing the
biggest library in the history of mankind — the cyber library of the
internet.

Here are just a few of the phrases you can search
online that will lead you to sites where you can learn music online (I
have used piano and guitar as an example, but obviously you can search
for anything from singing lessons to drum lessons to harp playing and
everything in between):

· piano lessons

· music lessons

· guitar lessons

· guitar chords

· piano chords

· how to form chords

· chord piano

· play guitar

· play piano

· learn guitar

· learn piano

· guitar playing

· piano playing

You will find that if you type “music lessons
online” into the Google search box, you will come up with something
like eight million results! “Piano lessons” will call up about a
million and a half, while “guitar lessons online” will bring up over
two million search results.

With this abundance of material
online, there is no excuse for anyone who really wants to learn music
to not avail themselves of the opportunity, especially when they
realize that this is the first time in the history of the world that
this riches of knowledge has been available with just the click of a
mouse.

Arguably the biggest motivation for learning to play the guitar is to learn guitar songs that are both instantly recognizable and those which you or everyone loves. What’s the best way about going about learning these songs, however?

For the first year of my learning the guitar, I took lessons pretty much with the exclusive interest or want to learn guitar songs. Each week I’d pick out a song or maybe two that I’d want to know how to play. I quickly learned that this wasn’t ideal for two reasons. One, it was getting very expensive very quickly. And two, my teacher would try to figure it out in front of me and his interpretation never sounded the way that the record did, and I realized that I’d be better off figuring it out on my own.

Once you’ve been playing for a couple of years and have had a lot of practice with basic chords, you can begin to pick them out in a song. Most songs are made up of only a handful of chords, and most popular songs are simplified progressions of 3 or 4 of these in different forms. Therefore, the quicker you learn the basic chords and transitioning between them, or basic fundamentals, the quicker you can learn guitar songs, virtually any song you can think of.

The internet is a great place to learn guitar songs as there are a number of sites devoted to posting tabs or chords to popular songs. That’s a start, but many tabs are faulty interpretations of someone’s who likely doesn’t know how to play guitar that well themselves.

Learning any new occupation, hobby, sport, or technical subject requires a series of steps to proceed through to an outcome. Playing music is no different.

Every outcome is dependent upon what we are willing to put into it. In learning music the outcome is dependent upon many factors, but one that has a significant impact is ownership.   To explore ownership we need to look at the various aspects of the learning process.

What Is Taught Is Not Ownership

In music studios and class rooms a myriad of music elements and theory is taught. Every student is relying on the music teacher or musician to provide a path to get to the outcome of  improved skill and technique in playing.

So often the teacher may even feel they have failed the student. I would submit this may even be true to the extent that the idea of ownership of the outcome is basically the students and by extension their parents.

I do not make this claim light heartedly. I have experienced this very problem with my own child as I became so busy I didn’t pay enough attention to the progress and allowed the attention to slip away in other distracting avenues.

Teaching the Knowledge Is Not Enough

I struggle with the idea that we can impart all this knowledge on the student, but that there is always a muddling through. We talk to them and try to impress that they need to practice more, study a bit harder, and concentrate on the specific tasks to improve their playing.

This brings me back to the ownership requirement. I can speak from personal experience that it is easy to slip into I’ll get to it later syndrome. I did it on many occasions. It wasn’t until I had decide to take on a big project and learn three movements of a Beethoven Sonata did I actually move into the ownership realm.

Focus On the Outcome

When I started focusing on the outcome an attitude change took place. I didn’t even ask about how to approach the goal. I decided that I would work different movements at the same time and that we’d start with parts and sections that were easy to define in my mind as completely accomplishable form lesson to lesson.

Doing It Through Ownership

This focus and determination put me in the seat of ownership. I was completely responsible for the outcome I had created. This was even more reinforced when I would go into a lesson and my teacher would simple say:

“So what do we need to work on today to move you to your goal?”

Can you see where just that one question told me I was the owner of my outcome. It wasn’t her goal, it was all mine. Ownership was completely mine.  The issue is to determine how do we get others to take that same ownership.

I submit that it’s in not defining the goals for the student. It’s in having the student define the goals they are going after.   It will take some time to explore what the student can achieve and help them realize it can be achieved. Let’s all take some time to think about the outcome and how our own ownership is the key to really making it happen.

If you thought music theory was a waste of time and not necessary to further your musical goals, then read these following 5 reasons why this is not true.

1.Read sheet music: Being able to play from any piece of sheet music. Well it may be hard to play BUT you can read it!

2.Be able to transpose: Say you are playing a piece from the sheet music you can now read but you think it sounds too high or too low, or just not right. Well now you can move it into a new key and play at a better singing.

3.Be able to modulate: You will be able to, with a few quick moves of the fingers, move your music into a new key with a succession of notes so pleasing to the ear it will bring a smile to your listeners faces.

4.It will increase your skill in improvising: Enough said.

5.Knowing music theory will help you recreate the sounds you enjoy in your favorite songs. Those fabulous chord progressions. The parts that give a song that certain sound. Gospel, Contemporary etc.

To learn music theory you don’t have to become a scholar on the subject. Just at least learn the basics. Getting a good music theory book and spending a few minutes a day reading from it and doing any included exercises can jump start your music playing.

For many people, attempting to play an instrument of
any kind is a nightmare. First you have to learn to hold it, manipulate
it and/or sit at it properly. Finally you have got that right, but then
you have to ask yourselves the BIGGY? ‘What do I play, and does it mean
that I have to try and understand those little black tadpoles that seem
to be going up or down, long lack-barred climbing frames, with some of
them even holding hands with each other.”

The answer is No.

As
a musician who plays by ear, I feel that for many of you out there who
are struggling to get to grips with your instrument, some helpful
hints, tips and advice, may make the difference between you starting to
enjoy yourself at your new found pleasure, or you placing your unwanted
instrument on eBay, due to frustration at not having made any headway
in learning.

Now before you think, “Oh Yeah, and what does he
know” My Son is a percussionist, my daughter a Professional Jazz Singer
and Teacher and my Son-in-law, a Professional Jazz Guitarist, who
manages a music shop, and YES, they do all read music. The difference
between us is that they all learnt basic music at school and then had
lessons. I didn’t.

“Why do I play by ear you may say.” Well I had
two brothers that were much younger than me. They had Recorder lessons
in school.  In about 1972, my Dad (bless his soul) decided in his
wisdom to buy a brand new Electronic Organ for my two brothers and
myself, to learn music on. You see in his childhood, he lived in a
two-up, two-down terraced house As it was a large family of TEN, he
slept in the attic/loft and as a kid, and that was where he tried to
learn the violin. Needless to say, he did not and so although he loved
to listen to music, he was only able to play by ear. You see nobody
actually helped him to do even that. In today’s information ridden
Internet World, Help is only a click away.

As they say ” Do not fear, Robin is here”

Music
lessons at school for me had been basically singing from song books
(words-only). I had no idea of basic music theory, but I had a vague
idea about organs as my Godfather was a semi-professional musician who
played the organ in clubs. When I visited his home I listened and
watched as he played his late sixties, Lowrey Holiday Organ.

The
reason that I I play by ear, is that I have great difficulty in reading
music. If I tried to read a piece of music, I would memorise the melody
and then only follow the chords. Pretty soon I would have those
memorised to. This does allow me to play many things straight off the
top of my head. Dad and Mum often liked melodies and songs that we had
no music for. As I mastered the two keyboard organ with bass pedals,
they would ask if I could play certain tunes for them. I found hat I
could, be it a hymn, a march, a folk song, Waltz, Rhumba, Rock and
Roll, slow or fast.

So what is the secret to playing by ear? My
answer is, if you can hum it or whistle it, you can play it. Maybe not
perfectly at first, but that will come in time. The more you play a
piece, the easier it gets. I played regular charity sessions with a
professional organist, and he would shoot over to me as I finished
playing a piece of music hoping for a copy of it as he could only play
by reading the music. He was disappointed as I played by ear.

My
advice to you now is to make a start on playing by ear and follow on
with further help such as this. Finally, pick something easy to play in
an easy key and try that first. My starter was always “God Save The
Queen” Being English, I knew both words and tune. I did it in the key
of “C” which was good for my instrument, and it was not to long.

Always
have confidence in yourself, and remember when you are playing, that if
“YOU ENJOY IT” other people do not matter. The ones who comment or
criticise the most, are those who cannot do it themselves.

Bye for now,

Robin

Note.
All opinions printed here are the personal choice of the author an
experienced designer and not necessarily the views of others.