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Learning Guitar Alone Can Be Lonely - Get Connected! · The Steve Stine Podcast

• 0:35
  Steve: Hey, steve Stine from the Guitar Zoom Academy here.
• 0:37
  Steve: Thank you so much for joining me.
• 0:39
  Steve: Today we're going to be talking about the impact of learning guitar by yourself versus learning how to play guitar with a support system.
• 0:46
  Steve: Okay, so as an example, let's say you know when you're alone and you're going to try and learn how to play bar chords, or you've been trying to learn how to play bar chords, so you look up, you know, a video on YouTube and you start trying to learn it.
• 0:59
  Steve: Or you look up a couple of different videos and there's a couple of different methods on how to do it, and again, that might work perfectly for you, which is awesome.
• 1:06
  Steve: But if you find that it's not working for you because the videos tell different things or there's just something still missing about what you're trying to do, oftentimes you get stuck and then that's where you get frustrated.
• 1:20
  Steve: So you're like, well, I've been working on this forever, but it doesn't feel like I'm making progress.
• 1:24
  Steve: And I hear this all the time from people because even with guitar courses which we've sold hundreds of thousands of guitar courses here at Guitar Zoom and guitar courses sometimes work amazing for people but there are times when people will say, look, I own this guitar course and I've been trying to go through this, but I get stuck here because something about this doesn't make sense to me.
• 1:45
  Steve: Okay, or I'm confused on something, or I'm not sure how to apply this thing.
• 1:50
  Steve: So same thing when you're watching a video.
• 1:52
  Steve: The video is great, and there's a ton of amazing videos on YouTube.
• 1:56
  Steve: The problem is is, if there's something inside that conversation where you kind of get stuck and you're like, okay, well, I don't understand what to do with this, or why does it feel wrong to me, like when I'm trying to play this.
• 2:08
  Steve: It feels very awkward or almost painful when I'm trying to put my arm in this position, or whatever it might be, and so it's really important to be able to have somebody that you can bounce ideas off of, literally together, and say, okay, play for me, show me what it is that you're trying to work on, show me what that looks like.
• 2:26
  Steve: Let me hear you.
• 2:27
  Steve: Okay, here's what I would do is I would give you this advice.
• 2:30
  Steve: Maybe what you need to try and do is this or I think you're missing this, or you need to develop this thing a little bit more, or you know, what I want you to do is I want you to watch module three in this guitar course, watch that and then, once it you know, once you've kind of absorbed that idea, what I want you to do is come back again tomorrow and let's talk about what you watched and see if we can't develop that a little bit.
• 2:51
  Steve: So for me, it's all about assessment and support.
• 2:55
  Steve: Okay, you need to be able to talk to somebody, get assessment on your playing, get support, get clarity on what it is that you're doing.
• 3:02
  Steve: So you might, for instance, you know, we have in the academy here we have what's called open rooms where you can actually have discussions with me and other instructors and we watch you play, listen to what you're working on.
• 3:14
  Steve: You know, if you if you don't show up with your guitar, that's okay too.
• 3:17
  Steve: You might just show up and have a question.
• 3:19
  Steve: Well, I have a question about how this works, or what does this mean?
• 3:22
  Steve: We get you that clarity that you need and then you get right back to work.
• 3:25
  Steve: The other thing is is maybe you post a clip of your playing and say look, can somebody give me some insight on what's doing here, what to do here?
• 3:33
  Steve: I don't have time to show up to an open room this week because I'm traveling, but I want to make you a video clip of what I'm working on and you let me know kind of what's going on there.
• 3:41
  Steve: So we go back and forth, we communicate and make sure that you're clear, and so I think that's something really, really important.
• 3:50
  Steve: We had a student here in the academy that avoided literally learning how to play bar chords for years in his playing because he couldn't figure out how to get them to work.
• 3:59
  Steve: And you know, every time he'd try and play it, some of the chord would work and some of it wouldn't, and it was very slow for him to get there.
• 4:07
  Steve: So he tried to convince himself that he doesn't need bar chords.
• 4:11
  Steve: And again, I'm not here to argue whether you do or don't, I'm just saying in the real world, oftentimes we still need bar chords, even though they are frustrating for most of us.
• 4:21
  Steve: So we started working with him and started getting him to understand some different ways of being able to practice, some little tips and things to try and make it better.
• 4:30
  Steve: You know, things like bouncing other things you've probably heard me talk about and then understanding the reality of play.
• 4:36
  Steve: Right, I love to tell this story about a football player that used to take guitar lessons from me.
• 4:43
  Steve: I live in North Dakota, in Fargo, North Dakota.
• 4:45
  Steve: We have a college here, NDSU, and I you know this football player, large human I'm not a large human.
• 4:53
  Steve: So we started looking through chords and we started recognizing, as he was learning how to play, that we were.
• 4:58
  Steve: We were learning how to play the A chord, just the A major open chord, and playing with three fingers was absolutely impossible for this man because his fingers were so huge.
• 5:07
  Steve: So then we tried two fingers and then we ultimately settled on using one finger for the A chord, and when he would make the A chord with that one finger, the first string wouldn't ring out.
• 5:18
  Steve: So then here comes the decision right Is does he quit playing guitar because he's a tall, large human that plays football and can't get his first string to work?
• 5:31
  Steve: Or do we just say it's okay, so your first string doesn't work, your A chord is still an A chord.
• 5:38
  Steve: So what?
• 5:39
  Steve: So your A chord is a little bit different than somebody else's A chord.
• 5:42
  Steve: Is that a reason to quit?
• 5:43
  Steve: Well, that's up to you.
• 5:44
  Steve: For him it was not.
• 5:46
  Steve: For me it most certainly was not Okay.
• 5:49
  Steve: So we we fix the problem by working together and finding a solution that worked for him.
• 5:56
  Steve: It doesn't mean that it works for everybody.
• 5:58
  Steve: We're all different sizes and shapes and we're all trying to do different things, but if we work together we can find solutions that fit the student.
• 6:06
  Steve: So, for me, the support system for me is really just encouragement, motivation, clarification.
• 6:17
  Steve: We can do this through clips, video clips.
• 6:20
  Steve: We can do this through actual interaction in what we call open rooms, where we actually talk to each other.
• 6:27
  Steve: We have live classes where we meet, we talk about things, we discuss things together as a group.
• 6:33
  Steve: There's all kinds of things that you can do, but the point is is that you're able to do this whenever you need it, not just Thursday at 4 pm for 30 minutes.
• 6:43
  Steve: It's literally whenever something strikes you and you need to get clarification on it.
• 6:47
  Steve: So, anyway, hopefully that helps.
• 6:49
  Steve: Learning guitar alone versus learning with a support system is a vastly different experience.
• 6:54
  Steve: For people.
• 6:55
  Steve: To stay, you know, educated, to stay clear and to stay motivated is just really, really important Having a goal, having a game plan, having a, you know, a roadmap to success, all of those things and then being able to work together.
• 7:09
  Steve: So, anyway, take care, stay positive and I'll talk to you soon, okay.