Beginners' Struggles: How to Continue with Confidence When the Going gets Tough
Being a beginner music student can be a difficult process. You’re undertaking a course of study that requires a great deal of time, effort, patience, and faith in yourself that you can overcome the obstacles you will undoubtedly come across. Here are some of the challenges you’ll face.
Despite practicing for hours, you feel as if you’re not getting anywhere with the piece
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The most difficult obstacles that many beginners face is the mental process involved with learning music. When you’re attempting to play a scale for the twentieth time and still can’t get it right, you’ll find yourself questioning, Can I do this? Or maybe you’re learning a particular piece, and despite practicing for hours (literally), you feel as if you’re not getting anywhere with the piece—that you’ve wasted the practice period, and that maybe this isn’t what you should be doing in the first place.
All musicians have been there, at one point or another in the pursuit of learning music, and can sympathise with your struggle. Music, like any other art form, requires self-confidence in knowing that despite your seeming lack of ability, you’ll eventually learn what you set out to learn. Essentially, you’ll be working against the odds during your first several years of study: studying music is comparable to studying a foreign language or a complex mathematical language, neither of which is an easy task, regardless of what someone else might tell you. Many beginners quit because they aren’t learning as fast as they’d like, or lose confidence in their ability to learn it at all.
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And then there’s the problem of memory. Basic music theory requires learning notation, fingering patterns, timing, symbols, and Latin terminology, then mentally processing that knowledge simultaneously as you’re attempting to play a song. Depending on the teaching style of your instructor, a lot can be thrown at you at once, leaving your head reeling, your fingers stumbling, and your mind in a general state of confused chaos as you search for Middle C with your right thumb, while attempting to hold the A above it in a half-note count and seeking for that strange looking note that you can’t quite recognize in the bass clef. There is a reason why learning music helps children to achieve better grades in school—it’s a workout for your brain every time you do it!
Depending on the teaching style of your instructor, a lot can be thrown at you at once
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Any seasoned musician will advise a beginner student to be patient. Nothing of great worth comes easily, and the experience of learning music is, without a doubt, an experience that will be monumental in your life. Rest assured that there will come a time in your music studies when, after multiple failed attempts at a song or complicated measure, you’ll suddenly and unexpectedly get it right. It will be a moment of revelation, a moment when you catch a glimpse of the sense of celebration and fulfillment one can receive through the art of music. At that point, you’ll realise that you truly are cut out for this, and the seemingly endless hours you’ve spent practising haven’t been in vain.
