Feeling stuck – Question to adult music learners
I started studying guitar and harmonica a bit more than a year ago at 33. I am working on my LOA 3 and can also play several songs on a guitar like Where Did You Sleep Last Night or Diamonds and Rust, a couple of basic blues solos, several licks and basic blues rhythm. I'm studying music theory and doing excercises like listening to intervals and chords and singing scales.
Despite all of this, I'm just feeling like I am stuck and not getting any closer to real musicians who can play melodies by ear, jam on any theme etc. I understand that I mostly just have to keep practicing, but at times this feels very depressing and I even don't want to touch any instrument.
Fellow adult music learners, how long did it take you to feel that you had a breakthrough and some sense of muscial freedom? What helped you the most on this path, what excercises and activities were the most effective in making you better understand music?
Been playing Sax/Clarinet for over 50 years in mostly big bands on and off. It wasn't until I started to record the bands that I felt I was making progress. Starting to learn guitar, keys and harp now and if I can learn something new each day I feel it is all worth it. I think it is the journey rather than one aha momement. I have been lucky to have played with some people that I have felt mastered their instrument. That is what I call talent. I only have played with two people that can come close to Dave. I have not reached the talent point and may never. I am enjoying the ride.
Thank you for all the advice.
The most effective for me was patience :-)
I started here almost exactly 3 years ago and it's about a month ago when I noticed the first big change in my play. I started to improvise and now I can play "something" that is not totally awfull along with simple backing tracks that I dind't hear before. It took me 3 years.
If I may place my 2 cents on the matter:
Music is about the journey, not the destination. Unless you're looking forward to be a professional musician, keep studying, enjoy the ride and let it be!
Ivan,
I'm with you on this. I am just staring level 3. I first started blowing in the harp about 6 months ago. I thought after about 2 months I would be setting on a park bench blowing some tunes and impressing the people that walked by. As it turns out I won’t even set on my deck and practice for fear of the squirrels tossing acorn at me and my neighbors calling the police.
I’m pretty sure someday I will be able to set on my deck and play with some pride. It’s just going to take much longer than I thought.
Hang in there.
Brian in Tennessee
The problem most of us find is that we will listen to say, Little Walter, and compare our playing to his. You will always come out second best in this contest (as will most pro harp players). The best advice I can give is to record yourself playing and compare how the excercises you are practising sound today compared to how they sounded when you started a couple of weeks or months ago. Use yourself as a benchmark of progress rather than comparing yourself with someone who was earning a living playing with Muddy Waters band (or his own band) most nights and who would have spent years practising or rehearsing!
Ivan: Really interesting topic. At the risk of sounding either flip, or pessimistic, "how long did it take you to feel that you had a breakthrough and some sense of muscial freedom?," may not be the right question. E.g., if you are compelled to be the best musician you can be, you might never feel as though there's a "breakthrough," because every time you open a door and walk through it, there will be a new door up ahead with a bunch of new challenges trying to figure out how to open IT. But if, for instance, even as an anxious beginner, you can work up the courage to play a harp solo and maybe sing a song at a jam or open mic that welcomes beginners, and you bring some friends along, no matter how disappointed you might feel about your own performace, you'll have friends in the audience who say things like, "WOW ... I never knew you could do something like THAT!" And you'll understand that rather than a "breakthrough," you've "broken in" with the worldwide family of musicians, a happy and close-knit community. As for "freedom," your desire to keep learning, keep improving, keep finding new challenges, will mean that you will never be "free" from the muse of music. But that's a good thing, that every day will bring you at least one happy experience. (Before I retired I used to remind myself that "a bad day of practicing my music beats a good day at work, any day.") Best of luck for your own success.
Yeah, for me this is a challenge as I have never had any musical talent. My natural skills are visual (photography) or verbal (lawyer by profession) but not really musical. Still, it is a challenge and one that I enjoy.
I feel your pain in not being able to "make" music, but in being limited to "playing" it only. Still, all I can say is to keep plugging along. As David is fond of saying, you'll be able do it someday, you just don't know when.
When I was a year old, I could say a few words. When I was five, I could communicate with 5-year olds, and most adults knew what I was talking about, but they could tell I was a 5 year old.
For me, at least, learning music is kind of like learning to talk. I still don't talk "as good" as many people, and I've been learning for 67 years now. I never had a "breakthrough" in talking. My ability to communicate with words developed gradually. If I had put in more focused practice along the way, I might be able to hold my own with great orators, but that never seemed worth the trouble, so I settled for being able to simply communicate most of what I want to, with most people, most of the time.
Same with music. Practice here and there over time, you get a little better, and you can get to the point that you can "communicate." But if you want to get "closer to real musicians who can play melodies by ear, jam on any theme etc.," I think you just have to be able to really embrace (and enjoy!) the journey, and put whatever effort into it that it takes to get what you want out of it. Just as with speech, the better you get, the easier it gets to get better.
In my opinion, Bluesharmonica.com is exactly the right place to do that. Listen to Professor Barrett! You'll be glad you did!
I've studied music theory and know it better than most people, but I learned to improvise intitially by imitating what I heard and liked - mostly other harmonica players to be sure, but also stealing whatever inspired me in a singer, guitarist, sax player, etc.
When you hear something that inspires you that you want to steal, try singing the lick before finding it on an instrument. Doing that will bypass the need to know where the notes are on the instrument and how to get from one to the next. One you have the lick, line, or melody by ear, you can work on finding it on guitar or harmonica.
Also, listen to music as question-and-answer statements, emotional gestures, or even as competing assertions. Musical phrases are not all that distant from human speech, and when when you listen that way, you start to form ideas about things you yourself can "say."
It ain't all about counting beats or knowing intervals and chord structures, even though that knowledge can do a huge amount for your understanding.