Music Lessons

We had some guitar and drum lessons for about 5 years during highschool that we enjoyed tremendously. It was great for getting started and for having someone to ask questions and get feedback from.
I’d still say the majority of progress we made (especially on guitar) was self taught but I guess that’s always the case because practise = progress. And no teacher can practise for you 😉 Our teachers never really taught us much theory (and we still can’t read music very well) but they kept music FUN, which was soooo much more important. We had little drum ensembles, learned how to groove and play with other people and that made us look forward to picking up our instruments every day.

And later on in life, YouTube, the internet and our favourite musicians became the main “teachers”. Watching tutorials, practising new techniques and studying the hands of George Harrison and Mark Knopfler 🙂

Great question Steve and great answer Lisa!  I am learning so much more about you and Mona here!  I never knew much of what you just said.

I liked what you said about practise = progress!  That is so true, whether it be in music and other fine arts, painting, pottery, sports, etc.

We often here that practise = perfect as well, but that depends on who we emulate and what we practise.  I like the saying practise = permanent instead.  We could practise bad technique or errors, and those little synapses in our brains can developed the wrong pathways.  By emulating George Harrison and Mark Knopfler (of Dire Straits who were inducted into the 2018 Class of the R&R Hall of Fame along with The Moody Blues and 3 other bands),  you learned from masters and learn great technique!

So very true what you said about FUN too!  When we were little, my older sister Anne and I took piano lessons for 5 years.  By the time I reached about 10 years old, I shelved it for a few years.  By the time I was 16 to 18 and in high school, circa 1966-1969, they started making sheet music books of rock and pop stars.  That is when I really got turned on to piano.  I could sit down and play Beatles and more (Moody Blues, Bee Gees, etc) for hours on end!

Yes, this applies to so many things. When younger and learning martial arts, my trainer said the difference between an amateur and a  professional was repetition, repetition, repetition.

The same approach applied to the time I took  up sailboarding, although I had a couple of lessons to get started, hours and hours of practice is what got me proficient.

In my last year of primary school I had a year’s piano lessons and learnt to read music. Not having an ear for music, this is the only way I could play! All those hours spent going up and down the scales! Yes, very boring, but oh how I loved it when I could finally play beautiful music I read from sheet music!

The Beatles never did learn to read or write music using traditional notation, and by all accounts were happy with that fact. Proves one does not need to know this to be talented musicians, you are in good company Mona and Lisa.