Let me tell you what, you bought your instrument and you are all set to become the musician of your dreams. You are taking the matter into your own hands and search for the lessons on youtube.
Voila! Youtube presents you with thousands of music lessons. You start watching those lessons and you even try them on your own instrument.
You watch videos of all of the virtuosos and their playing gives you goosebumps. That day you sleep with dreams of yourself playing like your favorite heros.
Do you know what happens after that?
After that you get frustrated and stop practicing. You don’t learn anything. This is the case with every single student of ours who came to us after trying to learn from youtube. This is not just us but we’ve heard the same story from a lot of other teachers also.
There are reasons why this happens.
Let’s take a look at what these reasons are and what you should do instead.
No Directions
From all those gazillions of lessons, you start with a video that looks fine to you. You start practicing whatever the instructor tells you to do. You learn the thing and the video ends.
Now what?
You search again for the next videos and again youtube loads that same pile of lessons in front of you.
After a few videos, you stumble upon a video that’s too hard for you and you don’t know whether or not you should push through. After all, there’s no one to tell you if the video is right for your current level. So you move on.
You fool around with more videos but you can’t really play anything. You’re stuck.
Should you learn a song, however, it seems hard? Or should you start with the basics?
Who can tell you what to do exactly? What if you have a question? What video should you watch next?
Unless you are a child with a crazy level of enthusiasm and way too much free time, you’re most likely to put your guitar down at this point.
No Feedback
Learning with youtube poses another problem-
“No one is going to tell you if you are practicing things right or wrong.”
Yes! You just watch videos and try to replicate that on your own but there’s no one to give you feedback if you’re doing it right. You are just on your own.
What if you have any questions?
Youtube videos are a one-way teaching medium. Sure you can write your questions in comments but a lot of times only text cannot answer questions in music.
Also, you become dependent if the instructor will answer it. So no one to clear doubts, it is very frustrating.
No Authenticity
Youtube is a platform where anyone can upload a video besides the video should not violate their terms and conditions. Youtube’s terms and conditions don’t include any quality and authenticity measures.
It means that someone who doesn’t know what he’s talking about can also upload the video. A person who has just started playing a week ago can upload his own videos and youtube won’t say anything.
This is a big problem with the internet. There are a lot of people claiming to be a guru but most of them and believe me most of them are talking total crap.
So should you stop learning from youtube altogether?
NO.
There are two basic scenarios where you can use Youtube to learn music.
To learn a specific technique
It’s when you want to learn a specific technique you can use youtube and find great content. For example, if you want to learn hybrid picking you can find specific videos that can help you understand the basics of the technique.
To learn a song if you’re an intermediate guitarist
If you already know the basics of playing and can play a few songs already but now wants to learn a few more songs you can easily get help from youtube.
Although the problem of feedback and authenticity will be there but the problem won’t make it impossible as it is the case for beginners.
Beginners need some hand-holding because they don’t have any direction to go as the intermediate players who are already a few steps into the way.
Beginners must, at least very initially, join some good music classes which are capable of instilling some good playing habits and giving you a basic understanding of music. If you can find a good music school near you join them or you can join our music classes here at IQ School of Music, Bikaner. Where we will teach you everything you need to know to play music in a very detailed and step-by-step fashion. We’re currently providing guitar classes, piano classes, and singing classes in Bikaner. We also provide online lessons.
Call us now at 9929628629
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