Study Generic Music. Don't Pay to Study Rock!

Lately I've been getting a lot of questions about how to learn music. Every few months the questions come which ultimately lead to a common final direction of inquiry; how do I learn how to play better.

I can start by telling you that you cannot get better by going to a teacher to play rock music as rock music has a history of success when it is learned through listening to this music and playing it. There is no reason to pay money to go to a teacher or a school to learn a musical style that you can learn at home for free. The support for this comment lies in the factual statement that just about every single well known rocker learned how to play this way since rock music began in the 1950's.

If you are in need of musical improvement and wish to pay someone for this insight, then seek out teachers who know academic generic and perfect jazz-type harmony. Jazz is not a good career choice unless you really want to play this music. But, it is the best academic study-type music there is because jazz harmony relates to every Western musical style and fits perfectly with every contemporary instrument. An Amaj7 for example exists in Van Halen tunes, Broadway shows, TV commercials, pop songs, country music, Blues, just about everything that we listen to. Find a teacher that teaches musical facts, not musical art, and you will grow as a player.

Don't study with a teacher that doesn't emphasize music as the core of their lessons. Everybody can develop some kind of technical ability over time, in fact, most do. But, musicians who don't pursue learning music as the core of their formative studies will find that 30 years later, they won't know much about music either. Seek out a teacher who puts musical information that you can't find on your own, and you take care of the rest byt listening and imitating what you hear out there.

Finally, some people believe that the Internet is a good place to find good music lessons. I checked this claim out for quite a while by looking around at what was out there to help you to learn music. I came to the conclusion that the Internet is a terrible place to find valid useful musical information, at least most of the time. Anybody can put up a website or a YouTube video and claim that you will get better through their study methods. I checked out quite a few of these sites and videos and came to the conclusion that most of these sites are just bad places to go for any enlightening musical information, which is why I suggest that you take that money and find a great harmonically motivated music teacher and let them show you the mechanics of our artform. Many people don't know how to play musically and they really should try to find some good musical material to work on.

Good luck.

Jeff