Learning an instrument

Learning an instrument can be a student’s biggest nightmare, or biggest wish, depending on the reason for wanting to learn. Many music students are pressured by their parents to play an instrument and these students tend to quit as they grow up. On the other hand, some students are so passionate about the instrument they are playing and even practicing it becomes their biggest hobby, and these students usually never give their instrument up.

Am actually learning how to play the piano, which is simply amazing! I feel so lucky that I have found my passion and that my parents are able to afford piano lessons. I started taking classes 2 years ago, and within a period of 4 months, I jumped to a grade 5 RCM, which made me very proud of myself. During those days I had been going through a lot, and practicing had become almost an addiction. I extremely enjoyed it! Started my mornings practicing, ended my nights practicing… Even practiced a lot during school at lunchtime. Unfortunately, when we immigrated to Canada I stopped playing for about 6 months, and started again with a very strict teacher. Even though I was very passionate for the piano, the attitude of the teacher really reduced my enthusiasm and I stopped playing the piano after 4 months again, until 2 weeks ago. This shows how important a teacher’s attitude can be. So my suggestion would be that if a student doesn’t feel comfortable around their teacher, and doesn’t have fun during class, they should change the teacher before they temporarily lose their enthusiasm for the instrument.

While learning an instrument, I believe that the purpose of it should be fun, and not competitively trying to improve. The improvement should come because the student enjoys practicing and not because they are practicing to go up a level. I am not saying that ambition is bad, just saying that being to competitive will take away the fun. I am myself a very competitive person when it comes to everything, and when my competitiveness comes in the way of my learning too much, I lose a little of my ambition to practice because improving takes a lot of time, patience and hard work and it is not something you can expect to happen just like that and when my ambition sees so many weighs to lift, it sometimes gets a little scared. And that is exactly why being to competitive while learning is not good.

One thing I find very interesting about learning an instrument is that after sometime, the student will automatically hear noted in music that they would have never noticed before knowing how to play the instrument. The way students view music will change and that is a great way to get the most out of music.

A very important question to ask is “What is the right instrument for me?”. Well, that is a pretty important question. I think that the answer should come naturally. It should not be something that a person has to do research on and see what kind of instruments are out there. I chose the piano because the house I grew up in had a piano that nobody used and it had always amused me.