Learning Guitar From A Friend or Family Member | Los Angeles or Skype Guitar Lessons with Vreny

How Saving Money On Guitar Lessons Learning with Dad Is Usually A Costly Mistake

People occasionally contact me for lessons, but then decide for economic reasons that they will first learn for a while from a friend or family member who plays a bit of guitar.

While I can understand that paying $60 a lesson is quite hefty for many people, one actually saves money in the long run by paying more now.

I still remember how as a kid, I tried to learn from my dad.

In hindsight: part of the reasons why I gave up on learning the accordion and later drums with my dad, is probably that we spent more time arguing and dad getting impatient with me than was advisable for my progress or my musical joy.

Parents, siblings, or family members, in general, are prob, not the best equipped or trained to give you the most enriching, most effective musical learning experience.

There are many reasons for that.

The emotional connection between family members obscures the learning experience and slows down musical growth. (More miscommunications, lesser focus, …)
Higher inclination to take criticism as personal. (Which leads to energy-draining and time-wasting discussions)
People are usually by nature much less patient with family members than with strangers
A family member is usually not adept or trained in the art of teaching.
One subconsciously is more committed to learning when having lessons with a professional instructor than with a family member.
They are more prone to teaching you bad habits. (When you start taking “real” lessons: would you rather work with your teacher on new exciting things, or spend tons of time having to fix bad habits in your playing?)
A family member can not motivate or even push you the same way a teacher is capable of.
Etc.

Conclusion:

A great deal of your musical ability, progress, time, and even musical joy gets wasted in the process.

Click HERE to read “The High Cost of Getting “Free” Guitar Lessons from Your Dad”. Many students who planned to learn from a friend or member of their family first, change their mind after reading this. 🙂

Time: Our Most Valuable Asset

When you consider that our most valuable asset, really is our time: you probably want to experience as much life, fun, joy, adventure, and personal self-development as possible in the very limited time we all have on this planet.

Consider how much more time you could have left to fill up with awesome adventures and life experiences, or with ways to make tons of extra money if it did not get wasted on music lessons with an inexperienced family member who takes 5 times as long to teach you something than it takes a guitar teacher!

To put things in perspective: if you could learn 10 year’s worth of theory, chords, techniques, tricks, scales, rhythms, abilities & skills, songs, and musicianship in 2-3 year’s time, would you do it? Or do you think spending a full 10 years on something you could get done in 3, saves you bucks?

Well think again: you could use the 7 years you save to travel more, live more, party more, earn more money, find more different ways to earn more money, find more different ways to connect with more people, build your family life, have more friends, smell the flowers, learn more languages, learn how to play chess, play soccer, sleep in, …

There is so much more you get out of life and you progress so much more quickly with a trained guitar teacher than you can learn from a friend or a parent.

Wasn’t Mozart Taught Music By His Dad?

One might think: “Well how about Mozart then who was taught by his dad? clearly there must be exceptions?”

Not quite!

Leopold Mozart was a successful, high-quality music pedagogue who had authored a treatise on violin playing.
Yes… he was a music teacher.

Do you think we would ever have heard of Mozart if his dad knew 23 chords and 30 songs?
Highly unlikely!

In Conclusion:

Studying with a friend or someone in your family who knows a couple of chords and songs, is hardly going to bring out the Mozart in you.
On the contrary: for reasons explained above… it prob will do exactly the opposite to your musical desire and abilities.

Are there exceptions?
I’m sure if you look long and hard enough that you will always find an exception somewhere.
But why would you want to spend time on this when you could be having fun playing guitar right now? 🙂

Conclusion

Hit me up anytime at vreny@zotzinmusic.com if you have any questions, or if you would like to book a lesson.

These free lessons are cool, but you will never experience the progress, joy, and results that my students experience in lessons when you’re learning by yourself from blogs and videos.

That is why people take lessons: way better results and progress, much more complete information, exposed to way more creative ideas than you can get from a blog or YouTube video.
There is only so much that self-study can accomplish.

If you want to see amazing results and progress in your guitar playing, buy your first lesson here and get started ASAP.