Put your hands together and give a big round of applause for today’s guest blogger, Walt Ribeiro. Walt’s post entitled “Patience is the Key” discusses one of the most frustrating parts about learning an instrument and new tab. For more about Walt, please read his biography at the end of this post.

Patience is the Key

Every great painter had it. Every great inventor had it. Eddie Van Halen, Steve Vai, Metallica, Jimmy Paige, and even Green Day had it.

Patience.

There’s nothing more important that you can acquire. I remember having started guitar at 16 years old, and all I wanted was to learn my chords, songs, drills, and play shows immediately. But I quickly learned it would take work, and over time I eventually grew to be a successful, patient, confident, and appreciative musician. I worked hard, did it every day, knowing that if I wanted something I just had to work for it.

The fact that you’re reading this blog right now means that you have a level of dedication, and that already means you have an advantage over others. But this blog post isn’t simply about music, its about everything. Be patient in everything you do. Be patient when stuck in traffic, or when trying to solve a problem, or trying to learn your guitar chords.

You know all the MX Tabs you get frustrated over? Well, understand that if it was so easy everyone would be good at it. You can’t give up – No, you’re better than that. Just be patient, and you’ll get it. Understand that short term profits create long term losses. The practicalities of increasing one’s skills slowly and steadily will make you a much better musician in the long run.

By doing things slowly and steadily you’ll actually become better, faster. So you may be asking yourself “How is that possible?” Well, if you rush into learning a song then you may have ‘learned it quickly’ within a week, but you never ‘mastered’ it. So 2 months down the road you may have to break a bad habit and re-learn that one riff which you didn’t pay much attention to. On the contrary, if you took your time, then you would have mastered the song, its techniques, and more within 3 or 4 weeks.

It took you nearly 5 years to learn how to speak your native language, so why must you rush learning the musical language?

This stuff happens in everything, not just music. Start-up businesses take time, learning a language takes time, and even becoming a decent basketball player takes time.

I know because I’ve been there – I wanted to play faster, longer, and louder than the next guy or girl, but it’s about the long-haul. I don’t know where many of them are. Some got burnt out, while others never learned the proper technique and therefore don’t get many gigs/jobs. Even if you do it for fun, you should still be patient and learn your passion correctly. Truth is, I took the long road and worked hard to get where I’m at. So as you continue to use MX Tabs in order to grow your musical horizons, just understand that you’ll get there, it just takes work, passion, and patience.

Author Bio for Walt Ribeiro

Walt Ribeiro, AKA ‘The Internet’s Music Teacher’, shares his lessons, passion, and knowledge of Music Technology, Guitar, Piano, News, Interviews, and more every day at his website. He has written full songs with his community, as well as leveraged them together to create neat experiments in music and technology, and helps every student in the world with their music questions.