Educate yourself! No matter what level you are at today, you can be and should be learning more. If you are currently studying with a teacher or enrolled in a music program at a high school, college or university, you are on the right track. If you aren’t doing this (or if you feel that your current teacher is not helping you enough in reaching your goals) I strongly recommend looking for a new teacher.

I have written an article on this exact topic titled: Choosing a Teacher. I can’t stress enough how important it is to find the teacher that is right for you! Your teacher (or Lessons DVD) should always be Goal Orientated. If its not look for another teacher or school to study with! You don’t need a teacher to simply give you information or things to practice – you can get those things anywhere, what you need is a teacher who knows what your goals are, Cares about helping you reach your goals, and knows how to help you reach your goals.

The greatest source of inspiration has been my own personal experiences in life and within myself. The desire to express that was (and still is) a constant burning desire and powerful force that thrusts my desire to improve forward. Know what truly inspires you, seek it out, surround yourself with it and soak and soak there.

If self expression is the pinnacle of art (or if you at least agree it is very important) and if you desire (and attempt) to express yourself in art (music), you are an artist. In the past, I would not have used the label “Artist” to describe anyone that was not already great at creating genuine art. I typically reserved the words, art, artist and musician for only the highest levels of excellence. But as a teacher of music composition, songwriting, and self expression I have changed my use of these terms for the benefit of all students.

Skills like improvisation, songwriting and playing with a guitar pick or not going to be high on his list of skills to acquire. This is because classical guitarists generally don’t do those things – and don’t need to to be great at what they do. These players are great players in their own ways and they have spent many years developing their skills. Learning everything about guitar playing would have taken away precious practice time from the things they needed to focus on to reach their goals.

Absolutely spend a good amount of time in practicing reversing that habit. Practice in a new way, where you make sure you do what you weren’t doing before. Analyze the essence of that bad habit, extract it from it’s musical context, and perhaps make up “auxillary exercises” based on the essence of it. Use all the practice techniques that I teach to effectively begin this process of reversal.

To be GREAT means I have to be BETTER than everybody else. We already touched on this one above, but it is worth mentioning again here. What matters is reaching YOUR goals, not someone else’s goals. Who cares if you are or are not better than someone else? This is not the olympics. Music is the art of expression (or for some people, the science of entertainment).

For instance, the process may go like this: I notice I have trouble with a fast scale passage in a piece I am playing. I notice a particular note starts disappearing when I reach a certain speed. The note is being missed. I notice the finger responsible for playing that note is the third finger. It is not getting to the note because it is going up in the air in reaction to the second finger being used right before it in that particular scale passage. In other words, it is tensing in reaction to the movement of it’s neighboring finger, and I have not been paying attention to it. I realize this is a bad habit that pervades my playing, a third finger that tenses up in reaction to the use of the second finger.

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