Unrealistic and realistic goals in music education.

During one of our consultations, a girl wanted me to teach her an algorithm for discovering and playing the chords of any song. I suggested learning at least one and using it as a model for learning other songs. But for some reason, she compared playing chords on the guitar to sight-reading. I tried to politely explain that they were completely different things. After all, sight-reading requires the ability to identify pitches with your inner ear, while playing chords requires knowing them. But she stood her ground. We said goodbye because neither she nor I could understand each other.

Let me remind you for a second that there are more songs in the world than people, and that’s a number with a lot of zeros (plus those written by unknown geniuses). If you’re a true polyglot, then take more. They’re not decreasing. On the contrary, more and more new creations appear every day.

To learn a song on the guitar, for example, you need, at a minimum, to be able to play it. Guitar singing is the next level after the other three (I tell you which levels these are in my individual training).

So, even if you know how to play SONGS on guitar, learning ONE takes a month at first. Then 2-3 weeks, then 1 week, then 2-3 days, 1 day, and at the highest level, a song will take about an hour (15 minutes is enough for me with a consistent algorithm).

Attention, question?

How long does it take to learn ANY SONG on guitar?

???

Let’s do the math.

Let’s take the smallest number of songs: 1,000,000
1,000,000 x 15 minutes, which equals 15,000,000 minutes. 15,000,000 minutes is 250,000 hours
250,000 hours is 10,416 days
10,416 days is 347 months
347 months is 28 years

So 15,000,000 minutes is 28 years.

When you learn that many songs, you’ll need to think about retirement, not your career.

I know I’m joking, but people don’t seem to grasp the abstract nature of thinking.

When someone has such an illusory goal, it’s better not to try to explain it; it’s easier to just hang up.

Now let’s set a more realistic goal and see if it’s possible to learn more than 100 songs in a year.

Let’s take 100 songs, 100 x 15 minutes, which equals 1,500 minutes.
1,500 minutes is 62 hours. Just 62 hours a year!!!
62 hours is 2.5 days. 2.5 DAYS!!!, that’s a short TV series!
When there are 8,760 hours and 365 days in a year, that’s only 14% of the time (a paltry percentage), and you know 100 songs. You KNOW them, not just sing them for a day and forget about them. Even if you devote a whole day to a song, in just six months you can confidently add another ten.

Please set realistic goals, and leave the unrealistic ones to wizards and fairies.