One of the things that really test NLP experts is learning to combine a depth of knowledge with a skill in a real time environment. Playing a musical instrument is exactly one of these environments.

To play the guitar you need to be able to put your fingers in the right places at the right time. But before you have got to that point you need to be able to translate the dots and lines on a sheet of music to those positions on the guitar. Or, if you are improvising listen to what the rest of your band are doing and translate that to the most appropriate places to put your fingers on the guitar…all in real time with no opportunity to pause for thought.

Learning music is traditionally thought of as complex. Often people think you have to have ‘talent’ to be able to play guitar well. Music notation and theory has a mystique that even music graduates find confusing. Often people approaching music already have a preconceived notion of their ability…and most of the time it is not a good notion. This is an ideal environment to apply NLP Techniques.

By breaking down the unhelpful beliefs and installing empowering ones you can start to build momentum making the learning of music very simple. One of the best applications of Accelerated Learning in music is Duncan Lorien’s Understanding of Music Seminar. Duncan takes the time to increase people’s understanding of the basic components of music and how anyone can apply them. He does this deliberately to break those old, unhelpful beliefs.

One area where musicians don’t always help themselves is how they practice. Practice makes perfect is a well known saying, but the reality is only PERFECT PRACTICE make perfect. Taking the time and effort to get great practice routines that stretch you enough to create a challenge but are easier enough to be able to do is time well spent.

An example might be a guitarist who is learning a new piece of music and stumbles over a particular phrase in the middle of the piece. A typical response would be for that guitarist to criticise themselves for not being able to play that bit and then continue practicing that little part, out of context of the rest of the piece until then can play it perfectly. Then they have problems putting it back in context with the rest of the piece they were learning to play..

A more sophisticated response might be to practice the problem part along with the bit before and the bit after so that your learning in context of the overall section of that piece of music. A true NLP Accelerated Learning response would be to celebrate the fact you have found a development area for your fingers and turn the whole issue in to a series of exercises for finger development. You could take the bit that you find challenging and practice it all over the fret board in different keys, at different speeds and build more playing flexibility through a new exercise you have just developed.

On the Understanding of Music Seminar you get 100 ten minute guitar lessons that have been specifically designed to stretch every area of your playing but still be achievable. The brilliance of this is it only tasks ten minutes a day to dramatically improve you ability if you know what and how to practice. A good NLP Training Course will show you all the right accelerated learning techniques to be able to devise this approach for any context. Seeing a complex application and having a skilled tutor such as Duncan Lorien showing you how to apply these techniques is a great way to not only learn to play guitar but also how to learn.

By breaking down unhelpful beliefs and creating more productive practice routines are just two of the factors involved in accelerating the learning of any new skill. By investing in good NLP Training you can really get to understand how best to learn any new skill.

Duncan brings his accelerated learning guitar lessons Glasgow & Piano lessons Edinburgh to the UK this summer.