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Kids and music lessons: why do many promising players quit early?

thewalrus.ca

11–20 of 260 posts

Re: Kids and music lessons: why do many promising players quit early?

#11
I was all set to quit growing up until I discovered gamemusicthemes.com. I had a blast playing my favorite video game music and coercing my piano teacher to play some of the more difficult stuff. Even now, I have a binder of sheet music from that site that I play from time to time.

My parents have never heard of the site even to this day. If you ask them, I'm just naturally hard-working and passionate.

Re: Kids and music lessons: why do many promising players quit early?

#13

As someone who runs a music label, ans has been doing this since 1999, it's not worth it to invest heavily into music. The people that make money in the industry, aren't the people that play the instruments. It's a long gone dream of just making music that has turned into payola, social media corruption, fake audiences, and negative things like drug abuse, lip syncing, fraud, suicide and ghost writers. Don't wish it…

The more I practice, the more enjoyment I get out of playing. TBH, it never occurred to me to seek financial gain from it.

Re: Kids and music lessons: why do many promising players quit early?

#14
I've been teaching beginning guitar lessons for about seven years. Guitar is a little different in that, outside of classical guitar, there's very little traditional pedagogy, but from experience I think these things are generally true about most instruments.

1. When you start learning you sound terrible... for a long time. It's very difficult to stay motivated when you can hear your problems.

2. It's very difficult to judge your own progress. I've started recording short videos during lessons which I can show to students weeks or months later when they're expressing frustration with their progress.

3. You have to enjoy practicing, since you have to pick up the instrument most days to maintain the dexterity, callouses, etc. It's very easy for a pushy parent to beat the joy out of practicing.

4. You have to understand the difference between playing that song you can play great, and practicing something you suck at so you improve. It's very easy to stagnate if you only play.

Really it boils down to, you're going to suck for a while, then you're going to think you suck even when you don't, and you have to keep enjoying the process even when you think you suck.

/edit formatting

Re: Kids and music lessons: why do many promising players quit early?

#15

As someone who runs a music label, ans has been doing this since 1999, it's not worth it to invest heavily into music. The people that make money in the industry, aren't the people that play the instruments. It's a long gone dream of just making music that has turned into payola, social media corruption, fake audiences, and negative things like drug abuse, lip syncing, fraud, suicide and ghost writers. Don't wish it…

It depends on what genre you're going in to as well. Classical and jazz musicians usually have a very different experience than what you describe. Although there's one thing in common among them all -- it's difficult to make good money.

They may not get as rich as pop stars -but they suffer lots of substance abuse (though many themselves likely think they are enjoying the substance abuse).

Re: Kids and music lessons: why do many promising players quit early?

#16
post #13

As someone who runs a music label, ans has been doing this since 1999, it's not worth it to invest heavily into music. The people that make money in the industry, aren't the people that play the instruments. It's a long gone dream of just making music that has turned into payola, social media corruption, fake audiences, and negative things like drug abuse, lip syncing, fraud, suicide and ghost writers. Don't wish it…

The more I practice, the more enjoyment I get out of playing. TBH, it never occurred to me to seek financial gain from it.

Are you a kid, though?

Re: Kids and music lessons: why do many promising players quit early?

#17

I've been teaching beginning guitar lessons for about seven years. Guitar is a little different in that, outside of classical guitar, there's very little traditional pedagogy, but from experience I think these things are generally true about most instruments. 1. When you start learning you sound terrible... for a long time. It's very difficult to stay motivated when you can hear your problems. 2. It's very difficult…

Restating a saying I heard: "you have a thousand bad notes in you, get rid of them as soon as possible"

Re: Kids and music lessons: why do many promising players quit early?

#18
I was a classically trained Oboist as a child and I had some excellent teachers, but they only taught me to play and sight read pieces with technical perfection. Needless to say this was not fun and so I quit halfway through highschool. I ended up picking up the electric bass a couple years later and enjoyed it because there were no expectations and I could just learn and play on my own. As a kid lessons can just feel like a chore/school.

Re: Kids and music lessons: why do many promising players quit early?

#19

As someone who runs a music label, ans has been doing this since 1999, it's not worth it to invest heavily into music. The people that make money in the industry, aren't the people that play the instruments. It's a long gone dream of just making music that has turned into payola, social media corruption, fake audiences, and negative things like drug abuse, lip syncing, fraud, suicide and ghost writers. Don't wish it…

Are session musicians still a thing?

I would guess that the way music is recorded and produced now, session musicians are much less in demand, but I really don't know. Just seems that the ability to sit down and sight read a part and play it perfectly through in one or two takes is not really needed anymore, when songs are pieced together almost note by note in a computer/DAW.

"Before Pro Tools, there were pros"

Re: Kids and music lessons: why do many promising players quit early?

#20

I've been teaching beginning guitar lessons for about seven years. Guitar is a little different in that, outside of classical guitar, there's very little traditional pedagogy, but from experience I think these things are generally true about most instruments. 1. When you start learning you sound terrible... for a long time. It's very difficult to stay motivated when you can hear your problems. 2. It's very difficult…

I can relate a lot to what you said.

I practice piano (jazz improvisation), and I have mix of love and hate with practicing.

You basically spent lots of energy for little to no improvement at all lol, playing scales, arpeggios, etc.

And if you stay like 1 month without practicing you waste a lot of time trying to go back where you stopped.

It's like trying to go up an escalator that's going down, if you stop you come back to point 0.

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