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

I would suppose that the top-tier symphonies pay pretty well -- but making the cut there is probably the equivalent of a basketball player making the NBA.

It’s about

- matching content to interests. I took classical guitar, my guitar teacher realized I was really into blues (way into very capable rock guitar), so I learned classical for the theory and enjoyment of pieces e2e, and blues for a significantly growing interest as a “rock kid.” The more solid electric guitar I learned, the more I realized the classical background was making me good, and it played back and forth like that and I took music lessons until I went to college.

- I think bands are a big part of why kids stick with music. The happiest times in my life growing up were the 2 hr jams after school. Option to find bar bands is what keeps me playing as an adult as well. I don’t know if high school bands are still out there with all the tech now? Def curious.

It all paid off - I landed in tech somewhat bc DS&A and OOD == music scales and chord progressions, programming == creativity with known safe bounds like like in music. And I can find bands to play with until I’m old.

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> Music lessons—like many activities taken up during our youth—rest heavily on the student–teacher–parent triad. “Some teachers find it’s their job to make students get better,” Pappas says. “But what a teacher really needs to do is give their students the tools to make themselves better.”

The absolute critical thing for learning, the thing a teach and/or parent must do to make a child successful, is not just giving tools. You have to inspire a child to love music. You have to plant in them the seed of desire to create beautiful sound. And you have to make it fun to do. Otherwise it is just another boring chore, with no clear internalized goal.

When we wanted our children to learn to play an instrument, we spent months playing Bach and Mozzart for them, and explaining what was going on in the music. We played our instruments around them, and let them investigate them. Eventually they started asking us how they could make their own music, and that's when we began lessons.

"If you want to build a ship, don’t drum up the men and women to gather wood, divide the work, and give orders. Instead, teach them to yearn for the vast and endless sea."

I quit because I hated the music I was asked to play. When I was 5, I started piano with an amazing teacher (a local college professor) and made serious progress, both in skills and learning things like chord theory over the next four years. He would write out every piece I was to learn by hand in my book when I was getting started

I moved and the teacher my parents found that I could walk to only selected pieces that I didn't like which were technically difficult, but didn't sound good to me even after I learned them. She had to figure out what level I was and go through boring books of theory that moved way too slowly. I only much later found out you could buy sheet music of artists I actually liked.

I quit lessons and started composing instead, moving that to the computer when I got an Amiga 1000.