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

Learning to sing and strum chords at the same time was a transformative experience for me and incredible bang-for-buck compared to learning piano, because that immediately unlocks being able to perform most pop songs with chords. Someone above posted a great collection of pop songs written for ukulele that I can't wait to try playing tomorrow: https://sanjoseukeclub.org/song_book.html

For example: concerts. Music delivered in concerts is technically in every way worse then recorded. People are going to concerts to listen to music that is technically worse in every way. What this tells me and should tell you is that most people aren't only liking the music. There's a bunch of stuff around the music that they like, and the music itself is but one factor.

Additionally all music has very very common themes. If lyrics are involved the, lyrics tend to be revolved around Love or Power or Tragedy. This pattern of common themes indicates that music is biased biologically. It's used for very specific purposes in human biology, it is not some universal art form like say painting.

Another thing is that lyrics are horrible at conveying a point. Written text or normal speech is better yet tons of people are irrationally totally into lyrics that are "deep". Try writing a song about the point I'm conveying here and you'll see that it misses the point of music. The point of music is definitely not in communicating deep or complex messages. The point is to convey stupidly simple messages. Literally. All lyrics/poetry convey significantly more simple and stupider messages then plain text. You can't argue with this logically.

My theory is this. Music in human biology is for several things:

  -It's used as a mating call. (love songs)
  -It's used to promote group closeness and confidence (concerts)
  -It's used as a group mourning thing (singing at a funeral)
  -It's used to project power (Rock songs Rap songs)

There is a rather small group though that does appreciate music for it's intrinsic properties: The mathematicians (I'm not part of this group). The people who like the music purely because of the patterns. Some people like stuff like fugues. When I listened to Bachs fugue after reading GEB, it sounded like pure crap to my ears, and it didn't trigger any associated emotions with the bullet points I made above. I think these people are biologically wired differently. Most people won't like what they like... Either way, typically this group is into music that is closer to or is classical music.

But still the group above sometimes still goes to live performance symphonies and stuff like that, which tells me again that it's not purely the music they are liking.

For other uses, the density is the thing and it can't be replaced by anything. Sheet music has syntax and structure in a way that makes it possible to learn to read it by chunks, unlike let's say piano roll.

Sure, you can play more or less the same things on both instruments, and anybody who plays electrical will be able to do something on an acoustic guitar and vice versa. But anybody who plays acoustic guitar will also be able to do something on a lute, a mandolin or heck even on a double bass. You will also be able to use your guitar to sound like an organ, a flute, or a synthesizer, with sufficient effect pedals.

For me what makes an instrument is the music it lends itself easily. Give a five year old who never played before an acoustic guitar with fresh strings and an electric guitar plugged into an amp and they will do completely different things with it, because the instruments lend itself to different things. Ironically an electric guitar can be much more direct, because you will hear every slight tiny movement of your fingers amplified. An acoustic guitar (with fresh strings) can be extremely articulate, but you have to put in more energy to produce these sounds.

I certainly see the amplifier as part of the instrument with the electrical guitar, and that alone makes a ton of difference between the two.

That environment was horribly discouraging and, in retrospect, weirdly competitive. I dropped the piano for 5 years almost completely. Still, like a lot of my friends from that program, I came back to piano as a hobby, and I really appreciate the education I got.

I also think it made me a better person in a lot of ways.