6 ms·

It's a tough one. If you discover a passion for something as an adult, you'll often wish your parents had pushed you into it as a kid. I feel this way about mu

• benkwokcy 4y ago
  You don't have to catch up. It doesn't matter how good you are, only if you are enjoying it.
  • irjustin 4y ago
    At the same time, I understand it. There are some things simply out of reach, music you literally cannot play because those wires weren't built when you were younger.
    • darylteo 4y ago
      Exactly... at the elite level activities nowadays are simply out of reach to individuals who were not wholly absorbed in it from a young age. Federer - 8. Nadal/Djokovic - 4. S. Williams - 3. L. Hamilton - 8. M. Schumacher - 6. Verstappen - 4. Phelps - 7. Messi - 4. C. Ronaldo - 7. M. Carlsen - 5. Lebron - 9. S. Curry - 6 Some people are just lucky to be good at the things they love doing. The others have to be content with getting paid for the things that they're good at to pay for the things that they love doing.
      • Jataman606 4y ago
        Jimi Hendrix - 15.
      • ciceryadam 4y ago
        Andre Agassi wrote an autobiography, in it he explains that his father groomed him for tennis greatness by building a tennis court in their backyard, and by sending him to tennis boarding school. Agassi also said that he had always hated tennis during his career.
    • alfiedotwtf 4y ago
      FIFY: music you literally cannot play because you don't have as much time to practice compared to you were younger. The wires you speak of come from time, practice, effort and habit - i.e the original meaning of the term kung fu.
      • ntlk 4y ago
        This is it. There are periods in life when the time for practice is more likely to be freely available. As an adult there are other responsibilities to be negotiated. I’ve made life choices that now result in having uninterrupted blocks of time for learning to play an instrument in my thirties. I’m surprised at how quickly some things become completely effortless when you have time to practice every day.
        • ido 4y ago
          Be that as it may, children have a higher degree of neuroplasticity than adults. You would have probably learned even faster as a child.
          • alfiedotwtf 4y ago
            On the flip side, you're also less likely to be serious wanting to play an instrument, especially classical piano. I started classical piano in primary school all the way up until I turned 17. I thought I played ok... but I started lessons again about 6 months ago (I'm turning 40 this weekend) and now that I actually want to play rather than be forced to play from tiger parents, I can honestly say that I'm learning 100 times faster than when I was a kid. Also, now that I'm actually practicing multiple times a week rather than 30 minutes before my lesson (like when I did when I was a kid), my sight reading is blowing my mind. I could only wish to read like I do today than when I did in my teens.
        • alfiedotwtf 4y ago
          Exactly. I now have an alarm that goes off every day after dinner, where I force myself (no matter how dead tired I am) to sit at the piano and play at least an hour. But like going to the gym, the hard part is getting there. Once I'm playing, I look down at my watch and it's been over 2 hours!
  • strken 4y ago
    This is true in a sense, but the motivation a hobby gives you can depend on your performance. It often feels like there's a skill level where you hit critical mass and feel more rewarded than frustrated. Kids learn fast and are less afraid to fail, so they can start new things more easily.
    • badpun 4y ago
      > This is true in a sense, but the motivation a hobby gives you can depend on your performance. It often feels like there's a skill level where you hit critical mass and feel more rewarded than frustrated. That also depends on your mindset and expectations. I've read a journal of master painter who, after roughly 40 years of doing art, still often felt frustrated and defeated after spending a day at the easel (even though 99% of people who paint would kill to be able to produce a painting he worked on). Also, Polish poet Barańczak once said: "you know what they call a guy who enjoys writing? A hack".
    • abhaynayar 4y ago
      The upside of hitting that critical mass is negligible to the downside of not hitting that critical mass. Even when I get rewarded in things that I took up on my own, I feel that the rewards are quite measly compared to just having a normal healthy mental and physical existence. And these are interests that I took up on my own, I wonder how bad it would be for someone pushed by their parents. But then again, I guess if someone grows up not having anything they're good at, they might blame their parents for not pushing them. Parenting must be very difficult.
  • nlnn 4y ago
    This is true, I am very much enjoying it and not benchmarking my ability against others. My main frustration is around finding people to play with. People my age seem to have been playing since they were kids and have high skill expectations. Amateurs looking for people to play with seem much younger, and in it for the fun of hanging out as much as playing.
• shkkmo 4y ago
  There is a difference between pushing you kids to try things to see what they like, and pushing you kids to keep doing something when they've tried it and told you they want to stop.
  • bobthepanda 4y ago
    also, I feel like piano and violin are the very classic choices for parents picking out music education for their kids, when there is so much more than that to the world of music. I absolutely hated every single moment of piano and never really got good at it. It was a different story once I got selected for a chorus in school.
    • ludston 4y ago
      It's quite possible that the musical skills you picked up from your piano lessons are reason why you had the "talent" to picked for your schools chorus.
      • bobthepanda 4y ago
        Personally, I doubt it. My main struggles with piano were chords, and sightreading. Chords aren't really relevant in vocals since a single person can only sing a single note at any given time, and I wasn't great at sightreading then either. And I find breath control a lot easier than trying to anticipate where my hands need to go (as someone with small hands, a lot of pieces were quite difficult)
      • trbleclef 4y ago
        As HN's only? lurking non-swe choral director I'll just pipe in and say that every school should have a chorus that anyone can be in without being "picked", in addition to any auditioned levels. You can learn to sing the same way you can learn any other subject/skill; that is to say it's entry-level.
        • bobthepanda 4y ago
          To clarify, when I say picked I mean that for whatever reason at my high school every incoming freshman was screened for ability and if they were alright they got in. There was a similar screening process for the ability to swim, though it was actually for selecting those who could not and teaching them.
• satori99 4y ago
  When I was a small child I begged my mother to ask my teacher to excuse me from school music lessons. They were recorder lessons. And 20 children with recorders were giving me a literal headache every week. My teacher excused me but reached out to my mother with the business card of a piano teacher she knew, as she considered music to be important. I am eternally grateful that she did, and that I gave it a try, because even though I was never going to concert-grade piano player, it did mean I had enough music theory knowledge to play around meaningfully with early midi sequencers -- and those skills landed me a professional job in radio production straight out of high-school.
  • Fnoord 4y ago
    I've always been someone who found listening to music important (my father's hobby). 3 kids in elementary school went to 'music school'. I found them posh. I tried once, tagging along, but I guess my ADHD-like symptoms didn't work out (NB: ~quarter of century later I got an autism diagnosis). I also found the teacher very authoritarian. That's the thing: if people were friendly with me they could reach for the stars, but that cold authoritarian method just didn't work with me. Fast forward a few years, I wanted to get into producing music in the 90s, but I could never understand how to connect a synth to something else. I didn't know which cables I needed, what they'd cost, etc. No (IRL) network about music production. Failed. I consider my story being the nemesis of yours. Kudos!
• anonymous_sorry 4y ago
  I had piano and clarinet lessons as a kid, and kept them up into my teens. I rarely practiced except when I was forced to, and I wasn't very good at practising when I did. I don't consider this abuse by the way, I was "forced" to go to school lessons too (not that I'm questioning Wil Wheaton's experience, which sounds quite different). Ultimately I found the repetition required in practising extremely boring, and I didn't have enough inner drive to get better. There's probably (a lack of) natural aptitude involved too, although this is hard to disentangle from motivation - a negative feedback loop maybe. When I hear an good musician now, I inevitably wish I'd tried harder and could do what they do. If I hadn't had lessons, perhaps I'd blame my folks for the fact that I can't play jazz. But I was given every opportunity, had lessons for years, and didn't prioritise it. I just accept that it wasn't for me. My parents also encouraged me to join a choir, and whilst I tended to daydream in choir practice, I kept that up into adulthood and it's had a major impact on my life.
  • prirun 4y ago
    > When I hear an good musician now, I inevitably wish I'd tried harder and could do what they do. I listen to good piano performances on YT and wish I was as good. But then I think about how much time I have spent being good with computers and realize that I could not have spent that much time on piano too. They probably spent as much time over their life pecking on a piano as I have pecking on a computer. There's only so much time in a day!
  • apohn 4y ago
    > But I was given every opportunity, had lessons for years, and didn't prioritise it. I just accept that it wasn't for me. I have a similar story to yours, just with clarinet and flute. Our school (outside the USA) had mandatory lessons and practice, so there was some degree of being forced to do it. I took some piano lessons as an adult and enjoyed it. My piano teacher told me something that really stuck with me. "People who write Adult piano books know the learner isn't going to become a professional classical musician. So they just teach you to play some fun songs and you can enjoy it. Children's music education makes kids suffer under the assumption that they are might one day take it very seriously and become classical musicians. So you perform scales endlessly, have to learn perfect form, learn instruments you don't want to learn because you need to learn the clarinet before you can learn the Sax, learn a bunch of boring classical music when you are excited by other stuff on the radio, practice like crazy for exams, etc. It completely kills their interest in music."