9 ms·

My mom made me and both of my brothers take 9 years of piano lessons. Today, not one of us plays - I don't think any of us even has a keyboard in our houses. T

My mom made me and both of my brothers take 9 years of piano lessons. Today, not one of us plays - I don't think any of us even has a keyboard in our houses. The reason for this is simply that we were never allowed to play the kind of music we liked. Which was, of course, rock. Or blues, or country. Or, really, anything with a beat. Nope; it was all classical all the time. And piano lessons were the only time we were ever exposed to classical music otherwise, so we had no opportunity to learn to like it; it was just a source of frustration and boredom. We weren't even allowed to pick a different instrument; it had to be piano. Because mom wanted us to be able to play the organ in church. That nine years of lessons was the single biggest waste of time in my entire life, and I work for the government. In order for a child to learn anything on their own, which is the way a musician has to learn, really, they have to be incentivized. They have to like what they're doing, at least some of the time. The product has to be meaningful. And in music, like so much else in education, whether the child is actually engaged with the process is just never considered.

8f2ab37a-ed6c 4y ago
I wonder why parents do this. Parental cargo cutting? Cheap baby sitting?
- kibibyte 4y ago
  Parental cargo culting, probably. "It makes you smarter" (tenuous, as hinted in article), "all the other parents are doing it to their children"/"I want my child to be better than theirs" (this can be very cultural), "it looks good on your college applications" (this becomes a reason later on, and is also very tenuous), etc.
- ycombobreaker 4y ago
  Children's interests can be fickle. Learning a skill takes a serious investment of time, and a child left totally to their own devices could end up bailing on a lot of interests prematurely, because they never get over the initial hump. This is a natural part of parenting, to teach your children about investment of effort. The horror cases like GP's "9 years" are essentially a miscalibration, failing to recognize a suitable stopping point. "Cheap babysitting" is not it. Lessons are short and more expensive than childcare. Enforcement of practice time is a hassle (and a balancing act!)
- jbirer 4y ago
  Status seeking behavior and Narcissism. They are more concerned over their children making them look good to other parents / people than their kid enjoying themselves.
hugs_vs_toph 4y ago
Yup, same with sports. "You're gonna thank me later" they said. "You're gonna understand when you grow up" they said. NOPE
- RHSman2 4y ago
  [flagged]
  - hugs_vs_toph 4y ago
    [flagged]
maroonblazer 4y ago
I was forced to take classical piano for 6 years starting at age 8. Hated it. Begged my parents to let me quit. They wouldn't. Then we moved across the country and they said "Ok, you can quit piano." In my new town I struck up a conversation on the school bus with two kids, one played bass and the other played drums. Said they would get together in the drummer's basement and "jam". "What's this 'jamming' you speak of?" I asked. They invited me over and we played the one jazz-ish/blues tune I knew. I was hooked. Ran home and begged my parents to let me start lessons again, but this time rock/jazz. Since then I picked up guitar, bass, drums, a little alto sax, and continued studying piano. 40+ years later playing/making music is a huge part of my personal life. I feel incredibly lucky that my folks didn't let me quit and that I met those two friends.
- WA 4y ago
  I don’t understand the conclusion. Why are you glad that your parents forced you for 6 years, if this had basically nothing to do with your later-found joy for music? Couldn’t the same invitation have happened if you just tried piano for a couple months and remembered your one jazz tune?
  - bombela 4y ago
    The conclusion is forcing did nothing happy. But when wanted you won't stop.
  - ycombobreaker 4y ago
    A couple of months of weekly piano instruction is simply not enough exposure for most young students to even have "one jazz tune" under their belt. It's likely that the jam session invitation was predicated upon some minimum skill level with the instrument--something that 6 years of even begrudging practice provided.
  - amachefe 4y ago
    Maybe because kids don't really know what they wanted. If he didn't play the first 6years, he won't be able to enjoy "jamming" with friends
loeg 4y ago
> And piano lessons were the only time we were ever exposed to classical music otherwise, so we had no opportunity to learn to like it; it was just a source of frustration and boredom. To be fair, additional exposure may not have helped! I played several instruments as a kid / young adult, almost all of it classical or adjacent (old European music). My parents took us to the symphony. It just isn't what I like to listen to and wasn't motivating enough to keep my interested as a teen. After fifteen years without making music at all, I've started picking up instruments again in the last two years. I've been playing (some) classical music, not because I like it, but because there's a lot of it for the instruments I've chosen and it's fun to play.
westoncb 4y ago
Similar here. I really wanted to play guitar and had wanted to for years, but 1) there was already a keyboard in the house 2) I think my dad thought it would be better to learn principles via piano first—so, I took the piano lessons, absolutely hated 'em, quit after like 6mo and never went back.
polishdude20 4y ago
I started playing guitar at around age 15 just by myself. I met a friend in my chemistry class who taught me about the Beatles. I got super obsessed with them and really wanted to play their songs. Got a guitar and never thought twice about what I should play. It was always , all Beatles all the time. I loved it. I was hooked. That taught me the basic chords, barre chords, some soloing etc. Lots of great songs from beginner to advanced. Then one day, my cousin bought me a discography CD pack of Rush CDs. I heard Fly By Night and I knew I HAD to learn to play it. That resulted in about a five year streak of obsessive Rush disorder. I was again, hooked. Now on more advanced music. I wanted to learn all the songs. I even formed a little tribute band with a few other people. Now, I have a classical guitar sitting next to the couch and I sometimes come and sit and just noodle around. Just enjoy the sounds, the feel of the strings against my fingers, the satisfaction of discovering an assembly of notes to play that sound special. It's been about 15 years now. Not once did I think I needed to learn something on the guitar because somebody told me I had to. I always learned something in pursuit of learning the next song.
quartesixte 4y ago
As an example of an opposite situation that proves your point: I started classical music lessons very early as a kid. I was one of those weird kids that ended up liking classical music anyways, but I also had a deep love for movie soundtracks. My parents encouraged me to play anything I liked. Which I did -- movie soundtracks. They'd go around bragging to other parents how their little kid learned these soundtracks by ear too. I still play to this day, and have branched out into many different genres. Them being supportive for the idea that this is an expression of myself, and praising my efforts, really cemented playing musical instruments as a core part of my identity. Not a parent yet, but I hope I can pass along this chain of positivity to my own in the future.
Hayvok 4y ago
Same story here with piano lessons - I wanted to write my own music! I would come up with interesting sounds when practicing, and wanted to learn how to develop those further. Nope! Class time rolled around and it was forty five minutes of posture posture posture and finger movements. Mrs. Bell didn’t care about the interesting music I had created, she just wanted me to tick off silly boxes and follow “the plan”. I’ve barely touched a piano since.
- Slow_Hand 4y ago
  Oof. I'm so sorry to hear that. The sounds you discovered on your own were the start of your own personal vocabulary. That's you following your ear and following the pleasure of the sound itself. That's the most important part. The technique is important, but it's often for nothing if it's not in support of a distinct musical voice.
- hrns 4y ago
  Exactly my experience in music school. I've switched to guitar on my own initiative, started jamming, playing in bands, composing my own music with friends - and it was such fun. Never touched piano since then. Reading through other comments here makes me think that as humans we suck at teaching music to children.
- julian_t 4y ago
  Same for me - 8 years of piano with regular exams, gave it up in my teens because I didn't want to play just classical stuff, and all that practicing was just plain boring. Haven't touched a keyboard since (and have carefully forgotten all that music theory). I did pick up an old classical guitar at a girlfriend's house and started on Simon and Garfunkel and Beatles, and have been playing guitar (and bass, mandolin, slide guitar and lap steel) for the past 45 years, so the music was there! Having brought up 3 kids, it is sometimes hard to know when to encourage them to push through on something and when to let it die.
hippari2 4y ago
yeah and when those kids do manage to practice, i see they often turns into highly technical, but less musically developed players.
irrational 4y ago
It is interesting how people have similar experiences, but different outcomes. I have a brother who owns about 12 different guitars, a keyboard, and other instruments. He spends a ton of time making his own music and putting it on Spotify. But he will tell you that the most important thing in his musical career was learning to play classical music on the piano as a child because it taught him music theory and techniques that have made him a better musician than he would be otherwise.
- pclmulqdq 4y ago
  I don't think it's uncommon to have this experience around forced classical music lessons. I did a really serious conservatory prep program as a child, "strongly encouraged" by my parents. This included formal theory classes, lessons, seminars, competitions, and a lot of recitals. 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.
Simon_O_Rourke 4y ago
I was put on more or less the same kind of lesson program for much of the same reasons - my mom wanted the social kudos attached with kids performing at piano recitals, which is something that myself and my siblings had nothing but scorn for. Same net result as yourself, none of us continued with our music studies once we were old enough to make our own decisions. In fact, a lot of the social climbing associated with how it all started is something we've rebelled against the most.
sornaensis 4y ago
As a kid (7-8) I was forced to play acoustic guitar for several years. I didnt like any of the music (or much music at all) that I played, and ended up quitting. Later on when I discovered rock and metal music I asked my parents for an electric guitar but they refused, saying I had to play the acoustic I had first and then I could ‘progress’ to electric. I was easily discouraged then so I gave up the idea. I didnt end up getting an electric guitar and starting to play music seriously until after university when I had a job and could afford it easily myself. Now I play almost every day, learning new things, writing my own little pieces, and jamming with friends. Music is now one of the most fulfilling things in my life, and I believe one of my biggest regrets will be waiting so long to get started after I knew what I wanted!
- midoridensha 4y ago
  Electric and acoustic guitars are really two very different instruments; a bit like comparing trombones with trumpets. The way you hold and play the basic notes is fairly similar, but the techniques are very different for electric because of the amplification and distortion, and of course the sound is extremely different.
  - dukky 4y ago
    I'd agree with this distinction between classical (nylon stringed acoustic) and electric guitar, but steel stringed acoustic plays very similar to electric. I agree that people tend to play different things on them but if you're playing both with a pick you're doing the same techniques on both.
    - beardedetim 4y ago
      The two are so similar, bands do acoustic sets all the time! I learned to play a lot of Nirvana via their MTV or VH1 or whatever those acoustic concerts were hosted on since I only had a Goya acoustic
  - tinco 4y ago
    No way, I just googled trumpet and trombone, and those are different instruments. Electric guitar and classical guitar are just different flavors of the same instrument. Most guitarists play both, if they've ever touched a classical guitar. Playing electric is both easier and less loud, if you don't plug in the amplifier, so they're a lot more suitable for kids than classical guitars. The association that parents have that electric guitars are for adults and acoustic for kids is insane. In my experience good electric guitars are also cheaper than good acoustic, but I have to admit I haven't tried to buy a classical guitar in 20 years. Spring on a name brand second hand electric guitar for your kids you won't regret it. Electric guitars are basically inpossible to damage, and a second hand guitar will retain its value so you'll get those $500-800 bucks back when it turns out your kid wants to do something else. Higher quality guitars have lower action and more comfortable necks which makes them easier to play rewarding your kids more for their efforts.
erfgh 4y ago
Sorry to be an ass but it doesn't sound to me like you had any talent in music.
- GlenTheMachine 4y ago
  <shrug> I don't know whether I did or not. I hated the process so much that I never had enough incentive to find out.
worldsavior 4y ago
So why don't you play rock blues or whatever now? Is it because of trauma?
- GlenTheMachine 4y ago
  It's because I never got good enough at piano to play anything for fun. I hated lessons and I hated practicing. That's why the time was so wasted; I was so I invested in the entire enterprise that I learned as little as possible. Bear in mind that this started when I was 8, so I wasn't mature enough to be able to see any long-term upside to it.
  - worldsavior 4y ago
    Hard. I hope you will find a instrument that fulfills you :)
yodsanklai 4y ago
I had similar experience. I was literally crying as I didn't want to go the music class at school (the teacher was extremely strict and scary). The next year, we changed town and the new teacher was awesome. There were posters of all metal bands of the time in the classroom and the class was much more fun. > Which was, of course, rock. Nowadays, you can see rock prodigy kids playing guitar on YouTube. Sometimes I wonder how they feel about their instrument and the music they play. Do they even like it?
valand 4y ago
I was enrolled to a piano course before I developed interest in music. And then classical guitar. While I knew the theories and excels in mandatory music classes at school, music didn't click at least until a decade later in which I realize my genre isn't popular. I've written some music to date, but it remains a secondary thing compared to other stuffs I'm more passionate about. In contrast, my little brother was enrolled to drum after he developed interest, in jazz. He has the friends who are passionate with the same kind of music. He built several bands. Not only the music itself, he developed love for analogs, obsessed with building instruments and speakers. I guess the timing of interest development relative to the push to the direction, and having the right people to reinforce your passion is imperative to the optimal development of "click" to music.
Aidevah 4y ago
There's a reason for the continued popularity for the piano in western music pedagogy (for the classical/literate tradition at least). The keyboard provides an ordered mapping of the musical scale into physical space, which makes it a lot more intuitive than most other instruments. The keyboard is also supply its own accompaniment, which makes its repertory somewhat independent, and also makes playing arrangements from ensemble and orchestral possible. This means that you can acquire a knowledge of a very large amounts of music first hand, as no doubt many amateurs did before the advent of recording. For much of the same reason the piano was absolutely indispensable to the composers, as Charles Rosen observed in the first chapter of his Piano Notes: >The utility of the piano for composing was its neutral and uniform tone color: in theory (although not in reality) the tone quality of the bass is the same as the treble. In any case, the change in tone color over the whole range of the piano is, or should be, gradual and continuous (there are breaks, of course, when the notes go from one string in the bass to two and then to three in the treble). The monochrome piano might be used therefore just for its arrangements of pitches, and the quality of the sound could-absurdly in many cases-be considered secondary. >Keyboard instruments are the only ones able to realize and control the entire texture of Western polyphonic music. Of course, the question then becomes, why has the piano held on as a mark of bourgeoisie pretensions when the prestige of the classical tradition has ran aground in the 20th century, and pretty much collapsed in the 21st. The rich and powerful in the west today do not, as a rule, promote their love of classical music nowadays as a status symbol. Elon Musk dated Grimes, presumably at least partially enamored by her reputation as a musician; he did not date a violin virtuoso or a operatic soprano, maybe because he has no emotional connection or particular interest for that type of music. Richard Taruskin has shown that the last US president who at least pretended to a taste in classical music was Nixon, and the electorate certainly did not notice the absence ever since, although there have been notably musical presidents like Clinton. It seems convenient to at least pretend that classical music still enjoys some of its prestige purely for the purposes of using it as a whipping boy and distract the snobbery between genres which has since morphed into snobbery inside each genre. I will be very surprised if someone asserts that classical music forms part of the culture of the elites today. How much does an orchestral musician make? How much is a ticket to a Paul McCartney concert?
Fradow 4y ago
I took 10 years of piano. I wanted to when I was a child (and I chose the piano). The problem for me has not been the kind of music I had to play. My problem is I only learned to perfectly play a song with sheet paper, by repeating it over and over again in the course of a few months until every tiny little detail was perfect. That's because I was prepared to play in front of a large audience, where you are supposed to play perfectly. What I never learned was how to improvise a somewhat-okay song, or play somewhat ok a song from sheet paper. Those skills could have made it enjoyable to play piano for myself or in a social setting where perfection is not expected. But since I never learned those skills, the piano in my family house sit unused, and even the keyboard I bought for myself is collecting dust in a closet.
mikrl 4y ago
I get this. Never had any desire to learn an instrument because I didn’t see the point. The lures of impressing women or busking for beer money were never strong enough. Now that I have a copy of ableton I love playing around with wave synths, learning music theory, samplers, automation, the bitcrusher, etc and don’t even have to consciously set aside time to do so, I just do it as easily as opening a video game.
1983054105 4y ago
"Me too." I learned the piano because you have to learn the piano. And you have to play classical music because there is no other stuff and most teachers only like classical music. My parents had the same reaction with computers: programming is stupid therefore you can't enjoy programming at such a young age, the parents decide for you. 30 years later, I still love programming and would never do anything else in my life. Edit: When I think about it, the greatest music players on earth have an almost religious or orgasmic experience while playing music, while our parents saw that as yet another chore equivalent to what was taught at school. It's ridiculous.

8f2ab37a-ed6c 4y ago

I wonder why parents do this. Parental cargo cutting? Cheap baby sitting?

kibibyte 4y ago
Parental cargo culting, probably. "It makes you smarter" (tenuous, as hinted in article), "all the other parents are doing it to their children"/"I want my child to be better than theirs" (this can be very cultural), "it looks good on your college applications" (this becomes a reason later on, and is also very tenuous), etc.
ycombobreaker 4y ago
Children's interests can be fickle. Learning a skill takes a serious investment of time, and a child left totally to their own devices could end up bailing on a lot of interests prematurely, because they never get over the initial hump. This is a natural part of parenting, to teach your children about investment of effort. The horror cases like GP's "9 years" are essentially a miscalibration, failing to recognize a suitable stopping point. "Cheap babysitting" is not it. Lessons are short and more expensive than childcare. Enforcement of practice time is a hassle (and a balancing act!)
jbirer 4y ago
Status seeking behavior and Narcissism. They are more concerned over their children making them look good to other parents / people than their kid enjoying themselves.

hugs_vs_toph 4y ago

Yup, same with sports. "You're gonna thank me later" they said. "You're gonna understand when you grow up" they said. NOPE

RHSman2 4y ago
[flagged]
- hugs_vs_toph 4y ago
  [flagged]

maroonblazer 4y ago

I was forced to take classical piano for 6 years starting at age 8. Hated it. Begged my parents to let me quit. They wouldn't. Then we moved across the country and they said "Ok, you can quit piano." In my new town I struck up a conversation on the school bus with two kids, one played bass and the other played drums. Said they would get together in the drummer's basement and "jam". "What's this 'jamming' you speak of?" I asked. They invited me over and we played the one jazz-ish/blues tune I knew. I was hooked. Ran home and begged my parents to let me start lessons again, but this time rock/jazz. Since then I picked up guitar, bass, drums, a little alto sax, and continued studying piano. 40+ years later playing/making music is a huge part of my personal life. I feel incredibly lucky that my folks didn't let me quit and that I met those two friends.

WA 4y ago
I don’t understand the conclusion. Why are you glad that your parents forced you for 6 years, if this had basically nothing to do with your later-found joy for music? Couldn’t the same invitation have happened if you just tried piano for a couple months and remembered your one jazz tune?
- bombela 4y ago
  The conclusion is forcing did nothing happy. But when wanted you won't stop.
- ycombobreaker 4y ago
  A couple of months of weekly piano instruction is simply not enough exposure for most young students to even have "one jazz tune" under their belt. It's likely that the jam session invitation was predicated upon some minimum skill level with the instrument--something that 6 years of even begrudging practice provided.
- amachefe 4y ago
  Maybe because kids don't really know what they wanted. If he didn't play the first 6years, he won't be able to enjoy "jamming" with friends

loeg 4y ago

> And piano lessons were the only time we were ever exposed to classical music otherwise, so we had no opportunity to learn to like it; it was just a source of frustration and boredom. To be fair, additional exposure may not have helped! I played several instruments as a kid / young adult, almost all of it classical or adjacent (old European music). My parents took us to the symphony. It just isn't what I like to listen to and wasn't motivating enough to keep my interested as a teen. After fifteen years without making music at all, I've started picking up instruments again in the last two years. I've been playing (some) classical music, not because I like it, but because there's a lot of it for the instruments I've chosen and it's fun to play.

westoncb 4y ago

Similar here. I really wanted to play guitar and had wanted to for years, but 1) there was already a keyboard in the house 2) I think my dad thought it would be better to learn principles via piano first—so, I took the piano lessons, absolutely hated 'em, quit after like 6mo and never went back.

polishdude20 4y ago

I started playing guitar at around age 15 just by myself. I met a friend in my chemistry class who taught me about the Beatles. I got super obsessed with them and really wanted to play their songs. Got a guitar and never thought twice about what I should play. It was always , all Beatles all the time. I loved it. I was hooked. That taught me the basic chords, barre chords, some soloing etc. Lots of great songs from beginner to advanced. Then one day, my cousin bought me a discography CD pack of Rush CDs. I heard Fly By Night and I knew I HAD to learn to play it. That resulted in about a five year streak of obsessive Rush disorder. I was again, hooked. Now on more advanced music. I wanted to learn all the songs. I even formed a little tribute band with a few other people. Now, I have a classical guitar sitting next to the couch and I sometimes come and sit and just noodle around. Just enjoy the sounds, the feel of the strings against my fingers, the satisfaction of discovering an assembly of notes to play that sound special. It's been about 15 years now. Not once did I think I needed to learn something on the guitar because somebody told me I had to. I always learned something in pursuit of learning the next song.

quartesixte 4y ago

As an example of an opposite situation that proves your point: I started classical music lessons very early as a kid. I was one of those weird kids that ended up liking classical music anyways, but I also had a deep love for movie soundtracks. My parents encouraged me to play anything I liked. Which I did -- movie soundtracks. They'd go around bragging to other parents how their little kid learned these soundtracks by ear too. I still play to this day, and have branched out into many different genres. Them being supportive for the idea that this is an expression of myself, and praising my efforts, really cemented playing musical instruments as a core part of my identity. Not a parent yet, but I hope I can pass along this chain of positivity to my own in the future.

Hayvok 4y ago

Same story here with piano lessons - I wanted to write my own music! I would come up with interesting sounds when practicing, and wanted to learn how to develop those further. Nope! Class time rolled around and it was forty five minutes of posture posture posture and finger movements. Mrs. Bell didn’t care about the interesting music I had created, she just wanted me to tick off silly boxes and follow “the plan”. I’ve barely touched a piano since.

Slow_Hand 4y ago
Oof. I'm so sorry to hear that. The sounds you discovered on your own were the start of your own personal vocabulary. That's you following your ear and following the pleasure of the sound itself. That's the most important part. The technique is important, but it's often for nothing if it's not in support of a distinct musical voice.
hrns 4y ago
Exactly my experience in music school. I've switched to guitar on my own initiative, started jamming, playing in bands, composing my own music with friends - and it was such fun. Never touched piano since then. Reading through other comments here makes me think that as humans we suck at teaching music to children.
julian_t 4y ago
Same for me - 8 years of piano with regular exams, gave it up in my teens because I didn't want to play just classical stuff, and all that practicing was just plain boring. Haven't touched a keyboard since (and have carefully forgotten all that music theory). I did pick up an old classical guitar at a girlfriend's house and started on Simon and Garfunkel and Beatles, and have been playing guitar (and bass, mandolin, slide guitar and lap steel) for the past 45 years, so the music was there! Having brought up 3 kids, it is sometimes hard to know when to encourage them to push through on something and when to let it die.

hippari2 4y ago

yeah and when those kids do manage to practice, i see they often turns into highly technical, but less musically developed players.

irrational 4y ago

It is interesting how people have similar experiences, but different outcomes. I have a brother who owns about 12 different guitars, a keyboard, and other instruments. He spends a ton of time making his own music and putting it on Spotify. But he will tell you that the most important thing in his musical career was learning to play classical music on the piano as a child because it taught him music theory and techniques that have made him a better musician than he would be otherwise.

pclmulqdq 4y ago
I don't think it's uncommon to have this experience around forced classical music lessons. I did a really serious conservatory prep program as a child, "strongly encouraged" by my parents. This included formal theory classes, lessons, seminars, competitions, and a lot of recitals. 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.

Simon_O_Rourke 4y ago

I was put on more or less the same kind of lesson program for much of the same reasons - my mom wanted the social kudos attached with kids performing at piano recitals, which is something that myself and my siblings had nothing but scorn for. Same net result as yourself, none of us continued with our music studies once we were old enough to make our own decisions. In fact, a lot of the social climbing associated with how it all started is something we've rebelled against the most.

sornaensis 4y ago

As a kid (7-8) I was forced to play acoustic guitar for several years. I didnt like any of the music (or much music at all) that I played, and ended up quitting. Later on when I discovered rock and metal music I asked my parents for an electric guitar but they refused, saying I had to play the acoustic I had first and then I could ‘progress’ to electric. I was easily discouraged then so I gave up the idea. I didnt end up getting an electric guitar and starting to play music seriously until after university when I had a job and could afford it easily myself. Now I play almost every day, learning new things, writing my own little pieces, and jamming with friends. Music is now one of the most fulfilling things in my life, and I believe one of my biggest regrets will be waiting so long to get started after I knew what I wanted!

midoridensha 4y ago
Electric and acoustic guitars are really two very different instruments; a bit like comparing trombones with trumpets. The way you hold and play the basic notes is fairly similar, but the techniques are very different for electric because of the amplification and distortion, and of course the sound is extremely different.
- dukky 4y ago
  I'd agree with this distinction between classical (nylon stringed acoustic) and electric guitar, but steel stringed acoustic plays very similar to electric. I agree that people tend to play different things on them but if you're playing both with a pick you're doing the same techniques on both.
  - beardedetim 4y ago
    The two are so similar, bands do acoustic sets all the time! I learned to play a lot of Nirvana via their MTV or VH1 or whatever those acoustic concerts were hosted on since I only had a Goya acoustic
- tinco 4y ago
  No way, I just googled trumpet and trombone, and those are different instruments. Electric guitar and classical guitar are just different flavors of the same instrument. Most guitarists play both, if they've ever touched a classical guitar. Playing electric is both easier and less loud, if you don't plug in the amplifier, so they're a lot more suitable for kids than classical guitars. The association that parents have that electric guitars are for adults and acoustic for kids is insane. In my experience good electric guitars are also cheaper than good acoustic, but I have to admit I haven't tried to buy a classical guitar in 20 years. Spring on a name brand second hand electric guitar for your kids you won't regret it. Electric guitars are basically inpossible to damage, and a second hand guitar will retain its value so you'll get those $500-800 bucks back when it turns out your kid wants to do something else. Higher quality guitars have lower action and more comfortable necks which makes them easier to play rewarding your kids more for their efforts.

erfgh 4y ago

Sorry to be an ass but it doesn't sound to me like you had any talent in music.

GlenTheMachine 4y ago
<shrug> I don't know whether I did or not. I hated the process so much that I never had enough incentive to find out.

worldsavior 4y ago

So why don't you play rock blues or whatever now? Is it because of trauma?

GlenTheMachine 4y ago
It's because I never got good enough at piano to play anything for fun. I hated lessons and I hated practicing. That's why the time was so wasted; I was so I invested in the entire enterprise that I learned as little as possible. Bear in mind that this started when I was 8, so I wasn't mature enough to be able to see any long-term upside to it.
- worldsavior 4y ago
  Hard. I hope you will find a instrument that fulfills you :)

yodsanklai 4y ago

I had similar experience. I was literally crying as I didn't want to go the music class at school (the teacher was extremely strict and scary). The next year, we changed town and the new teacher was awesome. There were posters of all metal bands of the time in the classroom and the class was much more fun. > Which was, of course, rock. Nowadays, you can see rock prodigy kids playing guitar on YouTube. Sometimes I wonder how they feel about their instrument and the music they play. Do they even like it?

valand 4y ago

I was enrolled to a piano course before I developed interest in music. And then classical guitar. While I knew the theories and excels in mandatory music classes at school, music didn't click at least until a decade later in which I realize my genre isn't popular. I've written some music to date, but it remains a secondary thing compared to other stuffs I'm more passionate about. In contrast, my little brother was enrolled to drum after he developed interest, in jazz. He has the friends who are passionate with the same kind of music. He built several bands. Not only the music itself, he developed love for analogs, obsessed with building instruments and speakers. I guess the timing of interest development relative to the push to the direction, and having the right people to reinforce your passion is imperative to the optimal development of "click" to music.

Aidevah 4y ago

There's a reason for the continued popularity for the piano in western music pedagogy (for the classical/literate tradition at least). The keyboard provides an ordered mapping of the musical scale into physical space, which makes it a lot more intuitive than most other instruments. The keyboard is also supply its own accompaniment, which makes its repertory somewhat independent, and also makes playing arrangements from ensemble and orchestral possible. This means that you can acquire a knowledge of a very large amounts of music first hand, as no doubt many amateurs did before the advent of recording. For much of the same reason the piano was absolutely indispensable to the composers, as Charles Rosen observed in the first chapter of his Piano Notes: >The utility of the piano for composing was its neutral and uniform tone color: in theory (although not in reality) the tone quality of the bass is the same as the treble. In any case, the change in tone color over the whole range of the piano is, or should be, gradual and continuous (there are breaks, of course, when the notes go from one string in the bass to two and then to three in the treble). The monochrome piano might be used therefore just for its arrangements of pitches, and the quality of the sound could-absurdly in many cases-be considered secondary. >Keyboard instruments are the only ones able to realize and control the entire texture of Western polyphonic music. Of course, the question then becomes, why has the piano held on as a mark of bourgeoisie pretensions when the prestige of the classical tradition has ran aground in the 20th century, and pretty much collapsed in the 21st. The rich and powerful in the west today do not, as a rule, promote their love of classical music nowadays as a status symbol. Elon Musk dated Grimes, presumably at least partially enamored by her reputation as a musician; he did not date a violin virtuoso or a operatic soprano, maybe because he has no emotional connection or particular interest for that type of music. Richard Taruskin has shown that the last US president who at least pretended to a taste in classical music was Nixon, and the electorate certainly did not notice the absence ever since, although there have been notably musical presidents like Clinton. It seems convenient to at least pretend that classical music still enjoys some of its prestige purely for the purposes of using it as a whipping boy and distract the snobbery between genres which has since morphed into snobbery inside each genre. I will be very surprised if someone asserts that classical music forms part of the culture of the elites today. How much does an orchestral musician make? How much is a ticket to a Paul McCartney concert?

Fradow 4y ago

I took 10 years of piano. I wanted to when I was a child (and I chose the piano). The problem for me has not been the kind of music I had to play. My problem is I only learned to perfectly play a song with sheet paper, by repeating it over and over again in the course of a few months until every tiny little detail was perfect. That's because I was prepared to play in front of a large audience, where you are supposed to play perfectly. What I never learned was how to improvise a somewhat-okay song, or play somewhat ok a song from sheet paper. Those skills could have made it enjoyable to play piano for myself or in a social setting where perfection is not expected. But since I never learned those skills, the piano in my family house sit unused, and even the keyboard I bought for myself is collecting dust in a closet.

mikrl 4y ago

I get this. Never had any desire to learn an instrument because I didn’t see the point. The lures of impressing women or busking for beer money were never strong enough. Now that I have a copy of ableton I love playing around with wave synths, learning music theory, samplers, automation, the bitcrusher, etc and don’t even have to consciously set aside time to do so, I just do it as easily as opening a video game.

1983054105 4y ago

"Me too." I learned the piano because you have to learn the piano. And you have to play classical music because there is no other stuff and most teachers only like classical music. My parents had the same reaction with computers: programming is stupid therefore you can't enjoy programming at such a young age, the parents decide for you. 30 years later, I still love programming and would never do anything else in my life. Edit: When I think about it, the greatest music players on earth have an almost religious or orgasmic experience while playing music, while our parents saw that as yet another chore equivalent to what was taught at school. It's ridiculous.