2 ms·
i mostly agree, but having had piano and guitar lessons in school, and later having learned playing the irish drum on my own, i don't share that experience. may
by em-bee 3y ago
i mostly agree, but having had piano and guitar lessons in school, and later having learned playing the irish drum on my own, i don't share that experience. maybe the teaching methods were wrong (i kind of felt the teacher expected everyone to just naturally pick up notes and play). i certainly wasn't able to just grip a chord and start playing it. that alone would have taken me hours of practice. so i never learned even just one chord on a guitar nor did i manage to get any useful sequence of notes out of a piano, whereas the drum i practically learned only from playing in live sessions, and not from practicing myself at home (although there was some of that too, but not much). all i needed was an ear for rhythm.
- bruce511 3y agoI think you hit the nail on the head with 2 parts of your story. Firstly, playing with others is great fun, and a great way to learn and improve. Not to mention a good motivator. Like you, most of my improvement has been in that context. When I was just starting out we had "bands" of beginners (guitar, piano, bass etc) and there was a sense of progress learning just one chord or riff etc. So -how- you learn matters. Equally "starting young" is a common wisdom, but most of the people I play with now "started old". They started because -they- wanted to play, not because someone else wanted to play. I think method also matters. In school we "learnt" recorder, but it started with "reading music". That's like explaining virtual methods in object orientated design to someone who can't write a for loop. For both activities we learn better when it's fun.