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Comment by ehaskins | Hacker News Reader

I've been teaching beginning guitar lessons for about seven years. Guitar is a little different in that, outside of classical guitar, there's very little traditional pedagogy, but from experience I think these things are generally true about most instruments.

1. When you start learning you sound terrible... for a long time. It's very difficult to stay motivated when you can hear your problems.

2. It's very difficult to judge your own progress. I've started recording short videos during lessons which I can show to students weeks or months later when they're expressing frustration with their progress.

3. You have to enjoy practicing, since you have to pick up the instrument most days to maintain the dexterity, callouses, etc. It's very easy for a pushy parent to beat the joy out of practicing.

4. You have to understand the difference between playing that song you can play great, and practicing something you suck at so you improve. It's very easy to stagnate if you only play.

Really it boils down to, you're going to suck for a while, then you're going to think you suck even when you don't, and you have to keep enjoying the process even when you think you suck.

/edit formatting

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I've found it surprisingly low effort to get good enough at guitar and, in fact, piano, that you can start to see social rewards, i.e. people actually want you to play, at least a little.

Meanwhile I put in more hours and had far more formal instruction at a woodwind than either of those combined and... yeah, nobody wanted to hear that shit, it sounds awful (cringe-inducing, even) unless you're excellent. Years of effort and practice and no-one wanted to be around when I was playing (and I can't blame them). It's super discouraging to have spent that much time and effectively have nothing to show for it—nothing that sounds at least OK, even to you when you record it and play it back.

A couple half-assed months on guitar or piano can get you to, "hey, that sounds pretty good!" and get people to start singing along to whatever you're playing.

You can't do a pop- or folk- or standard-tune sing-along with a damn saxophone. I mean, you can, but nobody wants to unless your playing is so good you could go pro.

I think the difference is that they're good accompaniment instruments, and can play chords. Plus there's very little technique to learn to achieve acceptable & reasonably consistent tone.

Now, I'm sure getting to the point of being able to play solo instrumentals that anyone cares to hear on either of those, is much harder (I was getting there on the guitar at my peak, but still hadn't achieved it), but there's just nothing for most other instruments, as far as natural encouragement or reward from others, until you're awesome at them.

I am thinking of learning guitar/piano at some point for exactly that reason - a little effort, have some fun and get some social recognition!

> I've found it surprisingly low effort to get good enough at guitar and, in fact, piano, that you can start to see social rewards, i.e. people actually want you to play, at least a little.

Also surprisingly low cost for a pretty good instrument. $250 dollars will get you a pretty good solid top steel string acoustic guitar (Yamaha FS800 or FG800, Fender CC60 or CD60, half a dozen models from Orangewood) or solid top classical guitar (Cordoba C3, Yamaha CG122).

Piano costs a bit more, but $500 or so should do it for a pretty good beginner instrument.

By pretty good I mean an instrument that sounds good and has a good feel so that you don't have to struggle to play it (beyond the struggling inherent in being a beginner even if you were playing on a professional concert level instrument) and it won't make you learn any bad habits you'll have to unlearn if you continue and move up to a better instrument.

> Meanwhile I put in more hours and had far more formal instruction at a woodwind than either of those combined and... yeah, nobody wanted to hear that shit, it sounds awful (cringe-inducing, even) unless you're excellent

Plus woodwinds and other orchestra instruments seem to be way more expensive. I'd guess that stops a lot of people who might have been interested in taking them up.

I checked at my local music store and student oboes for example start at around $3000. Clarinets around $1000. Tubas around $4000. Wow.

Ukulele is even quicker, kid sized and you can hang it on your wall for art when you’ve moved on.

The San Jose Ukulele Club is a bunch of nice folks, if you're in the area.

https://sanjoseukeclub.org/song_book.html

Low floor, high ceiling

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l9YLOlUa7ro

This is my favourite ukulele ceiling

https://youtu.be/D5V4mtZ-0qg

Wow, thanks! Here are a couple more for anyone who stumbles onto this thread:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IYhcN8p4yhg

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2gyxeXW_2T8

They are even small enough that you can just get a whole bunch of them and tune them each to a different open chord and then just switch ukuleles as the chords change in your song as the Ukulele Orchestra of Great Britain did in this hilarious version of "You Don't Bring Me Flowers Anymore" [1].

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0-puL9FrZms

Flutes are more affordable and easier to get a nice tone out of than clarinets or tubas.

You can get a good (wood) student recorder for ~$250. I guess recorders are technically flutes :-).

Oboes are just expensive instruments. Tons of small moving parts, low worldwide volume. If you think that's bad, though, low end English Horns (1.5x longer oboe) start at $6000.

Also, many orchestras have only 2 oboe players. I don't think I've ever seen a pop/rock band with an oboe in it.

The lack of french horn players in pop/rock bands was part of why I quit playing. The neighbors complaining about my practicing didn't help. Yamaha's Silent Brass system worked pretty well while I still had one.

A few years back I got a decent second hand student oboe for £300 on eBay. Prices are probably higher now though.

You'd definitely want to check out the second hand market if getting started in woodwind.

This is why guitar is considered a folk instrument. I think that’s what’s cool about guitar—-its low floor but high ceiling. You can strum open chords or on the other end learn difficult pieces on classical guitar. Similar to what you shared, classical guitarists will tell you nobody cares when they’re playing something super difficult. Sometimes people just can’t tell the effort it takes and don’t relate to the piece being played.

As a guitarist I found piano even easier to sound decent as there is no real threat of accidentally muting anything or plucking at a weird angle. But if you’re musically inclined its pretty easy to tell who has dedicated the time to learning it well.

Was mildly triggered by your comment at first, being a pianist, but on reflection you're right. The skill floor for the piano is objectively lower thanks to being percussive. But my god is it difficult trying to sing with a percussive instrument while also accompanying yourself with and extra 2-3 voices.

Timbre, vibrato and dynamic control over a single note mean that people will pay to listen to a beautiful singer or sax play a single line of music but my god does a pianist or guitarist have to work to keep up with that.

I think a big part of it is you can sound good playing piano quietly. It's hard to play a woodwind quietly and sound good. Yes, the pros can certainly do it, but it's a difficult skill to master. They're instruments designed to project without electronic amplification.

Totally fair. My fiancee plays flute and I was quite blown away by the intricacies required even playing at even an intermediate level

I've played both piano and guitar for many years now, and the distinction I'd make is that piano is easier to start out on than guitar, but harder to get good at--in the long run the difficulty of mastery is probably about the same on both, but they have different learning curves.

I can't find the quote, but I reminded of something from an early electronic music pioneer.

They talked about how electronic music would lower the barrier to making music, and remove all that tedious time spent on the mechanics of playing an instrument, allowing people to focus on the music itself.

Long quote, but very relevant:

"Nobody tells this to people who are beginners, I wish someone told me. All of us who do creative work, we get into it because we have good taste. But there is this gap. For the first couple years you make stuff, it’s just not that good. It’s trying to be good, it has potential, but it’s not. But your taste, the thing that got you into the game, is still killer. And your taste is why your work disappoints you. A lot of people never get past this phase, they quit. Most people I know who do interesting, creative work went through years of this. We know our work doesn’t have this special thing that we want it to have. We all go through this. And if you are just starting out or you are still in this phase, you gotta know its normal and the most important thing you can do is do a lot of work. Put yourself on a deadline so that every week you will finish one story. It is only by going through a volume of work that you will close that gap, and your work will be as good as your ambitions. And I took longer to figure out how to do this than anyone I’ve ever met. It’s gonna take awhile. It’s normal to take awhile. You’ve just gotta fight your way through.”

― Ira Glass

I've seen that quote before but this time I'm laughing at the assumption in, "we have good taste".

I think he means that you get into creative work because you have an awareness of what you like and a desire to make more of it. But the use of the word "good" amuses me.

As a guitar player for over 30 years now, it's fascinating how quickly you can teach something like Smoke on the Water or Whole Lotta Love in the span of a few minutes to someone who has never picked up the instrument... sure the timing/fretting is off but it's close enough that their face will light up.

To underscore your overall point, I took lessons in 2 phases:

1) At 10 years old, had a cheap classical guitar. Did 8 'proper' lessons, went home on the 8th one crying after being sent home to learn Jesu, Joy of Man's Desiring.

2) At 14 years old picked up a guitar mag with a tab for Living Colour's "Type", which is almost as simple as something like Smoke on the Water. After learning a couple dozen more songs like this my parents purchased a Squire strat and signed me up for lessons with a dude who looked like Jerry Cantrell. Practiced 5 hours a day, and after 9 months stopped going as it appeared I had outclassed my instructor.

As to your #1 point, I'd humbly disagree. I was in a guitar center with less than a year under under my belt noodling and some guy walked to compliment my playing and see if I was in a band he could check out. My practice partner was similar, went on to win our battle of the bands and dropped out his freshman year of college to helm a critically acclaimed jam band for several years (at their height they spent 3 months touring w/ Phish).

Nowadays with the power of online tools kids can get frighteningly good very quick, and some within a few years to session pro level playing in a myriad of styles. Bedroom guitarists that become obsessed with the likes of Guthrie Govan and Tim Henson.

Do you appreciate those 8 lessons from where you were 10? In a way, you'd played guitar for 5 years when you strolled into that Guitar Center and started noodling.

Unfortunately I didn't touch the guitar again until picking up that mag, so it was all lost, including my nascent ability to read music.

Musical and muscle patterns that form in your mind at a young age don't disappear, they just wait for their time

Would 8 lessons be enough to build that muscle memory though? It is pretty remarkable, though, how long muscle memory can last. I haven't played piano seriously since university except for occasionally noodling on my mom or sister's piano when visiting, and old repertoire seems to flow out of my fingers. Maybe a bit more rusty than when I was taking lessons in my teens, but still there somehow 20 years later.

If nothing else, being exposed to something for a short time has the effect of removing some of the fear of the unknown, at least. You might not be able to repeat any of the stuff you learned, but you'll go into it with a lot less fear the second time, and that's incredibly helpful. And I'm sure some of that stuff will come back to you, too.

We’re talking a sum total of possibly 20 hours playing as a child over the course of a couple months.

As a lefty, I recall I was still in an awkward enough phase that when shopping for an electric I couldn’t decide on getting a left or right model, they both felt equally awkward, so just continued using right. Pretty sure I wasn’t able to barre chord. Things ramped up quickly once I started with the 2nd instructor.

Agree: TABS == good, sheet music == bad. (For beginners, anyway.)

A lot of people fluent in sheet music don't appreciate how incomprehensible and information-dense it really is. If you just want to play a song, it's the wrong way to go.

I'm a fluent reader, and I agree with you. Conventional notation has its use cases, but if you don't fall into one of them, then you're better off without it.

Playing "classical" music is the most familiar use case. I belong to a 19-piece jazz ensemble, which involves a hybrid of composed and improvised music, and everything we play is from sheet music. I'm the bassist, and my parts are a mixture of conventional notation and chord symbols. In this environment, tabulature is actually useless -- no arranger knows how to write it, and nobody can read it at performance speed.

On the other hand, there's very little sheet music in rock and contemporary genres except in some situations such as studio / commercial work. A complaint I've read about tabulature is that a lot of tabs found online are inaccurate. There's also a school of thought that relying on tabs is an impediment to learning how to play by ear.

Learning to read from day one is how I was taught, but it's no longer the preferred method. For instance, the Suzuki method has kids start out playing entirely by ear. Reading comes later.

I can sight read tab to a pretty high level, e.g. I was able to sight read my way through most of Capricho Árabe at first glance if that means anything to anyone. I just started teaching myself classical guitar in August and I've completely fallen in love, it's all I listen to and I practise hours per day.

But I am now teaching myself standard notation because I am running up against the limit of tab. I keep having to go back and forth between someone actually playing the piece and the tab so I can get the rhythm, and sometimes I'll find I internalise a rhythm incorrectly and then one day when I'm listening to the piece played by a pro it clicks and I realise I've been playing it wrong this whole time.

There are sites like https://www.classtab.org/ which try to add this rhythmic information to tab, but I don't think it works all that well.

Honestly at this point I wish I'd started with standard notation, or at least learnt both at the same time.

> I can sight read tab to a pretty high level

I don't think you can sight-read tabs, AFAIK sight-reading means being able to play something without seeing or hearing it before, and tabs don't have rhythm information.

> Honestly at this point I wish I'd started with standard notation, or at least learnt both at the same time.

Well, it would have required the same (or more effort) then, couple of months should hardly make a difference. Good luck!

Guitar is in a tricky spot because tabs give you information sheet music doesn't, which voicing to use (is it called that) i.e which string to play a given note on.

Lead sheets are great, they are not dense and get the most important parts across.

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.

I have come to like sheet music - in part, because of its density.

Most voices, which we play in our music club fit on 1 to 4 sheets. This is the amount of sheets, which can be conveniently put on our music stands. Any more means page turning during a piece or multiple music stands.

A less dense format would mean that it does not find on four sheets on a music stand anymore. We would have to swap out paper binders for an electronic solution. This on one hand is expensive and on the otherhand bothersome. Paper with all its limitations just works. Electronic devices need to be charged, kept up to date, break easily, etc. Doing something offline lets me relax and focus easier.

That said I think tablets will become an increasingly better alternative for paper based sheet music. I don't like the glowing comparatively small displays though. Looking forward to big e-ink tablets running a general purpose OS.

A club member's setup is cool. He has an area dedicated to music in his house. Inbetween a dozen hardware synthesizers there is a master keyboard and behind it a big screen, which can be (at least in theory) used for configuring the synthesizers and display sheet music. This setup is expensive and stationary though and thus not a good fit for performing or playing music in a club.

I did not like sheet music in the beginning, but honestly I cannot think of a strictly better format to teach people how to perform a piece of music. I think a piano roll projected via AR technology would be a good contendor, but the technology is not there yet.

Early learning should be focused on musicality and improvisation, not refined performance technique. Historically, even music in the so-called 'classical' tradition was mostly improvised. It's only in the late 19th century or so that technically virtuosic-performance playing of old repertoire became the only known standard of quality; but what those pieces of music were intended for originally was something quite different.

There'a been a comparatively recent revival in classical improvisation largely focusing on the partimenti and solfeggi tradition, that arguably points to a better way of teaching even 'ordinary' music performance as well. After all, even a "proper", non-robotic performance of a piece cannot be achieved without some appreciation for the musicality of "how the piece goes".

I agree. The idea of perfectly reproducing a performance note for note may have been impressive before recorded music, but now it's the boring default. When people talk about a "song" they really mean a particular recording of a single performance played metronomically over a grid.

People are starved for the human touch in music that comes for free with any live performance. In most of the US there is so much focus on mega pop stars executing perfectly planned shows with exorbitant ticket prices that there is little exposure to real improvisation. My hope is that people jamming together for fun can regain its place as a cultural staple in this century, but it seems like the barriers are higher than ever.

This also tends to be my view because improvisation is what I enjoy doing musically the most, but my daughter (12 yo) takes piano lessons which are quite typical in their structure (Conservatory) and has no interest in improvisation, and in fact, has resisted my attempts to get her to try it. She's obsessed with classical music and practices all the time with no prompting (and is now able to play quite beautifully), so of course, I haven't continued trying to change what she's doing.

Perhaps what are needed are methods to determine the approach that will work best with a given child.

I disagree with you, and I think that if your daughter has found something she likes doing with the instrument, you should encourage that, even if it's not what you wanted or expected.

As a child who loved classical music, I hated getting comments from my relatives that I should play them some rock or jazz. I just wanted to do my own thing. Honestly, it's also a very different style of playing - I later learned some jazz piano (to appease them) and it's less demanding on your fine motor control ("tone color") and more about playing precisely on beat, which I found a lot less fun.

I think you misread the parent post. They said that they stopped trying to encourage their daughter to improvise, because she took naturally to classical music and doesn't seem to care about improvisation.

Perhaps it's because it's how I taught myself, but I am in the camp that chords should be taught first (guitar or piano).

Notes, reading sheet music can come much later (if at all).

Two or three chords on either the guitar or piano is an easy start and will open up a world of songs for the learner.

I watched my daughters take lessons and tediously work through reading sheet music, learning scales... I thought it was no wonder they hated it, and no longer play an instrument.

I once attended a workshop by a guy who had been a salesperson for Piano I, Piano II etc books. He noted that sales of those fell off geometrically for each successive book. So he basically advocated/hawked an improv and "fakebook first" approach, as a means to make enjoyment [potentially] primary.

I had an interesting night some years ago interacting with a Google piano ML available online. It would broadly mirror your input is a sort of call and response way. Even with only a qwerty keyboard (i.e. home row) and really elementary melody/stacatto it was remarkably pleasing. Relatedly, This could be one reason I anticipate great potential with GPT-like tutors.

Totally agree. The general focus on rote learning is quite unfortunate.

People always look at the end results, want it, but don't see how much work and practice it takes to get there. It's always the motivation to overcome the difficult frustrating parts in the beginning, that is the hardest part. This is true for most anything: learning an instrument, learning how to program something the first time, learning how to draw art, many different crafts and sports...

But as you improve, it's like it becomes more and more self-sustaining. At some point, it stops feeling like a chore and actually feels kind of pleasureful to just pick up and play something, anything, for a few minutes.

That said, I've been playing guitar for 20 years now, I have certainly improved and enjoy playing, but there's always room for improvement. And to continue improving, still has some of a frustrating element to it. I suppose that's just how it is when it comes to improvement. No pain no gain, as some people say.

I can relate a lot to what you said.

I practice piano (jazz improvisation), and I have mix of love and hate with practicing.

You basically spent lots of energy for little to no improvement at all lol, playing scales, arpeggios, etc.

And if you stay like 1 month without practicing you waste a lot of time trying to go back where you stopped.

It's like trying to go up an escalator that's going down, if you stop you come back to point 0.

Having recently picked-up the guitar after a 10 years hiatus, that escalator analogy hit me right in the feels :'D

You do go back down to 0, but you can run up that escalator pretty damn fast

Exercise is the same way, lots of effort to stay in the same place. I like to believe that maintenance work makes me better, even though the numbers don't really change. At least it gets easier to keep it up over time.

Your dexterity is lost without practice, but I find that the new licks, chord progressions and other ideas you add to your repertoire to be used in improvisation stick around. This to me is far more valuable than the dexterity which I can reacquire in no time. My jazz voicings today are far better than they were at a time when I practiced a lot more piano.

I gave up piano, was spending all my practice time just keeping level but not progressing. Switched to drawing art (mostly nsfw). Takes far less work imo and I don’t seem to regress in skill after taking a break.

You get way more attention for low skill drawings than music too.

Yes. I noticed as well that, in my case, if I don't have a pushy teacher I make little to no progress studying alone.

> It's like trying to go up an escalator that's going down, if you stop you come back to point 0.

I think it's more nuanced than that, you don't go back to zero, the decay is exponential so the drop is most brutal at the front of the curve:

My experience with skill acquisition, you have to hit a checkpoint and bed it in while in a learning phase.

Eg Now that I grok cycling/skiing/wakeboarding, I can take years away from those and will be able to find my way around without starting from scratch.

Even after a decade of not speaking Mandarin, I decayed massively but didn't go back to zero even though I really had lost so much vocab and fluency.

My takeaway after really honing the skill of learning itself is that it's most efficient to learn in super intensive bursts, especially if you don't expect to be able to keep up frequent practice.

Skiing is probably the most relatable skill that many people learn but rarely practice. Living in a foreign country and learning the local language is another example.

Bringing it back to music, after taking almost 8 years out of the piano my scales didn't really drop below 150bpm for quavers but I was able to get to 250+ in a single focused practise session. Skill reacquisition is very fast, which is why weight lifters always report that getting back to PB is considerably faster second time around (weightlifting low-key being the skill of muscle recruitment)

Supporting your exponential hypothesis, I noticed after my 5 year break from piano that I could still play scales at pretty much exactly the same speed, and I still had a lot of the muscle memory. My teacher when I was in school had me doing them in 16th notes (semiquavers?) at 160-180 bpm before I stopped.

That's some serious scale speeds there...

100% agree. You need something motivating to push through the wall of sucking. And it can fluctuate throughout life.

I was a drummer. I was first attracted to the status of it - it was the only instrument in our school band that you needed to try out for. I didn't make the first cut, so I got lessons, then I made it next year. I kept the lessons for a while, but at some point I got bored and stopped lessons - there were only so many paradiddle variations I wanted to learn. There was no vision for me anymore.

Then, I got into rock music and thought that looked awesome, and I had a burst of new motivation that lasted for several years through college.

Then I accepted I wasn't going to be a famous rock drummer (or at least, the opportunity cost vs other things was no longer looking worth it), and shifted my time toward other things in life.

I like the idea of trying a different instrument. I know I would suck for a while so I haven't committed to it. Maybe when my kid gets older that would provide more motivation to bond with him.

Restating a saying I heard: "you have a thousand bad notes in you, get rid of them as soon as possible"

When new players learn Go, they're told to "lose their first fifty games as fast as possible."

Also you have to play with other people. I'm a lifelong musician and former professional musician, and I was always in bands, both school and rock bands with friends, right from when I started playing.

I think that's just crucial, I never would have stuck with it just sweating it out in the basement. You aren't a musician if you aren't playing with other people and in front of audiences.

> You aren't a musician if you aren't playing with other people and in front of audiences.

That’s a terrible attitude. There are plenty of, for example, solo piano players who love playing, but aren’t interested in either being in a band or being a celebrity playing for other people. They are every bit a musician as you are.

I didn’t say they had to be a celebrity. But to be a musician you have to actually produce music, its among the performing arts.

Solo piano players have recitals, or make and share recordings of themselves, or do things that aren’t solo too. I stand by the idea that musicianship is a thing that involves other people, at least in some manner or another.

Good to know I’m not a musician even though I play two different instruments 3-4 hours a week each.

I hate playing with others and stick with jam tracks for accompaniment. I never play in front of others either. Super awkward.

I do occasionally put a recording on YouTube, but the listens are never more than a dozen per year, and I don’t promote it ever. Not sure how I get the listens that I do get.

Not sure what it is I’m doing, but apparently it’s not making music. I do love what I do, and find the craftsmanship and technique as pleasurable as any video game.

Of course you are a musician! Just because some arse tells you aren’t because of x, y and z. Everyone is a musician with voice, hands etc.

Do it cos you like it (like anything else) and that is the reason.

That is bullshit that you’ve told your ego. An audience of one aka the person making music/sounds is just fine.

The context of the story here is kids and music, we’re not talking about people who no longer really bother with worrying about an audience we are talking about kids.

I think kids should play music that reaches other people or they aren’t likely to actually become musicians.

Not sure how controversial that actually is, I’m mostly just making a tree falling in the forest argument.

I’m not saying that isn’t true but it isn’t the only part of being a musician. I think you are suggesting it is.

I agree you should play with other people, but disagree entirely that you aren't a musician if you don't check those boxes. Maybe what you mean is "performer" and even then I'm not sure the logic holds.

I think learning software has been transformative in this space, at least for baseline technical skills and coordination. Hopefully in the future the software will be able to give you feedback on stuff like tone and posture as well.

How many kids will performance in philharmonics because they played Trombone Champ?

My experience with students that have used various learning software has been mixed.

They're not good for absolute beginners because it can't give you feedback on the bad physical habits that lead to repetitive strain injuries, or just make it hard to play.

Once you're past that point, you're usually far enough to find a tab or chord sheet and figure it out.

For a motivated intermediate level student there can be value in the smooth difficulty progression and forced introduction of new concepts, but that's a pretty small window where they add value.

What I think is also very important is to have a love of music. Have a band you really like. Have a bunch of songs you really want to learn to play. Playing an instrument takes just as much listening as playing.

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