"The main takeaway from your comment is that whatever you do with music should be fun, to make sure you don't destroy your motivation.”
Absolutely. As a child, I encountered both music and maths in a way that destroyed any idea that they could be fun. I took piano lessons for eight years and got to a fairly advanced amateur level, but the emphasis on theory and having to play exactly what was written on the page led to me eventually hating it, and I haven’t touched a piano since.
I later took up guitar, and discovered that I just like making stuff up, and seldom play anything exactly the same way twice. I think that now a little more understanding of the underpinnings might give me more to play with, but I still have a rather visceral reaction when I see written music...
This very much mirrors my own experience as a child (violin, piano), the later on saxophone was a lot of fun and now piano again, but this time without guidance just enjoying myself figuring it all out and using my software skills to help me.
Absolutely. As a child, I encountered both music and maths in a way that destroyed any idea that they could be fun. I took piano lessons for eight years and got to a fairly advanced amateur level, but the emphasis on theory and having to play exactly what was written on the page led to me eventually hating it, and I haven’t touched a piano since.
I later took up guitar, and discovered that I just like making stuff up, and seldom play anything exactly the same way twice. I think that now a little more understanding of the underpinnings might give me more to play with, but I still have a rather visceral reaction when I see written music...