That was ironic understatement. With classical guitar, you won’t really get anywhere without being able to read sheet music. It’s not like rock and pop guitar where you can just learn tabs and slightly develop your ear and that’s enough play along with all your favorite tunes.
If you’ve already picked up reading music for one instrument, it’s a ton easier for the next one.
You want to have fun playing along to your favourite song. Or impromptu jam with a friend. Or sing for yourself because a song reminds you of a memory.
They all have a minimum skill requirement, without which it isn't as enjoyable.
You need to know to play reasonably well by ear to have fun imo.
Sure, those are definitely fun things to be able to do, but it’s not some kind of essential life skill. If it’s not someone’s thing, why force it? There are plenty of other skills that are also fun to have.
I mean, fair enough. I had an aptitude for it.
If you're able to figure out what skills they might have fun with in the future, that's excellent.
If not - I'm not sure, you gotta shoot your shot I guess? Because the dislike might be for the process (practice) when they actually would like the end product (jamming)
I just had a kid so this is pretty real to me. How it will go is anybody's guess, but I hope it does go well :)
I guess I believe more in the Montessori idea that kids are intrinsically motivated to learn and excel, and they will tend to be naturally drawn to work hard at the skills that they are best suited for.
I understand the idea that some skills have a hump to get over and it’s good to encourage that determination, but I’d also guess that for every person like you who is glad they were pushed to learn some particular skill, there is another person who it affected very negatively. So I suppose it’s a bit of a gamble in that sense.
> Because eventually you plateau without proper foundations, and that's not fun.
This is a completely alien perspective to most people. Most people never even really try to be good at anything. That you think this quirk of your own psychology is the norm shows a deep disconnect with the mass of mediocre people who don’t care about being competitive because they’re not trying to get highs up on some leaderboard. https://danluu.com/p95-skill/
I get that. It’s satisfying to overcome those hurdles and frustrating to be blocked. Speaking for myself though, if I find I’m getting really frustrated by something that I’m supposedly doing for fun, it’s a sign that I might not be approaching it in the best way psychologically. I’m usually much happier when I try to have more of a zen ‘putting in the reps’ mindset. Then the periods of progress are like icing on the cake, not something I need to enjoy the thing.
If you’ve already picked up reading music for one instrument, it’s a ton easier for the next one.