I picked up Violin as an adult, have done recitals, and I suck. Being able to suck and find joy in something anyway even if you're not top nth percentile is a valuable life skill.
This is so true! I think as kids we naturally don't mind doing something creative and it not working out well, but as adults, we worry too much about seeming competent.
In a career, seeming competent can be valuable, but for learning something new and creative, it often just creates a barrier to getting started.
So many things in life are better if you can get past that fear of not being good. Because very very few people can skip the stage where they are not good. (I'd be comfortable saying nobody. But there is always somebody, it seems.)
That's why I enjoy singing so much. Moderate skill good enough as most people can't even bring themselves to do it in public out of embarrassment.
My sister is in a whole different league than me in terms of singing but she also performs live, which I don't plan to do unless it's a karakoe evening.
I am 57M. I started singing less than 3 years back. Had a teacher from Koltaka doing weekly zooms for a few months, but mostly on my own. Started with karaoke, then graduated to a capella bollywood songs. The idea was to improve my voice, I was always shy/introvert but something triggered me to get on camera. With embarrassment out of the way, now it just 1) keep working on it - singing, producing tiktoks, learning editing on the way, and 2) lot more fun since I can hear my voice and enjoy it ... many of the times. Not a great singer, but getting better every single day.
As mentioned in the top comment, or somewhere near that, the first step ... listening to your first botched song, going on camera ... was the hard step. I made a monologue about this, a mix of english and hindi, on my tiktok profile.
PS: I have an alt, or a main. Not sure if that is an issue or not. I opened this account a long time back and then decided I did not want my name to be public so I opened an alt. This discussion made me reverse that decision just for one comment.
I updated my profile to add my social links, and happy to answer any questions from mods/dang about dupe accounts, but in general do not want to comment on AI, politics, corporations or anything controversial where it can be linked to my identity. And this is not trying to get followers or viewers - I have my hands full anyways.
This is good advice for most human activities. I told my students these exact words (you gotta get comfortable being uncomfortable) countless times when teaching math and physics.
I think it's pretty frustrating if the songs/pieces you actually want to play are demanding or even at the virtuoso level.
If you really want to play a David Gilmour guitar solo or sing some Led Zeppelin, it better not suck because it won't hit the mark at all.
For me, the reason to pick up the guitar as a kid was to play stuff I liked, stuff that turned out not to be that easy, and every time I play, I feel that gap of where I feel I should be to respect the music I'm trying to play.
Rick Beato did a video about being able to identify guitarists by a single note. David Gilmour was by far the easiest to recognize. It got me wondering how much work would it take to even be able to play a single note as well as David Gilmour. And even then I would still only be imitating someone, not creating something original.
Wow, true. The David Gilmour note is plain as day. Only other one nearly as easy for me was EVH. The Jimi note sounded like Jimi but like the top comment says, a lot of the others sounded like Jimi too.
Jimi and Eddie are the two singularities of guitar, though. Before them it was unimaginable for anyone to sound like that. After them it was the normal.
(Although they're also tones that a lot of players still try to chase for their entire lives and never really reach. There's some magic to them beyond the more obvious steps.)
I've heard two people separately tell me that Yo Yo Ma would start his concert by playing a single long, low note. And they both told me they were immediately hooked.
There's plenty of good stuff that's hard to play, but there's also so much good stuff that's relatively easy.
It's also obvious to me that at this point I'm never going to reach the virtuoso level even if I really wanted to, but so what? I suck, but whenever I manage to play something that I couldn't before it brings me joy.
I picked up singing 4 years ago (I’m 42 now), starting from nothing, and I’ve been taking regular lessons. I still suck. But I suck slightly less than I did when I was starting, and what motivates me is the sheer joy that it brings. I just hope it lasts.
Yes, the number of amazingly talented people on YouTube has a way of making it feel like it isn't worth pursuing. But that is a combination of the sheer number of people, and "the algorithm" that allows you to find so many of them at that skill level. It creates a pressure that you feel like you must be equally amazing, or just give up.
The reality is, you're probably better than at least half of their followers. If that actually matters in the grand scheme anyway.
Embrace the suck. You don't become great coloring in the lines; that only gets you to the 100th percentile. Smearing the paint creates the 101st percentile, which drops everyone else to the 99th.
In a career, seeming competent can be valuable, but for learning something new and creative, it often just creates a barrier to getting started.