A supportive environment makes a world of difference. I hsf people around early on to who offered constructive advice and encouragement and that made all the difference.

One of my dad's greatest pieces of advice he gave me came as we drove back from a wrestling match I lost, like every single one before that one. As I hung my head in tired shame, he said, "people show more character in defeat than in victory."

Rudyard Kipling, If. http://www.poetryfoundation.org/poem/175772

I think I'd have had an (initial) advantage over someone who absolutely sucks at music and is learning to sing or play a percussion instrument.

I feel the same thing when I look at people who are much smarter than me when it comes to intelligence.

As you get older, the only way to sustain that sort of advantage is to work hard at things you're not good at, but that requires stepping outside your comfort zone. Which is unpleasant. And additionally so if you had "innate ability" when you were younger (which I think is usually more about exposure than people realize).

With music the contrast between the desired outcome and the actual results for a beginner is extremely, painfully, embarrassingly obvious. The whole point is that you want to make beautiful sounds, not horrible sounds. You want to be in tune, in rhythm, melodious, but instead you feel clumsy, weak, confused, tone deaf, and awkward.

So that can easily kill your whole motivation if you don't really internalize the idea of progressive learning.

John Holt's book "How Children Learn" has some thoughts about learning instruments.

> There is a special sense in which it may be fair to say that the child scientist is a less efficient thinker than the adult scientist. He is not as good at cutting out unnecessary and useless information, at simplifying the problem, at figuring out how to ask questions whose answers will give him the most information. Thus, a trained adult thinker, seeing a cello for the first time, would probably do in a few seconds what it takes a child much longer to do—bow each of the strings, to see what sounds they give, and then see what effect holding down a string with the left hand has on the sound made by that string

> That is, if—and it is a very big if—he could bring himself to touch the cello at all. Where the young child, at least until his thinking has been spoiled by adults, has a great advantage is in situations—and many, even most real life situations are like this—where there is so much seemingly senseless data that it is impossible to tell what questions to ask. He is much better at taking in this kind of data; he is better able to tolerate its confusion; and he is much better at picking out the patterns, hearing the faint signal amid all the noise. Above all, he is much less likely than adults to make hard and fast conclusions on the basis of too little data, or having made such conclusions, to refuse to consider any new data that does not support them. And these are the vital skills of thought which, in our hurry to get him thinking the way we do, we may very well stunt or destroy in the process of "educating him".

> But the greatest difference between children and adults is that most of the children to whom I offer a turn on the cello accept it, while most adults, particularly if they have never played any other instrument, refuse it.

One thing that really sparked my motivation for music even while I was sucking horribly was the realization that you can make pretty neat melodies in very simple ways, for example by just improvising on the 0 2 3 5 7 9 10 frets on the high E string and sometimes hitting the low E string for bass—this way you can sound kind of like an Indian raga without too much practice.

Once I noticed that the black piano keys are a pentatonic scale... Just sit with your eyes closed, spread your hands out and feel the black keys. They're raised and so easy to find. try not to play adjacent black keys. Do this with both hands. If you want higher or lower notes, move hands in that direction. Play with rhythms. Play a pattern on one hand and just let the other bounce around. find a few interesting chords to come back to - resolve to. But most of all, do this with your eyes closed. You'll be surprised what comes out after a bit.

I'm a bit of a hippie in that I'm biased towards innate creativity and improvisation as opposed to strict learning of traditional established forms of music.

I realize that's a false dichotomy but it's semi-useful.

I only took a small number of music lessons but they were definitely focused on learning the exact way to play finished songs by established artists. There's nothing wrong with that, it's quite satisfying to play things you recognize, and it's probably easier to teach in some ways.

But improvisation is such a magical, living thing. I haven't tried to teach someone in this way, but if I did, I would focus on exercises exactly like the one you describe.

I would show the student how beautiful music can be created spontaneously through the application of patterns and "restricted subsets" (scales, chords, etc).

I've met some people who work with musical therapy. I believe they focus on this type of thing a lot. I don't know why in years of music class in school I never came across anything like it: free improvisation based on restricted creativity.