I am a hobby (unplugged) woodworker with a quite large collection of vintage tools... it all started because I needed some basic temporary furniture for the new house and w were broke enough to not be able to afford it - the kitchen I built is still around after 7 years and I have developed a lot in this area.

I use manual cameras, or digital cameras in manual mode / with manual lenses because that's how I learned photography in 1990's

I like to cook, 95% of our meals are home made, I can prepare a whole week worth of meals in abut 3 hours, including cleaning. I usually just improvise, my wife says I can make a delicious meal out of an empty fridge...

Yet music somehow eludes me - and it is THE thing I have always wanted to be proficient at way more than any of the above. I just don't have any idea how to approach it. Let's say I get a musical instrument - be it a piano (keyboard), a guitar, saxophone or percussion. What's next? Practice the notes until I'm "touch-typing" them? Then try to mix and match? Try to play some sheet music or repeat what I've heard before by brute-forcing? I am actually able to re-create a simple melody by trying the keys on a toy keyboard, but in all the other areas (woodworking, cooking, photography) I went almost straight to improvisation - which I enjoy the most - and I have the feeling that in music there is some set of basic skills required to unlock this, yet I don't know what it entails. Woodworking is all about hiding the imperfections, photography is about selecting the best shots / being prepared for lucky timing, and an imperfect meal can be (usually) fixed with herbs/spices/salt. Music is either spot on, or too far off to be tolerable - am I missing some middle ground opportunity here?

I'm learning it with an electric guitar plugged into my xbox using the game/app Rocksmith. It's not the recommended approach for beginners. But I'm having so much fun with it that I'm going to see how far I can go before I signup for classes. That and JustinGuitar is how I'm approaching it. The whole investment was under $300 (not including the xbox). I'm assuming that music is going to take a while before I feel I have anything resembling mastery of it. My goal is different - I just want to blow off steam playing music instead of a video game or watching TV. It's a very modest goal at this point. YMMV depending on what you're trying to achieve.

learn to play songs you like. all you need to do this is a few chords. if you choose guitar, there's tonnes of tabs out there, and if you choose piano, just read the guitar tabs and translate the notes/chords.

but most importantly, play songs you like! sing along! play around with the lyrics! whatever!

I’ve spent the better part of a decade trying to learn an instrument and I’m terrible at the guitar. I guess it’s just not for some people.