There are plenty of alternative teaching methods for instruments. (TBH, I don't even know what you are referring to by "classical music", but yeah, some places can be quite oppressive.)

I was going to make a variant of this comment. $FAMOUS_COMPOSER's $REALLY_HARD suite is right there, you can get the sheet music and it clearly says "play this note, then play that one, then stop for a specific duration...and so on". That doesn't $EXPLETIVE mean that if you watch Khan Academy's video on how to play notes[1..n] you can play the music according to the composer's specification.

I think people who are frustrated they can't grok diff eq in a n-week course are likewise deluded. There is such a deeper meaning those symbols on the page, and I suspect there is simply no way to spoon feed it.