I'm sitting here listening to Youngest play the guitar and sing. While admittedly, its unlikely that I'm totally objective, I will say without contradiction that he is playing and singing very well. That skill is something that he developed in less than a year, because he wanted it.

 

As a bit of background, you may know that among other things, I love music, and have always played music and musical instruments around the house and elsewhere. I grew up in a house filled with music and everyone on my side of the family plays something. I have always been very interested in passing that interest on to Eldest and Youngest, and I am firmly convinced they each have a predisposition to understand music and use it as a personal form of expression. First, I watched Eldest learn the piano. She started with a strict, performance based technical teacher who demanded perfection, pointed out every mistake and drove her students to recitals where she (the teacher) was in reality the center of attention.  She absolutely hated it (of course). She hated the fact that the teacher's emphasis was on performance, and she was never satisfied. She hated the formality of the recitals. She hated being judged based on whether her performance met to a "T" the notes transcribed on the page. Initially, that made her think she hated music and the piano, but we switched teachers to someone who let it be fun, a teacher who used more contemporary selections at first, and who was not concerned as much with performance as she was in transmitting a love for the art. That's not to say she was in anyway less committed to excellence, she just defined excellence as something different that performing like a soldier and drill sergeant.  Eldest blossomed. She learned to love music from the heart. She ultimately learned to play some of the most difficult classical pieces you can imagine with great precision (so she had to learn the technical side), but she didn't learn it by the crack of the whip, but because she was inspired to love music and she wanted to learn it.

I always wanted Youngest to learn an instrument too so we can play things as a family. We talked about piano, guitar drums, and even signed him up for piano lessons when he was very young. Like Eldest, he absolutely hated it at first. The whole idea of learning yet another discipline just for the sake of discipline made little sense. So instead of prodding him or forcing him to work at it until he learned some technique, I just got out all our guitars and other instruments and put them in a room so they are easily accessible. I bought a bass guitar some electrics and amplifiers and let him fool around with them with his friends. No discern-able demands; no expressed expectations other than my encouragement that he experiment. Admittedly, I played the same instruments a lot alone, with Eldest and even with friends. Eventually, he became interested and started picking them up on his own. He started playing with the band at church before he was ready, and that total immersion made him want to get better. Now, I'm convinced that if I had tried to force the issue at the piano stage, he would have rebelled to some degree and ultimately hated the whole thing. Of course, as the parent, I could have forced the issue, I could have made him take the lessons, even give him consequences that would encourage him to practice, but I couldn't force him to love the art form. He learned because he wanted to learn.