Learning a music instrument is definetely something I have on my wishlist for quiet some time. Besides that the list also contains learning to draw, learning how to use a 3D modeling and animation program, getting into laser cut, …
Well, maybe it is more sort of a pile of shame. Well, 50+ years to go if everything goes well, so …
I have a mountain of shame. No need to feel inferior, yours will grow with age, along with your ears and nose.
I agree that playing an instrument and learning a language are similar. I have even heard it said that musicians make better language learners because they are used to listening. I have no idea how true that is.
I started learning to ice skate, and then play ice hockey, seven years ago. Skating is not dissimilar to learning a language, initially one performs a move with conscious incompetence. This transforms into conscious competence. And finally it develops into unconscious competence. I highly recommend ice skating to anyone who wants exercise and enjoyment,
What completely transformed my skating was taking weekly one on one lessons with a teacher spread over several years. I highly recommend you take guitar lessons once you pass the basics.
Psst: Would you like to buy an electric guitar? It’s somewhere in my mountain of shame. I realised after a year or so that I wasn’t prepared to put in the effort required to learn scales.
I had some idea of how much work it would be to learn a language – and I was right! – but I’ve learned from French that if I have real motivation, I can settle into the regular discipline to do the work and accept that progress will be slow, yet still find my efforts satisfying.
For me the trick is a compelling motivation. I just don’t have it for piano or Spanish for that matter. But I do for French and now electric guitar. There seems to be some chemistry involved.
I’ve been watching guitar videos and ran into a great piece of advice:
Get a guitar you love and want to play every time you see it.
I would probably start with a harmonica, as it doesn’t require much space and is comparably cheap. I would probably never take lessons as I prefer to learn on my own, although I don’t doubt it has its merits.
For me, music was a lot easier to internalize.
After six months practicing music every day, you should start to feel and think like a musician. It should start becoming part of who you are.
I’ve been studying French for six months and that hasn’t started to happen at all. Not yet, anyway.
Maybe because the music creates a higher emotional reaction?! I made the experience that I can remember things better I am emotionally tied to. For example, as a student I could remember english words good that appeared in lyrics of songs I liked. (Due to my music taste this caused me to grew a very strange vocabulary)
I can also remember formulas and theorems better if there is an elegant proof to them (like the pythagorean theorem). It just warms my heart
You bring up an important issue – that of identity. One of the most powerful paths to personal change is to enlarge one’s identity.
I’m still not sure why but my desire to learn French hit me like a thunderbolt when I started listening to 60s French yé-yé music again. It was like a religious conversion.
I started off feeling like I was French, but born in the wrong country and retarded when it came to the language.
I’ve been studying French 4-5 hours/day for 20 months now. At six months I was excited everyday for every tiny breakthrough, but I was still pretty pathetic.
However, I never stopped believing at some level I was French and I would someday be fluent.
Today I read 20 pages of a Maigret crime novel, almost double what I usually manage in a day.
Steve Kaufmann emphasizes the importance of identifying with the people of your target language.
Well, 50+ years to go if everything goes well, so … 
