5 BIG Mistakes Adult Music Learners Make – And How To Fix Them

There are five BIG mistakes that adult music learners make. And if you’re an adult working on your music, I can pretty much guarantee you’re making one of these mistakes – if not all five! Today I’m going to share with you what those five mistakes are and how to fix them.

So this wasn’t the episode I was planning to do today, but I was inspired by something that came up last night. I was doing a coach’s corner recording session with our coaching team, and Andrew mentioned something that had been going on with one of his clients, which is just a real bugbear we see all the time at Musical U.

And if you’re new to us, if you don’t know, we specialise in helping adult music learners online. It’s what we’ve done since the beginning. We don’t do any stuff with kids. Our focus is helping adults improve their musicality and learn music faster and more easily.

And so we’ve really had the chance over 15 years to figure out how to help adults in particular, learn more effectively.

And I just want to say right up front, you may be suffering under a misconception that most adult music learners are, which is “it’s easier to learn music if you’re a kid”. I just want to get that right out the way, right up front, and we’ll be unpacking some of that a bit as we go on.

But we worry that if we didn’t do it by age twelve, we’ll never be able to do it, or that we envy the kids who seem to just be able to soak things up like a sponge. And in fact, if you look at the science of it, the research into neuroplasticity shows adults can learn just as much as kids. And actually, if you take advantage of the superlearning stuff we talk about here at Musical U, you can learn just as fast, if not faster.

And what I wanted to suggest is that actually maybe one big reason that kids do tend to learn faster than adults is because they don’t make these five mistakes we’re going to talk about today!

Before we dive in, I do want to say, as I cover these, please don’t feel bad or embarrassed or defensive if you are doing these, the whole point of the episode is to help you get past them.

They are all things I’ve gone through myself, and like I said at the outset, almost every adult learning music, learning an instrument, improving their musicality, is suffering from one or more of these. So definitely don’t feel bad if you can relate, it’s a good thing. Now you know about it, you can do something about it.

And the most successful musicians I know, and I’ve had the chance to interview so many amazing musicians, music educators, had the chance to work with so many amazing members here at Musical U. The most successful ones have all conquered these, but none of them did so without first struggling with them.

So whether they learned music as a kid or an adult, these mistakes, these misconceptions, these things we’re going to talk about today, they all bite us all at one point or another. The trick is just to know how to fix each one.

So here are the five big mistakes that adult music learners make and the solutions that you can apply right away.

Mistake number one: worrying it’s too late.

I touched on this already, but I’ll always remember this email I got back in the early days of Easy Ear Training, like 2009-2010 kind of time. We didn’t have a membership site at that point, so I was doing a lot of back and forth by email with our customers who were using our ear training materials.

And I’ll always remember this one email I got from this guy who was like, blah, blah, blah, a bit about me, what I’m doing, “I’m worried that it’s too late. I’m worried it’s too late for me to ever get good at music. I’m 19 now” and blah, blah, blah.

And when I read the email, I just cracked up. I was like “He’s 19! And he’s worried it’s too late.”

And I can, you know, I don’t mean for a second to make fun of the guy. I can relate. And even now, there are moments where I’m like, oh, I really wish I’d just, you know, gone harder at it faster in the early years.

And it’s fine to daydream in that way, but the vital thing to know is that it doesn’t matter.

We have so many examples of musicians at Musical U who have literally started from scratch in their eighties and nineties and become very competent, very capable, very confident, very creative. It’s absolutely possible.

I often think, actually, of Albert Frantz over at Key Notes. One of my favorite people in music education.

He’s a great example of someone who has reached the very top of the classical piano world. He’s a concert pianist at the top level, and he started in earnest as an adult. He started learning as a kid, and then got discouraged by his teacher, who told him he wasn’t talented, gave it up, came back as an adult, and reached that level.

So that’s just one example. And there’s so many from, you know, music history and famous musicians who just emerged out of nowhere as an adult, too.

So many adult music learners will trip themselves up with that doubt that, you know, “I’ll never make it. I’ll never be the musician I want to be. Because I started learning late. I missed the opportunity. It’s too late for me”.

And if you’re always worrying about that, you’re going to have one foot on the brakes. You’re never going to really be leaning forwards with full force into your music learning.

And let’s think about it. Kids don’t do that, right?

And with good reason, if you’re seven years old, it would be even more crazy to worry that it was too late. But, you know, my kids never worry that it’s too late for them to get good at French or too late to learn an instrument. And they lean fully forwards into everything as a result.

And the solution then, for us as adults is, is to really simply just smash that false belief.

It is not true. And as long as you entertain that thought, as long as you allow yourself to worry that it’s too late, you’ll never be able to make the progress you could.

So if you need concrete proof to be able to smash that limiting belief, I’ll put a link in the shownotes to our Reviews page. Not to pump up Musical U, but just to say, like, there’s dozens and dozens of videos on that page of adult learners having incredible breakthroughs. So if you have any doubt of what’s possible for you, that should really inspire and encourage you.

So that’s mistake number one.

Mistake number two, somewhat related, is just: To doubt your potential.

And this is, you know, a bit regardless of age, it’s that thing of, do I have talent? Do I have what it takes? Am I any good at music? Am I inherently a good musician?

And this is the one that held me back personally the most of these five.

For years, I thought I wasn’t talented in music, I’d never be a good musician. And I was so devoted to music. I loved music so much, I kept at it, I kept slogging away.

I was doing the stuff to learn music, but it really was like I had one foot on the brakes. When I look back now, it’s because there was a part of my brain that was always like “This is kind of pointless. Like, what, am I fooling myself? Like, what am I doing? Clearly those guys are talented. I’m not. Why would I bother?”

And that part of my brain was constantly sabotaging me, and it was killing my motivation from time to time, and it was just discouraging me at the smallest things.

This is what we talk about as the “talent myth” at Musical U.

And if that idea is new to you, I’ll just very short nutshell-summary: all of the research has proven pretty conclusively that there is no such thing as talent for music – or in general, in fact.

Everything we associate with talent can be explained by the particular learning process the person went through.

Kids don’t worry if they’re talented! Kids will dive into anything they’re enthusiastic about and interested in. They’ll try learning anything. They’ll try doing anything.

They don’t stop and think “oh, should I play sports? Because I’m not sure I’m talented”. They don’t stop and think “should I, you know, bang on that drum? I’m not sure I’m talented enough to”. And so they charge fully forwards into everything.

The solution to this one is a concept from the world of psychology research. A researcher called Carol Dweck coined the terms “fixed mindset” and “growth mindset”.

And this is one of those things where once you hear about it, it can become a touchpoint you keep coming back to to keep yourself on track.

And again, very nutshell summary: “fixed mindset” says “I was born with certain abilities and certain potential. All I can possibly do is try and live up to that potential. There are going to be some things that are out of reach. That’s just the way it is. Mistakes really should discourage me because it means I’m not good enough”.

“Growth mindset”, by contrast, is the attitude that “anything is possible for you. Anything is learnable for you. No matter what experiences in the past or what kind of innate abilities you might have been born with. You can learn to do whatever you want to do. And when you encounter mistakes or setbacks, you see them as learning opportunities”.

And so once you have those two models in mind, the really exciting thing is that it’s just a choice.

Growth mindset is itself learnable. And so if you find yourself struggling with mistake number two, doubting your own potential in music, the solution is really to commit to that growth mindset and say, I can’t do it YET, I’m not good enough YET, and really take that forward looking perspective on everything and set aside the talent myth and anything that tells you that you might innately not have what it takes.

Mistake number three: needing all of the intellectual understanding before you even start.

This was the one that came up on Coaches Corner yesterday. Andrew was talking about one of his Next Level clients who was really feeling the need to understand every step of the way before getting started.

And, you know, there’s nothing wrong with having a good plan. Plans are great. There’s nothing wrong with intellectually understanding the process of learning that you’re going to be going through.

But the trouble with it is that learning never happens in a straight line. And our musical journeys take all kinds of twists and turns, and that’s part of what makes it wonderful.

But as adults in particular, we are so trained by the educational system to think logically and plan everything out, and everything should be step-by-step, and that’s the correct way to do things. It’s really hard for us to engage with that more childlike model of learning, which is exploration.

You know, kids don’t worry about knowing every step of the Lego project they’re building before they begin. They just kind of dive in there and put blocks in place, right?

And the biggest danger, I think, for adult learners, beyond even that thing of “until I know steps one through 30, I’m not even going to take step one”, it’s also that it makes us particularly vulnerable to so-called Shiny Object Syndrome, where, you know, we leap about from this to that, and maybe THAT’s the solution.

And often when people talk about Shiny Object Syndrome, it’s seen kind of as a focus and discipline problem. And you know, it’s something where if you’re not, if you’re not diligent enough, you’ll be susceptible to Shiny Object Syndrome.

But what I’ve seen a lot in adult music learners is that actually they jump from thing to thing feeling very diligent and rigorous because they are seeking that full map of everything.

And so they’ll jump from thing to thing, not because they’re unfocused or easily distracted, but because something else comes up and they can’t quite see the path ahead on the route they’re on, and so they jump to that other thing, hoping it will be a clear path forwards.

And so that’s, you know, in the age of the internet and YouTube, it’s such a danger for adult learners.

So even if you’re being quite careful and diligent, if you’ve got this mistake going on of feeling like you need to know the whole plan before you get started, those shiny objects are going to come thick and fast!

The solution to this one is to eat the elephant one bite at a time.

You know that old saying, how do you eat an elephant? One bite at a time.

You really have to understand that even if you want your music journey to be as direct and straight line like as possible, you’re not going to see it all on step one. You can’t possibly. Even if you’re using the best resources, even if you have the best teacher or the best course to follow, it’s not going to go as you expect it to.

And if you’re expecting it to, you’re going to trip yourself up again and again when it doesn’t quite go how you expected or you can’t quite get started because you don’t understand step 17.

An analogy I like to come back to is an airplane. When the pilot puts an airplane on autopilot or when they launch a rocket into space, they have a clear destination in mind. They point at that destination, more or less, and then there’s constant course correction all along.

I heard a stat the other day that a rocket going into space makes thousands upon thousands of course corrections along the way. And so what really matters here is having that clear destination and then being ready for those course corrections and being okay with the fact that you can’t see every step ahead.

So I did an episode recently about the Big Picture Vision, your “north star” in music. That’s a great way to think about the “destination”.

And what’s awesome is that can be where you’re pointed and then you can allow the journey to flex and twist and turn along the way.

Another big part of the solution here is to find a trusted guide. Whether it’s a teacher or a coach or an organization you trust, put yourself in their hands, and then accept that you won’t see the full path ahead. Just get going.

I often think of that Steve Jobs quote. He gave a really good commencement speech that went viral online, and he said “you can’t connect the dots looking forwards. You can only connect them looking back.”

And I find that really deeply reassuring from someone as successful as him. He accepted that he would have to just kind of trust and follow and take the next step. And then looking back, it would be like “well, of course, that’s how it worked!”

So that’s how it could be in your musical life. If you have the clear destination and you allow yourself to twist and turn a bit, not expecting yourself to have all the intellectual understanding of the process before you even start.

Mistake number four that comes up a lot: Being too modest in your ambitions.

Being unambitious in your musical journey.

So recently we did that “Discover Your Musical Core” training, yourmusicalcore.com, and one of the big, impactful bits of that was going through the Big Picture Vision exercise. And again, we did a recent episode. I’ll put a link in the shownotes if you don’t know what I’m talking about.

We went through that exercise together, and from the comments during the session and the feedback afterwards, what really stood out was how many people were realising just how modest their aspirations had been.

So some of them had done what I just described as a good thing of, you know, getting involved, taking the next step, seeing how it goes, adjusting course along the way. But they hadn’t really sat down to think about, what do I want in my musical life? What is my ideal musical future? What is the version of me as a musician that I’m actually aiming for and inspired by and excited about?

And it made them realize that they had kind of, by default, been really unambitious. Like, they’ve been like, oh, maybe I’ll get a bit better at guitar, or, I’d quite like to write a song one day.

Compared to what they truly wanted. And when they took a bit of time to really think about that, it made them realise their vision was way up here and what they had been subconsciously, quietly aiming for was way down here again.

Kids don’t do this. You ask kids what they want to be when they grow up. They say pop star. They say, you know, a fireman. They say a university professor, whatever it may be. They don’t say “I’d quite like a job that pays me okay and covers my bills and I don’t hate it too much”, which, realistically, is what a lot of adults settle for, right?

And it’s not just about life vocation, obviously. It’s like anything kids want to do. They’re like “I’m going to be the best footballer in the world!”

And we really could do with channeling some of that ambition and some of that enthusiasm and allowing ourselves to dream a little bit more.

So the big solution here to this one, it’s quite simple, in fact.

It’s to separate out your “vision” from your “goals”. And this was another big impactful point from that training, was a lot of people, if they think about their musical aspirations, they get immediately caught up in goal-setting.

And goals are great, planning is great, don’t get me wrong. Essential.

But it is separate from your vision. And actually, again, on Coaches Corner last night, Andrew talked really eloquently about this, that, you know “vision”, that word, it’s about dreaming, it’s about daydreaming, it’s about imagining.

And when you allow yourself to give those two different boxes: “these over here are my concrete goals. They’re what I’m going to work on.I’m going to figure out the plan. I’m going to move towards them. And over here, that’s my vision. That drives everything. And there are no limits on that, and there’s no reality on that. And there’s no being realistic, and there’s no being, you know, sensible. It’s just, what do I truly, deeply want in my wildest dreams?”

And when you separate them like that, it really frees you from this trap of being too modest in your aspirations, because the adult, critical, analytical part of your brain can be like “here are my goals, I’m working on my goals”. But then the deeper part of us can be like “I’m inspired by my vision. This is why I’m doing everything. This is where I’m going to get to one day”.

And the last thing I’ll say is just, you know, the inspiring quote I often think of on this one is “Shoot for the moon. Even if you fail, you’ll land among the stars”.

And I think, was it W. Clement Stone who said that originally? Have to check the reference. But that quote always sticks in my head because (astronomy aside, I’m not sure it’s quite technically true, moon and stars!) the bottom line is, when you have that vision mind, it automatically drags your goals upwards.

It automatically pulls you forwards more. But it can’t do that if you keep it anchored to the ground. So you really have to shoot for the moon with the vision and then allow the goals to lead you more and more towards it.

Mistake number five, big mistake number five, without which all the others can, can still totally sabotage you, I think.

Mistake number five is to not ask for help.

And this is definitely one I can relate to. I am someone who, by nature is very independent, very independent minded, very keen to just do my own thing and sort it out myself. And it took me a long time to get better and better at asking for help when I needed it.

And you know what’s maybe the clearest example of this to me is over the years at Musical U, we have cultivated such a supportive and friendly environment in our community. And we say so often “just ask for help! If you have a question, just post! If you need us, reach out to the team!”

We really communicate that throughout the site, throughout everything we do, and we try and really encourage people.

And yet still today, we’ll occasionally get a member who cancels their membership after a few months and they’ll say, you know, I haven’t been making any progress. And we look and they literally haven’t posted a single comment or sent a single message or email. They haven’t once asked for help.

And, you know, I feel defensive enough to say, you know, our training is really good for DIY! A lot of people have a lot of success without asking for help. But sometimes someone needed a bit of help and they got stuck and they didn’t reach out for help. And that kills me.

And again, I can relate.

You know, that the image I always have in my mind is that bedroom musician who is slogging away, and they’re looking at the YouTube tutorials and they’re reading the music theory textbook and they’re just really trying. But they’re doing it in such isolation.

There’s no hope, in a way, because once in a while you need someone to reach down and give you a hand. And, you know, a single sentence can make all the difference. If you post a question, suddenly a block is removed for you. But that can’t happen if nobody knows you’re struggling.

So again, this is one that I feel has really gotten worse and worse in this incredible age of the internet with all of the abundant information online, that bedroom musician slogging it out alone can feel like “I have all the information. I should be able to learn this”.

But there’s just no substitute from being able to ask a question or get clarification or get a bit of guidance and have someone who knows what they’re talking about and has had the experience and has probably helped thousands of people like you just kind of reach down and remove that big barrier that’s otherwise holding you back.

So I’ve touched on the solution there. The solution, just like finding a trusted guide, can help with one of the others: find a trusted community.

And I know for a lot of people, if they have musical friends or family members or they’re working with a teacher, that can be the person to reach out to. In other cases, those aren’t people you want to admit any flaws with, or it’s not people you feel comfortable admitting you don’t understand with or asking too many questions.

So, you know, that’s really where the community at Musical U steps in for a lot of our members, is to fill that void and give them a safe space where they can ask as many questions as they like and get the answers. So whether it’s family and friends or an online community like we’ve created or like, we see it even more so inside Next Level, if you have a trusted coach and other people in that tight-knit community, it just makes all the difference in the world.

The more willing you can be to ask for help, the more success you’ll have.

And again, kids don’t do this, right? When my six year old needs help with something, she will ask for help with something!

And it gradually gets beaten out of us as adults. I think partly because we, you know, get told not to ask too many questions.

But more because our ego develops over the years and starts to make us embarrassed to admit when we don’t know something or can’t do something.

But we’re a student! We’re learning! We’re trying to get better! It’s total nonsense to not ask for help. And the more you can do it, the more success you’ll have.

All you need to do is find that trusted, safe space where you can ask all the questions you want.

So that’s the fifth mistake, is to not ask for help along the way. And the solution, figure out where you can ask for help with no hesitation and get good answers.

So, to recap then.

Mistake number one is worrying it’s too late. And the solution here is just to smash that limiting belief.

If you need examples, I’ll put a link in the shownotes. But there is absolutely no reason to believe you can’t learn everything you want to in music as an adult, even if you just started yesterday. We literally, again, have people in their eighties and nineties who improve faster than kids do and achieve more than most children ever do in music. So it is not too late.

Mistake number two is to doubt your own potential, to get caught up in that Talent Myth and worried that you don’t have what it takes. The solution is to know about this idea of “fixed mindset” and “growth mindset” and know that you can choose growth mindset.

You can choose to believe that everything is learnable for you. You have no limits on your potential. You have no innate ceiling you’re going to hit. Everything you want to learn can be learned.

Mistake number three is needing all of the intellectual understanding of every step of the way before you even get started. The solution is just to eat the elephant one bite at a time. Learn to accept that the path is going to be dark and dingy ahead of you, and it’ll become clearer as you move forwards.

Mistake number four, being too modest in your ambitions and particularly confusing “vision” and “goals”. So the solution is to separate those two. Let your goals be very concrete, very realistic – you know, SMART is the acronym a lot of people use, and one of those letters stands for Realistic.

Goals can be realistic. Fantastic. Your vision should be your wildest dreams and you should keep that vision burning bright to guide you forwards, help with the goal-setting and help gradually drag those goals to be more and more ambitious.

And mistake number five is to not ask for help. The solution is just to find a trusted community, whether it’s friends and family, a teacher, an online community, or whatever it is, somewhere you can ask the questions you need to ask and get the help you need to keep moving forwards fast.

I really held up kids there, as you know, not falling into these traps. And I just think it’s so clear cut.

Kids move fast because they don’t trip themselves up in these five ways, right?

And we need to remember, too, the benefits of being an adult.

As an adult, we’re more organized. We probably have more control over our time. We definitely have a better attention span and ability to maintain focus.

We’ve got years not only of intellectual understanding and ability to learn things quickly, but also years of musical vocabulary and instinct for music that’s in there just waiting to be brought out.

So there are vast benefits to being an adult, as long as you don’t fall into these five traps and have the brakes on with one foot.

So, to wrap things up, there is absolutely nothing you can’t accomplish in music if you stop making these five big mistakes.

We see it every day inside Musical U. The more you can get yourself out of these five traps, the more you can become aware of them, the more you can learn the solutions and really put them into practice, the faster and more enjoyably you will move forwards in your musical life.

That’s it for this one. Cheers! And go make some music!