Some things are impossible to teach yourself; you can't be a self-taught pilot.
But other things are possible but at the outer limit. You can do it. But you would have to be a masochist or plain nuts. I don't put chess at the top of that list. I taught myself the moves from a library book. There is another skill that I taught myself from absolute scratch about 5 years ago. It is in my opinion the hardest possible self taught activity: composing music.
I expected to last 5 minutes when I found a 1930's cheap booklet on music notation fundamentals. I didn't know what a note was. I emailed some music teachers but as an adult they don't want to know you; they just want the kids' market. At first it was hopeless. I don't know why I didn't give it up. Any sensible person would have thrown the booklet out the window. It wasn't an easy read. Its 1930's songs were foreign to me. I'm not THAT much of an old timer.
Maybe it was to escape personal problems. Maybe it just an obsessive streak that it brought out in me for better or worse. Soon I started composing music scores all day and all night. My scores were bad. That said, I got no support; I saw a music composing competition and there were 2 weeks left till the deadline. I decided to do the required 10 minute piano score entry and submit. That is a HUGE amount of composing. I was bonkers. Somehow I managed through working myself all day and all night to finish the score in time, then I got it bound as required, and I submitted it. As I placed it in the postbox I knew that however bad my score was, to get it done by the deadline was Herculean in itself.
But all I got was a contemptuous response a few months later that basically I didn't deserve to enter. Great. Everything's a product huh? Human experiences don't matter? Well count me out of that. I am proud of what I did. Even if the cognoscenti of musicality and academia want me to be ashamed of my efforts. I am also not stupid; I always knew that I wasn't going to win it. But that wasn't ever the point. I still have the score somewhere. Later I put it onto a VST virtual piano [I don't play any instrument whatsoever] and posted it on a music forum. I said there that it was my first ever composition, as distinct from fragmented, embryonic attempts. I even needed to have a paper sheet next to me as I composed saying "EGBDF", "FACE", Good boys do fine always and All Cows Eat Grass. Yes. I was that green back then.
To my amazement I eventually got the above down and I didn't need the cheat sheets anymore. The chords were a mystery to me. These weird combined thing chords spooked me. Slash chords lol. Over two more years of crazy obsessive madness I managed to get most basic music theory down: keys, modes, chords, articulations and stuff. I got no support from anyone. Forums on composing were full of such rude, anti social toxic people that I stopped any forum activity.
In the end I made a boatload of totally original music that I still have. Sometimes I dig up some of it and play it as I walk around the house. Then I have to blink a few times; that music would not exist if I had not made it. But now I have stopped making it. It was such hard work. It's in the same hard work category as novel writing. Every note is like one sentence in a novel longer than War and Peace. Eventually I got burnt out. I was probably burnt out at l;east a year before I stopped. There was also my move to Linux because of the abomination of Windows 10. That left me without a lot of the musical tools that I had.
What a waste. In the end I was making proper music. If I played it in a mall people walking past would think isn't that someone famous who made that. I never thought that I could do that. That anything remotely musical ever came from my labours was a miracle. But I got no support; I only got contempt.
I cannot think of anything that would be harder to teach yourself. At least in chess there is a rating to measure progress; in music there is no clear way of seeing progress. I was bonkers. Now I feel like Joseph Conrad did after he wrote Heart of Darkness: you wake up realizing that you haven't thought about your friends or family for years. And for what? For some smart alec hoity toity musical academic apparatchik muppet to not want to listen to your musical entry? My main disappointment is that as someone who doesn't play piano I only wanted someone to play one of my scores. Not in public. Not to make me money. Just to play it, even if they didn't like it. At one stage I even thought about finding someone and paying them to play one of my scores.
There is ability out there in the world. At last there are people who are as bonkers as I am to teach themselves. But if society doesn't want to know about it. If all that matters is the "product", then even someone sincere about it finds something else to do. I wonder what it was all for. I ruined my health doing it. Yes. I know. Nothing is worth your heath. That said, if I had got any support for my efforts I may have made music in a healthier fashion.
But other things are possible but at the outer limit. You can do it. But you would have to be a masochist or plain nuts. I don't put chess at the top of that list. I taught myself the moves from a library book. There is another skill that I taught myself from absolute scratch about 5 years ago. It is in my opinion the hardest possible self taught activity: composing music.
I expected to last 5 minutes when I found a 1930's cheap booklet on music notation fundamentals. I didn't know what a note was. I emailed some music teachers but as an adult they don't want to know you; they just want the kids' market. At first it was hopeless. I don't know why I didn't give it up. Any sensible person would have thrown the booklet out the window. It wasn't an easy read. Its 1930's songs were foreign to me. I'm not THAT much of an old timer.
Maybe it was to escape personal problems. Maybe it just an obsessive streak that it brought out in me for better or worse. Soon I started composing music scores all day and all night. My scores were bad. That said, I got no support; I saw a music composing competition and there were 2 weeks left till the deadline. I decided to do the required 10 minute piano score entry and submit. That is a HUGE amount of composing. I was bonkers. Somehow I managed through working myself all day and all night to finish the score in time, then I got it bound as required, and I submitted it. As I placed it in the postbox I knew that however bad my score was, to get it done by the deadline was Herculean in itself.
But all I got was a contemptuous response a few months later that basically I didn't deserve to enter. Great. Everything's a product huh? Human experiences don't matter? Well count me out of that. I am proud of what I did. Even if the cognoscenti of musicality and academia want me to be ashamed of my efforts. I am also not stupid; I always knew that I wasn't going to win it. But that wasn't ever the point. I still have the score somewhere. Later I put it onto a VST virtual piano [I don't play any instrument whatsoever] and posted it on a music forum. I said there that it was my first ever composition, as distinct from fragmented, embryonic attempts. I even needed to have a paper sheet next to me as I composed saying "EGBDF", "FACE", Good boys do fine always and All Cows Eat Grass. Yes. I was that green back then.
To my amazement I eventually got the above down and I didn't need the cheat sheets anymore. The chords were a mystery to me. These weird combined thing chords spooked me. Slash chords lol. Over two more years of crazy obsessive madness I managed to get most basic music theory down: keys, modes, chords, articulations and stuff. I got no support from anyone. Forums on composing were full of such rude, anti social toxic people that I stopped any forum activity.
In the end I made a boatload of totally original music that I still have. Sometimes I dig up some of it and play it as I walk around the house. Then I have to blink a few times; that music would not exist if I had not made it. But now I have stopped making it. It was such hard work. It's in the same hard work category as novel writing. Every note is like one sentence in a novel longer than War and Peace. Eventually I got burnt out. I was probably burnt out at l;east a year before I stopped. There was also my move to Linux because of the abomination of Windows 10. That left me without a lot of the musical tools that I had.
What a waste. In the end I was making proper music. If I played it in a mall people walking past would think isn't that someone famous who made that. I never thought that I could do that. That anything remotely musical ever came from my labours was a miracle. But I got no support; I only got contempt.
I cannot think of anything that would be harder to teach yourself. At least in chess there is a rating to measure progress; in music there is no clear way of seeing progress. I was bonkers. Now I feel like Joseph Conrad did after he wrote Heart of Darkness: you wake up realizing that you haven't thought about your friends or family for years. And for what? For some smart alec hoity toity musical academic apparatchik muppet to not want to listen to your musical entry? My main disappointment is that as someone who doesn't play piano I only wanted someone to play one of my scores. Not in public. Not to make me money. Just to play it, even if they didn't like it. At one stage I even thought about finding someone and paying them to play one of my scores.
There is ability out there in the world. At last there are people who are as bonkers as I am to teach themselves. But if society doesn't want to know about it. If all that matters is the "product", then even someone sincere about it finds something else to do. I wonder what it was all for. I ruined my health doing it. Yes. I know. Nothing is worth your heath. That said, if I had got any support for my efforts I may have made music in a healthier fashion.
