I have a very similar situation with my 12 year old granddaughter. We've been up and down this route since she was about 8 and her little sister who doesn't play any instrument, loves to sing and especially enjoys recording.

I'll share some of my experiences.

Maddie as taken piano lessons since she was 5 or 6 and plays pretty well and regularly. She has gotten too busy and no longer takes lessons.

One of Maddie's other grandfathers gave her a small guitar when she was about 8. She could play the Smoke on the Water riff within the hour. She learned the opening bass line of My Girl from me. Several other riffs but no chords.

Thinking it was the quality of the beginers guitar, I got her a better guitar. She would play it at least every other day but didn't want to take lessons or learn chords.

Purchased her a Tascam DP008 multitrack recorder. The menus of these small recorders and her lack of understanding multitrack recording too difficult to work for her -- Bottom line, money wasted and closet space filled.

She has a love for music and plunks on the guitar. Got to be some natural talent, right?

So, Christmas past, took an old laptop, cleaned up the HD, and purchased her BIAB Pro Pak. Registered it in her name and made one more attempt to jump start her -- gave her my Ibanez Semi-hollow $600 guitar so she would actually have something decent and easy to play that would stay in tune.

Spent a hour and a half showing her just the easy basics of how to find songs, chord progressions off the internet and load them into BIAB.

Then Softball started. Practice, games, tournaments, regular team, travel team, pitching coach - it was everything softball and no BIAB, no guitar lessons her mother promised, no more guitar playing in her room - no time.

Fast forward to a few weeks ago. She comes up and said,You know, I appreciate the nice guitar and all, but I'd give it back to you if you got me a Ukelele......

Purchased her a nice ukulele, Some current pop star has a hit that features the instrument. Maddie got on line, learned what the chords of that song were, learned those chords, watched a few YouTube videos and could play the song and sing it in about an hour and half. She plays it every day. Takes the Ukulele nearly everywhere she goes and can play dozens of songs... and gave me back my guitar..

As for little sister Emma - see for yourself - Emma - Burning House

BIAB 2025:RB 2025, Latest builds: Dell Optiplex 7040 Desktop; Windows-10-64 bit, Intel Core i7-6700 3.4GHz CPU and 16 GB Ram Memory.