Originally Posted by Planobilly
It is my impression that mastering a particular skill takes around 7000 hours of diligent study for most things, such as becoming a pilot, a woodworker, or a bass player.
But it takes far less than that to learn a very limited set of skills that will lead to a well-defined output.

Let's say you want to be able to play a particular song on the piano. Not how to play every song on the piano, but a single song. Let's also say that you get a teacher to make sure you're no building in any bad habits as you progress through the process. That way, you can increase in speed as you memorize it, instead of getting locked up because your hand position is terrible, or the fingering is nonsensical.

There's a whole lot you don't need to learn. For example, you don't need to know the right fingering for all keys, or even the key the song is in - just the passages of that song. And so on.

I've met plenty of musicians who are mediocre at an instrument, but can play one song really well. It's little more than a party trick, and goodness knows how they learned that one song - probably because thought the song was really cool. But they learned it, and it's etched into their muscle memory.

And once you've got one song, you can move to the next. Certainly, you'll need time, but not 10,000 hours.

There's another element here that hasn't been mentioned: musicality. Because that transfers, and it's already part of your thinking.

When someone is first learning an instrument, they're focused on the mechanics of the music. That's why teachers tell students to focus on the music first and foremost, making everything you play feel musical, focusing on the timing, phrasing and dynamics.

If you play another instrument, hopefully that's already part of your thinking process. You already know how to feel the beat, find the groove, and use appropriate dynamics. You're not just playing notes and hoping you're hitting them at the right time - you're interpreting the notation into music.

-- David Cuny
My virtual singer development blog

Vocal control, you say. Never heard of it. Is that some kind of ProTools thing?