This was something I definitely did not have in my life. My parents didn’t really enjoy music, so they didn’t really care if we did either. Don’t get me wrong, I don’t hold it against them, and I prefer that they just let us go out own ways rather than trying to regiment us into learning things we couldn’t appreciate yet. I learned music on my own, mostly from listening to recordings and live musicians. I like this approach better for myself, because there’s a lot I can get out of a piece of music if I listen to it, and really listen.
Nice!
In my experiences, these kids weren’t the ones in regular piano lessons from the little old lady at the church, but they studied at conservatory programs and Talented And Gifted programs.
You rarely ever see that these days. It’s usually just piano and violin.
I played trombone and tuba in marching band, cello in orchestra, and bass, guitar, and a little bit of keyboards when I played in bands. I never got the hang of woodwind instruments. I like the idea of being able to play any instrument at least a little bit, so I have a good idea of what the instrument sounds like, what its range is, and what it can do musically.
Maybe. But what’s expected of a guitarist vs a pianist? Compare what your guitar playing friends can do against what’s expected of these Type A classical piano kids. I know guitar players who can play on that level, and they are serious musicians. Your friends probably are as well. They can play well because they studied music in one way or another, not because they are unconscious musical geniuses. To be good at any instrument, one needs to take it seriously.
Ours was somewhat limited. We learned how to read music, and we had basic recorder lessons in elementary school and a brief music appreciation class in middle school. The music appreciation teacher tried hard and was a good teacher, but couldn’t really cram all of music appreciation into one unit. It was probably lost on a lot of kids.
There were band classes in middle school and high school. Around this time, I also learned upright bass for jazz band, on this turn of the century Czech or German instrument that had been neglected almost to the point of firewood from sitting in a humid closet over the summers 
The people at the school were nice enough to let me take it home over the summer so I could learn classical technique on my own time, and I applied that technique to cello when I was in orchestra in college.*
My neighbors in Ohio have guitar lessons through the school starting in middle school. I’m not sure if this is a thing everywhere or not, but it’s nice to have.
*Our college had no music program. Making the orchestra was an accomplishment but not that impressive.
