> This is very accurate to me. In the last few years I've been learning ukulele / guitar / bass / mandolin / banjo, and it took a LOT of time and practice before I could control my muscles well enough to use less effort. When you're starting you just don't have the necessary dexterity, and it's very easy as an expert to forget about those early days, especially if you learned very young.

Every time I learn a new instrument I'm reminded of the fact that many things just need to be drilled into your brain stem. I know how to play piano and sight read music for it but I can't do either because I haven't put the seat time in to do it in real time. I'm learning (electric) upright bass right now and there are a dozen technique issues I've noticed that I have to fix but I can only focus on a few of them at once.

Putting forth zero effort is how one ends up sloppy and stagnant. You instead need to be aware of your cognitive and parasympathetic bandwidth and how to utilize each to practice to a meaningful end.

I've wanted to be able to play boogie-woogie piano for a long time, and as a pianist who took a decade of lessons and has played for another 30 years after that, I feel like I should know how to play just about anything, right?

Of course that's ridiculous. Boogie-woogie piano has very strong rhythm in the left hand which needs to be drilled until you can play it without any thought - and then for the right hand, you need to learn how to play all the little bluesy riffs, runs, etc. None of this is especially difficult in isolation (one hand at a time), but doing two complicated new things at once is just too much.

So I've just been practicing the pieces individually until I can do them automatically - my brain becomes more like a conductor telling my hands to play specific macros.