Have you ever wondered if there is some sort of “trick” to learning a new musical instrument, or at least a way to make learning easier, that can be applied to any instrument? I believe that there is a transferable method to learning any instrument you want to. It is to deliberately break down the absolutely fundamental, basic techniques of each instrument into individual parts and master each part before getting down to actually playing a note. The more attention you pay to the absolute basics, the better off you will be in the long run as you will not have to go back and fix bad form. You might think this is fairly obvious, maybe not, but I will explain what I mean in detail.
Since I am primarily a stringed instrument player, I will use guitar as an example. When you first pick up a guitar, obviously there are various things you need to figure out how to do in order to play. You can break down each of these things individually and work on them one at a time. For example, the first thing you need to figure out when learning guitar is how to hold the instrument. This, by the way, is an example of what I mean about absolute fundamental technique: we aren’t talking about anything to do with playing a note or a chord…yet.
Are you going to sit down or stand up? You can hold the guitar in such a way that the position relative to your torso doesn’t change much, regardless of whether you’re sitting down or standing up. How do you adjust a guitar strap so you can make this happen? Once you have the guitar pressed against your torso, there’s proper arm placement. Where does your right arm go? Left arm?
Once you have body and arm position figured out, now you can work on hand and finger position. You can focus on one hand’s technique at a time. Don’t worry about what the other hand is doing yet, make sure you have the hand you’re working on positioned properly. Practice finger placement and related techniques with just that hand. You can practice strumming with your right hand before getting your left hand into the game. Same with the left hand; you can practice finger and hand position with your left hand without strumming or picking with the right hand. Once you are ready, you can combine both hands and play a note or chord.
Speaking of playing a note or a chord, you can now work on properly fretting the fingers of your left hand so that each note rings clearly and isn’t buzzing, muffled, or otherwise distorted. You need to work on finger placement and accuracy.
Hopefully by now you’ve gotten the point. I have purposely over-analyzed learning how to play a musical instrument. Break down what you need to do to learn a guitar into individual steps, and work on each one until you have learned how to do it properly. There is a lot you can do to make sure your form and technique is proper before ever getting into actually playing music. Develop your technique correctly from the start so you have the right muscle memory. It is likely difficult at first, but you will teach your body the proper form and over time your brain will create connections so in the future things will become easier and you will progress in your skill.