The first three months of any instrument sound terrible. Your neighbors will live. Keep playing.

CREATIVITY

WHAT THIS MEANS

Sounding bad is a required stage, not a sign of being unsuited to it. Fingers have to learn where to go, and for the first stretch the noise genuinely is unpleasant, which is a fact about the process and not a verdict on you. What stops most people is not the difficulty. It is being heard being bad.

So pick a fixed half hour and keep it, inside sensible hours or with the volume down. Practise the hard four bars rather than the whole piece. Three months is not long, and the people nearby have survived worse.

A QUESTION TO SIT WITH

What would you practice if you stopped worrying about being heard?

Free, with nothing to buy inside it.