My experience about learning about music is that whatever one begins with, one is soon drawn into the other areas-- one continuum that serves to illustrate is dots vs. ear. Start with either and you soon have lots of opportunities, pursuing the expression of a music you love, to reach in the other direction. If one does reach (and not all do), one is drawn past many wrong assumptions, through a lot of never-anticipated learning ewxperiences, along a path that szeems to glow in the dark. The musicians I love to work with, I think, are the ones just starting to reach-- just starting to let go of the "I Can't" assumption and discovering new things not only about music, but about themselves. They react like children turned out to play long after they have been made to behave; set loose, they suddenly find all their childlike abandon is intact and powerful. After that intense, absorbed, joyous interaction in a new way with music, the motivation to learn more is present with few barriers to fulfillment (except silly ones like time, money, etc.).

I think THAT's when the real, and most productive learning begins, in any subject area-- when the subject takes over its devotee, invites him/her to be a learner, and makes him/her its lover.

~Susan