Dyslexics can learn how to read, but they need to be taught differently. Is there some type of musical training for people like me? I managed to learn how to feel/anticipate 8-count beats, but can't get beyond 8-counts (while dancing). I even tried building a beat-aware video player[1] to help me learn musicality.
I've heard the argument musicality is acquired, not learned. I think acquisition would be better, but does not rule out learning. For example, I never heard about "uncountable nouns" while learning English as a native speaker; only in the context of ESL. This is English grammar native speakers acquire, but ESL students tend to learn. But there doesn't seem to be any "ESL" for music.
I can read sheet music and understand musical patterns at an intellectual level. However, despite taking piano lessons for more than two years, I didn't understand some fundamental musical concepts (like the emphasis on the "1" beat) until over a decade later when learning how to dance.
During that whole time, I was listening to music all the time. Although vaguely aware of what a 3-count waltz beat was, my mind was blown when I learned you could waltz to a Bryan Adams song I had heard over and over before. So I think I have some type of music learning disability.
Often when music breaks dancers will stop with the music. I couldn't figure how other dancers knew when to do this. Did they memorize the songs? Even armed with the knowledge that (big band/pop) music often follows a very regular repeating 32-count pattern, it's very hard for me to predict exactly when the music will break (especially while dancing at the same time).
Apparently another way to feel the music is by the relative intensity of major beats. The first beat in a bar is usually the strongest; the last beat the weakest. Likewise, in a set of 2, 4, 8 bars the first beat will be strongest and the last beat the weakest. I explained this in more detail here[2]. In addition, there's often a "ramp-up" or "ramp-down" in the final bars of an 8-bar set leading to the big "1" beat of the next 8-bar set. So there is a spectrum of relative intensities correlated to position in the music.
Unfortunately, I either lack the ability to recall more than the most recent 8 beats and/or sense the fine differences in the relative intensity of the beats. My mind seems to be better at processing visual information slowly and recalling summaries; not processing audio information in real-time and verbatim recall.
I would be happy just to be able to feel the basic 32-count beat patterns. But I know there are even more layers to musicality. Like picking out the melody or a specific instrument. Apparently songs have structure and "tell" a story (outside the lyrics) which just goes completely over my head.
[1]: https://phrasier.leftium.com/
[2]: https://cafe.naver.com/hotcoolswing/7922
Have you considered learning to play an instrument and taking some basic music lessons on that instrument? This could give you the kind of practice at recognizing musical structures that you need to become more proficient in hearing them at speed. Since you'd learn musical notation as part of this, you'd also have a new visual/mental framework that might connect up the wires in your brain a bit better for performance in other contexts, too, like dancing.