For some learning piano at a later stage in life e.g past late 20s, what must they be aware of to make the most of it?

Question

As humans age, their ability to master new skills reduces, it may take longer to reach the same level or it might not even be possible anymore.

For a person that starts learning piano at a later age i.e 30+ and has no prior experience with music instruments, what must they be aware of since it might be that for the same amount of time put in as say a 10 year old, their skill level might not improve as fast.

The purpose here is to have realistic expectations.

I understand that "learning to play piano" can a lot of meanings for different people. Lets say that I want to properly pass and go through the ABRSM levels in Piano playing. Assume 0.5h-1h practice per day.

Answer 1

Just one thing. You will make rapid initial progress. Then you enter a consolidation phase. You must maintain regular practice but progress will not be so excitingly rapid. This is the point at which most adult learners give up.

If the adult DOES maintain 0.5 - 1 hour daily practice, they should progress a great deal FASTER than a 10 year old. But it still won't be instant gratification.

Answer 2

As an adult, you have different strengths and weaknesses in music than does a child. The best way for you to learn is not the same as the best way for a child to learn, but if you adapt to the way your brain is now, you can learn very well.

Discipline

A child's brain is more plastic and picks things up faster. It memorizes things faster, and has an easier time with motor skills. However, that brain is not so much better that it puts your adult brain at a fatal disadvantage. You have something that the child's brain does not: discipline. Where the young brain might find it too difficult to keep going when it gets difficult, you are more likely to practice anyway, to find ways around the difficulty, or power through it, or take a break and come back tomorrow rather than just give up forever in frustration. Living an adult life with its challenges has taught you how to keep going when things are hard, so that will be one of your biggest assets as you learn an instrument.

Scales and exercises

Related to discipline is the practice of scales and exercises, which you ought to embrace. Many beginner music books and series emphasize the playing of tunes, because people want to learn music in order to play music. It makes sense. Who wants to just do scales and exercises? However, the one thing I wish I had done when I started music was to emphasize scales, exercises, and basic technique over learning to play actual tunes. I'm not saying to not learn to play tunes, but make them an adjunct to your main study, not the main thing.

This advice is based on my own experience: I learned to play many tunes when I started, but all I could do was recite the tunes. I was like a musical parrot. But once I added scales and exercises (and a little theory) to my practice, my playing technique got better, I gained some ability to improvise, and my playing got more musical. I started to get the ability to make my own arrangements, and learning new tunes became much faster. It was focusing on the basic that made that possible for me.

Scales and exercises and theory are the bedrock. Your adult brain's sense of discipline and working for long-term goals will allow you to focus on them, and you will progress much quicker as a musician.

Meta-learning

And, as you show very well by asking your question here, you are well positioned to think about the process of learning on a higher level. Rather than just practice a scale or a piece, you are prepared to ask yourself (and others) questions about how to best practice. If you look at an accomplished musician, you will find that their expertise isn't just evident in how they play, it's also evident in how they practice. They think about how to practice, they experiment with practice routines, they learn from how others practice, and they adapt their practice routines over time to find what works best for them. This is a significant advantage, since it can make your practice much more effective. I claim that an adult's brain is far better suited to this kind of meta-learning than is a child's, so this will be your other great strength.

By applying the strength of an adult brain, you can do just as well as the child's brain. You'll just learn in a manner that fits the adult brain better.

Answer 3

I started to learn guitar at the age of 24. It was my first instrument. I had no prior musical training.

Now, I am close to the 10k hours of total practice time. I made progress, but I would be hesitate to call myself an "expert". It is more like that I know better what my weaknesses and my strengths are. I am quite sure that I would have made much more progress if I would have started at least 10 years earlier.

I think it is quite well established that learning in the youth is easier. The brain is still growing, you have a much higher neuroplasticity. Your hormones work different, in the sense that experiences and emotional responses are more intense, which in general faciliates learning. All that stops, at the latest, somewhere between 20-25 years.

But, also as a child I guess you have a more playful overall attitude and approach. As an adult I think you are more goal oriented which might get you easily frustrated. At least I experienced this with my progress. I learned programming as a teenager, which was much easier. But also due to the fact that I did it "on the way" with projects etc, but was never specifically focused on programming faster, learn more programming languages or something like that. Happened in the process anyway.

Over the past one and a half year I recorded my weekly progress on certain difficult tunes. I plan to make a learning progress video and upload it to youtube. I can tell you when I am done with it. Meanwhile there a dozens of others on yt who made videos like these, even of adult starters with age 20+. But in my opinion these videos are a little bit biased in the sense that they mostly show success stories, the end result, but not the small scale intermediate steps and fallbacks.

Good luck with your journey! Don't be to strict with yourself.

Answer 4

@LawrencePayne probably gave the most practical advice: don't give up when you hit the initial plateau.

To that I add: take advantage of your adult ability to think abstractly and self-evaluate.

---

TL;DR

I'm not a teacher so file this under: personal anecdotes...

I took guitar lessons as a kid. I never questioned what I was doing in those lessons. Zero music theory or improvisation was included. I learned how to strum and fingerpick chords, but I could have learned so much more.

Now, as an adult I'm studying piano on my own.

To me, the difference between studying as a kid and an adult is: as an adult I can think abstractly, self-evaluate, and research my own study materials and repertoire.

For example, I don't just learn the fingering for a specific piece of music. I try to understand the underlying mechanics and then look for its application in a variety of piano method books. I make up drills on such things in all keys, varying rhythm and harmony.

I do similar things from theory studies. When learning about harmony sequences, types of motion, etc. I will apply that in little drills in all keys.

The point is to identify musical elements abstractly and understand how they are used in different contexts. Relative relationships and abstract modeling are hugely important in music so there is a great benefit to studying this way. Kids don't think abstractly like that, but adults do. Use that to your advantage. You will get more out of your study time when you realize everything has some underlying pattern or model which gets re-used in countless ways.

Not too long a ago I experienced the pay off when trying to play Mozart's K. 545. Not the first movement that everyone learns how to play (I learned that about 15 years back) but sight-reading the andante. Not that long ago attempting a sight read would have been hopeless. But after a lot of pattern drilling for about two years I really was able to read the piece. At certain points my hands started playing things before I realized what I was actually doing! The basic mechanical and harmony patterns had already been trained into my hands. I mostly had to pay attention to the rhythm. It was very satisfying.

So, set your own goals, self-evaluate, and use your higher level thinking.

If you really are starting with zero musical background, take time to review and compare method books. There are tons of beginner methods at http://imslp.org. Don't forget about the famous Mozart and Bach notebooks.

Answer 5

See music as a language. Like any language, it can be learned at any age. Can a kid learn French for example better than an adult? I'm not sure one can quantify it like that. There's a lot of variables involved (free time, dedication, urgency, and a bunch of other factors).

For a person that starts learning piano at a later age i.e 30+ and has no prior experience with music instruments, what must they be aware of since it might be that for the same amount of time put in as say a 10 year old, their skill level might not improve as fast.

I don't agree with this. There's a lot of benefits to being older and learning music for the first time. I've learned music in different stages of my life. I can easily say without a doubt that as an adult in these last 3 years I've learned the most rapid of any age.

As a kid you kind of latch on to whatever teachers hand you. I had terrible music teachers as a kid that made it more a job to learn music. Which killed my inspiration for many years. You just take what they say as fact, and you practice whatever they hand you. You go by their schedule, or whatever schedule they prescribe for you. You're not as free-thinking, committed, focused as you are when you are an adult. As an adult you're also pressured by time, a kid has all the time in the world to goof off.

Age is also irrelevant because we don't know when we die. Chopin died at the age of 39. So at the age of 20 he was 57 years old if you compare it to average life expectancy of 76. In short, just do the best with the time you have and stop making excuses!

Answer 6

You must have some means of practising where you are not worrying about the neighbours. E.g. on an electric piano with headphones, at a time of day when the thud thud on the keys is not obviously objectionable. You need to be able to concentrate and play simple things over and over.

You probably need some means of getting interested feedback, which could be

• a teacher (so long as they are a great teacher)
• a parent / friend (who is interested in a 30s video of something you've spent many hours practising)
• a learner band (if you weren't playing piano)

You may well need a guide i.e. to what to do first, which could be

• a teacher (so long as they are great)
• an online course,

because it appears to be true that if you play a series of structured exercises (i.e. not just pieces), then it gets easier to play pieces.

Answer 7

As an adult you have the cognitive capacities that enables you to comprehend in one lesson the same amount of knowledge that requires a a child a whole year: E.g. reading sheet music, intervals, chords etc. (elementary theory).

But you will need weeks and months to assimilate this stuff and you will need a lot of time to train your ear and the independency of your fingers - if you haven’t developed the basic functions of these abilities. (The fact that an adult of 30 years wants to learn piano playing seems to be an indicator that he’s got it.)

I suggest you to write like a diary or marking like the finerings directly in the sheet music what and how you’ve practiced a certain part and what you have recognized and learnt. (That’s what others call meta-learning ... and what I’ve started only since I’ retired. )

Answer 8

One advice which I find important is to find and play music you like. A difficulty with starting playing music as an adult is that you have well-defined musical tastes: maybe you want to play something extremely well-known like Chopin's nocturne or Liszt's second rhapsody. But you will not be able to do that after a week, a month, a year, which is a bit discouraging.

However, what is also discouraging is being stuck with beginner songs and exercises, which, though educative, simply don't please you aesthetically. So you'll be stuck playing "London bridge" or whatever you don't like and it can feel boring and unfulfilling, leading you to quit.

But it isn't true that only complex music is pleasing to the ear. I'm sure that for everyone there are easy-to-play songs that sound good to them; so you have to search for these. Stuff that is at your skill-level (or slightly above, to give you a push) but that you also like musically. I've noticed in several piano books for beginners that it's quite common to present simplified arrangements of well-known pieces or themes from other music (e.g. the Habanera from Carmen).