Piano World Home Page Forums Our Most Popular Forums Adult Beginners Forum How long and why are you learning the Piano.

Being new on this forum I would like to ask you how long have you been learning the Piano and why did you decide to start doing it.? What's your purpose? Are you doing it is just for fun or have professional hopes? Are you self-learning or have a teacher?

In my case I've learned as a child and now I had a "nostalgia" about it and decided to learn (self-learning) again (30 years have passed since), just for fun.

I've seen that many of you are in this forum for over 5 years, do you still consider yourself a beginner?

#dementiaprevention

I've been playing for about 5 years...joined 6 yrs ago but took a 1 year break. I consider myself an intermediate, began in early to mid 40's, and will never, ever play in any professional capacity. I have a teacher, who helps with things that are not obvious to me such as technique, analysis, etc, but do a lot of self motivated learning through this forum and other means.

I love music, always have, love learning, love the beauty of the sound the piano produces, and hope this will keep my mind keen for years to come.

By the way, bookmarked at the top of this page, is a thread entitled Why Do You Play The Piano that you might like to read through if you have a few hours!!

Some friends/acquaintances keep asking me what I am going "to do" with the piano. I always tell them this is just for me, it is a serious hobby. I have been taking lessons with a teacher for 8 years and am 70, so obviously I have no illusions of a career in music. I just love it and the thrill of playing some of my favorite music is wonderful--I think I would say I am advanced intermediate but far enough along that there is a world of gorgeous music available. Also, I think learning a new/difficult skill keeps your mind sharp (hoping at least).

Have a look at the ABF Survey 2018 version

I didn't play for about 35 years, then restarted about 9 years ago. I love music and as long as I'm having fun I'm happy.

I'm certainly not a beginner anymore, but I am still here in the Adult Beginners Forum. That's been sort of a touchy topic over the years. Many of us have been here for years and are not going to leave just because we are no longer beginners. We still have something to contribute, I think.

Sam

I decided to learn piano in late 2012, so I am coming up for seven years at this. With the exception of the first month or so when I realised how difficult this was, I have always had a teacher (although my first two teachers were simply guides). I took up piano because I was nearing the end of my working career, and although my main hobby back then was long distance running, I thought I needed a second hobby. It was shortly after I started piano that doctors told me I should stop running or face the consequences, so I stopped running immediately and concentrated on piano. Although I had played acoustic guitar for forty years, I had never taken it seriously and I knew virtually no theory. I had thought about getting serious about guitar but I wanted to start something from scratch, and the piano was quite appealing.

I don't consider myself a beginner anymore, I like to think I am seven years into a ten year apprenticeship. However signs are I might be held back a year (or more)

I have often wondered why I do this; the effort and expense I have put in to be able to play a relatively few number of pieces has been huge. I seem to derive more satisfaction from the learning than the finished piece. Which was exactly the sort of runner I was: I enjoyed the training much more than the event.

We can rename it the Adult Non-Advanced Forum. Or Adult Starter/Restarter Forum. Adult Pianist Forum. Whatever. It’s all fine!

Stuff that I can play rapidly becomes uninteresting. So I don't play stuff that I can actually play. I'm not giving concerts so there really isn't a "finished product" to be created and maintained.

The stuff that I can't play (and that is therefore interesting) gets more complex as time goes on, though.

Many of us here are in this category.

The typical trajectory of an adult re-starter amateur pianist is: lessons in childhood (endured or enjoyed, as the case may be), lessons stopped voluntarily a few years later or because life took over (inconsequential stuff like relationships, marriage, children.......even jobs for some of us ), then a sense that something is missing from one's psyche (like tickling the ivories), a realization that time is short and that one needs to regain essential lost skills before one becomes too decrepit. And - for some of us - a regret that we didn't continue lessons for a lot, lot longer when they were available to us for free (well, when your parents are paying, they're free ), because we could have been playing Rach 3 in Carnegie Hall now instead of struggling with Op.36/1 (or BWV 784, as the case may be). And so, we make up for lost time, as best we can. Or maybe not as best we can, as evidenced by quite a number of threads here, by people who flit from one thing to another instead of doing the one thing that will get them to their ultimate goal without getting sidetracked into blind alleys........

I suspect that it's only a small minority who took to piano like an orca to a seal (or a duck to water), and loved the piano and its rep right from the start and never wanted to give it up, come what may. Probably many more fell in and out of love. While others dabbled with others before returning to their one true love.

Just like life, really.........

I'm like a few here on the PW forum...I've played guitar for 30+ years, rock and then classical but got bored with rock and never was very good at classical. I decided to take up piano (because I've always wanted to) and this seemed like a good change, a new challenge.

I started with a keyboard but got a hankering for an acoustic piano so I bought an upright.


My aim is to play simple solo pieces for myself and family to enjoy and to accompany myself and family singing christmas songs and anything else we want to.

I've been playing 8 months now but you'd never know it by my skill level. lol.

I took lessons in my youth. Got to grade level 8 pieces in late teens. Life happened and piano went the wayside for a good 10+ years. I missed it. I brought a digital piano and have been playing on and off ever since. I play more show tunes and I play once in a while for church. Hope to tackle some advanced pieces again as time allows. Piano has been my one true form of relaxing.

I tried Violin in elementary school but had no real interest in it (my parents idea). Later I tried to self study Guitar but never got past an F chord. I just wasn't serious about it. A few years ago I encountered a few articles about how seniors who studied new things were much more successful in staving off brain decay. Having lost my father to dementia I thought I should give it a try and since I never had any luck with strings I thought I'd try a keyboard. I also have an extra motivation in that I am friends with a lot of the local musicians where I live and frequently meet them socially. They seem like they are having fun when they play at parties so I have made it my goal to be able to play at backyard parties without embarrassing myself. If nothing else it gives me a goal to strive for. Besides, if I succeed at that I might get invited to more parties!

"If nothing else it gives me a goal to strive for. Besides, if I succeed at that I might get invited to more parties! smile"

Don't you realize that playing piano is not the instrument for parties. You need to go back to the guitar for that

I had a few lessons as a child that didn't go anywhere. Within a month the piano was out of the house.

In my high school days I picked up playing violin. My music teacher said that if we wanted to get anywhere in music we would have to pick up piano playing as a second instrument even if it is not our main instrument. Our class did a research project on a composer. We picked J.S. Bach and the piece we used for the class presentation was "French Suite #3" performed on a harpsichord.

Over the years I considered piano too hard to learn because of hand coordination. I watched a man play a few demo Pop songs on a keyboard with L-chords. After a decade of hesitation, I finally got myself a keyboard. Having a keyboard at home is for practical reasons when you live in a building with neighbors around you need headphones at night.

The first few years I relied on online resources for learning and eventually enrolled in adult group classes. I like the social atmosphere of having other people around than 1-on-1 with a teacher.

The last pieces I worked on were Handel and a Bach Sarabande. I considered many like myself to be at the intermediate level. Different people get into various genre of music. Some don't read music very well or at all but play Jazz & Pop tunes by ear while others are good readers and play Classical. You can't really compare everybody with the same yardstick.

What happened to the OP?

For hose that have not, might want to add to the similar stickie thread at the top of the page.

I am not learning in the sense of having a teacher. I had two wonderful teachers in my youth and I have never since felt the need for another. I did take composition lessons from a celebrated local composer in my thirties but it was a total waste of time, through neither his fault nor mine. I simply preferred my “wrong” sounds to his “right” ones. It wasn’t until my late fifties that I understood myself and commenced building my own universe of sound through improvisation, and after retiring, the musical gates opened wide. In that peculiar sense I am indeed an adult beginner, despite having played since I was a small child. The compulsion to create piano music is ineluctable, solipsistic, and has no motive external to embodying my psyche in abstract sound.