Piano World Home Page Forums Our Most Popular Forums Adult Beginners Forum When is it really too late to start? The definitive answer..

My younger sister had a different reaction. After I left for college, my parents suscribed her for piano lessons. Like bennevis, her teacher got her up to a diploma level before she went to college. Then she minored in piano performance at Indiana University's Jacobs School of Music where she went for her degree in psych. Her jury piece was Hammerklavier mvt 1. Today her and my brother-in-law have a grand in their parlour, which she refers to as "his piano." She doesn't touch it normally unless dragged reluctantly to play a duet with her husband or one of the children. Usually not the children since it's my brother-in-law's job to play duets with the kids! LOL.

Some people will get their piano to a high level and discover they just aren't interested in it and quit for good. It's strange to me, but I guess she should understand it as she's a shrink... LOL

My sister-in-law also got to an advanced level, played competitively for 13 years, went on to teach piano for a while, and then quit altogether. Her piano hasn't been tuned in forever.

I started about a decade or so ago. Was self teaching mostly. Had a brain tumour removed and a stroke during surgery. Affected everything. It's been almost three years now. I've tried to restart a few times before now but my brain was not healed enough. Now, I'm going for the real deal. Looking for a piano teacher and everything. I log my daily practices so that my memory doesn't undo me. I have to learn it from scratch, again. Why? I love piano. I simply want to play Moonlight Sonata. I want to play rock with a band. I want to write music. The older I get the worse this desire becomes. Death can kiss my butt. Even if my tumour came back today and I didn't make it, I'd still have kept moving forward and not have given up on what I love. So not a scare but more like a "@%!$" you to death. LOL!

Respect!!

The discussion about kids being pushed into taking lessons gets very interesting and can be a separate topic for discussion. In my family my parents were not musical although my father learned to play the accordion at a very basic level. Nobody was pushed into taking lessons. There was no expectation any of us had to take conservatory exams or get to a certain grade level.

In my case I can't say I regretted having piano lessons as a child because I had only 3. My parents decided that nobody in the family had the talent for music. In my school days I picked up playing violin but put off learning to play piano for a few decades before getting a keyboard at home for some serious playing. What keeps me going is recording pieces for my own listening. Experimenting with recording is 1 of my hobbies.

Recently a cousin got herself a keyboard after a decade without a piano. She took lessons as a child. After moving out of the parents' house she found it impractical to move the old piano into her place and stopped playing. Another cousin was "pushed" into playing by his parents when he was child. He survived piano for a few years and hated it. Eventually the piano that was in his parents' house got moved to his place. He got his kids into taking lessons but he would not touch it for the rest of his life.

A friend got his son into the Yamaha music program for piano. The mother went to piano lessons with the child for a few years. The parents' thought that the child was more interested in learning to cook and the music playing stopped. I'm not sure if the teen would pick up playing again later in life.

When we were younger, our parents would make decisions on our behalf. On the other hand, there are people who enjoy playing music at a young age and would get their parents to enroll them into a music program or with private teachers. As adults, we make our own decisions. If we decide to learn piano, we tend to stick with it for many years.

My two brothers never played after lessons of a few years. Glad to be done with it. I was a slow learner after I reached intermediate level but I kept truckin at it. I was just persistent. I don't know how I would be without the piano in my life. It is the one thing I turn to when I want just me time Funny how I can spent an hour at the piano and I'm like where did the time go while sometimes at work I would be like I still have an hour to go

LOL

I've never had a FB account and I think that has provided me with a lot of practicing time.


I love the definitive answer. It's going to be my motto.

Looking funny.

I discovered I had thumb arthritis three months after I retook playing - learning - piano.
I thought it was a kind of tendonitis because of 40 years without Hanon and treated it like tendonitis. And nothing happened. Then I discovered - by means of x-ray - it was thumb arthritis, which btw has no treatment.
And here I am, using a sort of splint when playing and pill popping looking for placebo effect to do its job.
Is it too late?
It depends for what. It's never late for having fun - playing piano or whatever.