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The one thing I’ve always wanted to do was read and play music, just never made the time. So this Christmas (I’m 63), Santa is bringing a DP. I didn’t want a toy but always wanted to cover my “it’s not for me risk”. After visiting a few stores, I narrowed my choices down to the Yamaha p105 and the Casio 150. I really only want the piano sound, and for me I think the Yamaha p105 sounds the better of the two.

I’m spending a lot of time learning how to read/understand music now and am glad I found this place as I take my first steps on this journey. I don’t know how long it will be, but each adventure must start with a first step.

Well, congratulations on your upcoming adventure.

I, too, started late.

Let me get this in so at least you have it from one who started about the same time in life as you.

If you can afford it, get a teacher and do what they tell you to do for at least a year and see how it goes.

Fooling around with various do-it-yourself courses, etc....
may seem like the thing to do but I am here to tell you that it may be more costly (Buying courses/dvds/books etc...) in the long run than just getting a teacher.

Good Luck

Forntunately, age is not a factor. Determination is a factor. I turned 63 recently and started play the piano about a year ago.

I liked your sentence: "The one thing I’ve always wanted to do was read and play music, just never made the time."

When I was 7 I had few lessons and I am not sure what happened. When I left home, went to college and then got a job, I bought a piano with a bank loan, of course, and realized with an office job typing on a typewriter all day at work didn't lend itself to practice for 2 hours at home on a piano at 22 years of age - was too ambitious at this time of my life and moving around at that age as we do, and having to move a piano, so I sold it and moved on. At 38, I tried again, bought Clavinova and tried lessons again and realized for the second time that typing on a computer all day is not conducive to wanting to go home and pratice 1 or 2 hours a night on a piano. So for 25 years - a quarter of a century - the Clavinova gather dust except around Christmas time when I would try to play Christmas songs - and I still can't - - I was convinced that playing the piano was not going to happen and that was okay. Well, I had the health problems as one would expect at that time in their life and the end result was that I was still alive after the doctors and the medical professionals did their best to save me and they did. I could walk for a short distance but standing and sitting as you may or may not know requires extraordinary strength compared to walking or runnning as they work on the principle of momentary balance as
opposed to sitting and staying balanced or standing and staying balanced. So as I looked over at the very dusty digital piano. I thought that if I sat on the piano bench and played the only piano book I had which was Fletcher Book 1 piano book, perhaps it would distract me enough to stay in a sitting position while I tried to play the piano. To my surprise - I fell in love with playing the piano. It didn't improve my sitting but it is slowly improving.

You may already know that all you have to do is to play slowly and accurately day by day and the rest takes care of itself. It usually takes a few hours or days to learn to play the piece though start to bottom and then it takes weeks of playing it daily to get the piece to sound musical and as one piece leads to another, there is a connection so it is important to constantly review your pieces and enjoy playing them. Have fun and enjoy the experience.

Great Xmas present D! It's great you want to start piano.

Make sure the DP has weighted keys...good luck...

I second this! Congrats on your initiative.