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In 2011 husband got me a digital piano for my birthday (I was 41); actually, it was also because one of the children was asking for piano lessons.
So, the following October we started with different teachers; having had lessons as a lazy child, I was a restarter.
Now, three and a half years later, both my children started piano lessons and quit after two years, we have also an acoustic upright and I'm still enjoying the journey.

What got me interested/started was the income potential ... just kidding.

I'd heard around here you can learn how to play by ear with absolutely no talent. Thank goodness Seaside Lee, etc. weren't lying.

Well, I've 'restarted' piano as an adult more times than I can remember - that is, every time I landed a job where there was a piano accessible. (My job, for many years, required me to move every six months or so).

The longest stints I had prior to the present one (which is probably permanent, but I might be tempting fate....... ) were two 2-year placements. In the first, there was a clapped-out ancient grand in the common room with a few strings broken, and every intact string out of tune. I bought a tuning fork (A=440), and a tuning wrench, and set to work on it. I managed to get it into passable tune (i.e. into a honky-tonk that sounded almost like a piano), but discovered that it went out of tune very quickly, such that I'd have to retune it every week. Then I discovered that if I tuned it to B flat = 440, it would stay 'in tune' far longer, and as I don't have perfect pitch.....

On my second 'long' placement, a decade later, there was a decent upright (in tune, because it was used regularly for music therapy), on which I'd spend every night practicing, when the place had gone to sleep. That was where I gave my first lecture-recital, when an insomniac colleague heard me practicing, and asked me to do one for the series of informal lectures that staff members gave for colleagues (on any topic they chose - usually a hobby or passion of some sort). That was when I discovered that my long-standing performance anxiety wasn't a problem if I knew that my audience didn't know the music I was playing . But I also took the precaution of adding an extra prop - a low table, on which I piled up the music scores that I'd be playing from, to illustrate my talk - between me and the audience. And the whole rigmarole worked. I chose music by composers I loved and knew well, and could easily talk about without needing to read from a script (though I did have one). And no worries about playing wrong notes - after all, I could kid myself that my audience would think they were deliberate .

So, finally, to the present day, or 2010 in fact, which was when I bought my first piano - a digital. (I live in a tiny apartment surrounded by neighbors, and finally decided I couldn't live without a piano. Of some sort. Even any sort. I bought the best of 'any sort'.....). Since then, I've been making up for lost time, learning all the stuff that I'd always wanted to but never thought I'd be able. Amazing what regular practice on my own instrument - that I can access any time of the day or night - can do for my technique.....

Ah yes, and joined PW, after reading about it in Perri Knize's book.....

Good question. For me, it was a confluence of several related things, which I'll talk about a little further down. But first off, it's useful to describe my state of mind before restarting, which I held for all the years I did not play after quitting. It wasn't a question, really, of finding the reason TO do it, but really a question of finding the reason to withdraw the lack of permission for myself to restart, if that makes sense. My failure to return was a result of believing that I had squandered my one-and-only opportunity, and not only didn't deserve it, but would not be able to do it now that I'm no longer a child. After all, I had quit during that critical window of adolescent technical development without really getting there and my unquestionable conviction was that no amount of adult work was going to make up for that. Advanced music-making, to my mind, would have been mine to have for the rest of my adulthood only if I had passed a certain threshold of technical fluency while still young. I hadn't, so opportunity lost.

Then several things came to pass:

1) A friend who had also quit piano as a mid-teen before really breaking through to a solidly advanced level bought a baby grand piano, of a budget and size that would also be perfect for my purposes, too. I then decided that for MY 40th birthday (then eight years away), I'd like a piano, possibly that very model piano since the research had already basically been done. I might not be able to DO anything with it, but something made me want it. Badly. At this point I mostly justified that it was for the kids, but maybe I could noodle around.

2) About two years later, I moved abroad and learned a foreign language from scratch very well, with a good accent, showing me that things like languages and music, fluency in which is commonly considered to be something only possible if begun in the window of childhood, is not strictly true. I discovered the adult human mind can be nimble, at least some of the time.

3) I came home and started another art form usually pursued in adulthood only if started in childhood--ballet--and found that a patient adult mind CAN develop and progress in a technical art form, even from scratch.

So now I had the following pivotal thought process: If I can learn a foreign language well and almost as fast as my young children did, and I can start a new technical art from scratch and also make steady, palpable progress, why do I think I can't make progress in piano? After all, I would not be starting from scratch, and this is still extremely valuable even if I have learned that progress is still possible even from scratch. See, while progress was, admittedly, rather fast in a foreign language even for most adults, progress was and remains slow in ballet. I often lament I don't have that internal vocabulary for it that I would have had had I learned some of it while young and went back. I have to think through every motion, and it takes painstakingly long periods of time for me to pattern in movement until it's natural. I often feel as if I'm a marionette with a hundred strings but only ten fingers, so while I work furiously to make myself move as I ought, I can't do everything at once so things are often dropped. Progress, to me, is in being able to reduce the number of strings that require my conscious control at any given moment.

Yet, sit me down at a piano and while I'm woefully short of where I'd want to be, I can't deny that I've got the good fortune to be starting far ahead of your average adult beginner, even with the long gap and failure to achieve full advanced technical skill. I felt like, in piano, I'm where the returning adult ballerinas are, who can so quickly leapfrog over me on their way back to technical competence while I look on, with something that sort of feels like jealousy. No, it totally feels like jealousy. The motivating kind, though, which is thankfully still the good kind of jealousy, haha.

But back to piano. I'm not frantically grasping for hundreds of marionette strings, with more discovered each week. In piano, the general geography is familiar. The kinesthetic memory of it is intact. The natural sense of where the notes fall, my ability to read music with no effort, what chords feel like. Heck, even things like polyrhythms weren't too far back in the warehouse. Was I good as a child? No, but there's something to be said for having not missed a childhood window in some ways, too.

So, in the end I learned the following two very important concepts:

• The missing of childhood learning windows in learning a skill that is usually learned young is not an insurmountable obstacle except for maybe achieving a level of virtuosity that many cannot achieve even when they start young and follow through. Progress is slow, but not impossible and patience is a virtue.
• However, having assimilated a skill during a childhood learning windows still greatly aids the speed of the process of returning to something even when advanced technical fluency is not attempted until much later. Patience is still a virtue, progress is still incremental, but things move rapidly and from a starting point much further down the line.

So then I thought: why am I letting myself work so hard in ballet and yet feel unentitled or incompetent to work hard at the thing that I, frankly, have spent the last 25 years wishing I were still doing? Heck, if I had to pick one thing on which to work very hard on to finally achieve mastery in, it's neither ballet nor foreign language (though I dearly love those things) but...piano.

So the tipping point? Well here are the last two things...

...4) Another friend who does NOT play piano bought a spectacular piano. Top tier, too big for my living room, but the ensuing jealousy sealed the deal for me. There would be a piano.

5) At the same time I also realized that my ballet teacher was, first and foremost, a pianist and piano teacher.

I turned 40 two months later. The piano showed up that day and lessons started that week.

That was two years ago. So ten years after I began to think seriously about it. And almost 30 years after I started regretting quitting, which was, in all honesty, probably the very next day.

We used to have live music for part of the evening when I was Scottish country dancing. The piano player was going off to college, so I stood behind her and watched her play for awhile, and said "I can do that".

Hmph. I spent the next two weeks learning the "oom pah" to three tunes and bringing it up to speed (I had to actually learn how to form chords, let alone how to play them in real time). That was 35 or so years after my lessons in my early teens, 20 years ago from now, and I'm still going.

Cathy

I took up ballet also, as Two Snowflakes did, about age 40. I'd always wanted to do it (had tap as a child) and, altho I could mentally visualize the moves, the mirror showed something quite different!

Then I went back to college & got my BS, MS in 3 years and went back to the professional field I was trained for. Still working 30 years later, I started my PhD. Completing that at age 76, I recuperated for a couple years and then I looked for a new challenge.

Having always wanted to play the piano (as a child I said I'd either be a ballerina or a concert pianist! Strange how that didn't happen ;-) ), I decided that learning piano was it. And it has been a challenge. The mind gets it, but the fingers don't (sounds like ballet doesn't it?).

But I figure the only way I'll get to Carnegie Hall is practice, practice, practice (old joke for those of you who may not have heard it). But I've got a pile of music on the shelf, most of which I can't play yet, but there's still plenty of time.

Nearly 8 years ago I bought a Roland Workstation to help my children with their gcse and A level music, although their primary instruments were drums and clarinet, they needed the keyboard for composing and recording.
I wanted to learn, but then I had a new baby and didn't have time to set aside.

2 years ago I bought some books with the intention of self teaching, but I read various posts on here stressing the importance of a teacher, as that was not an option at that time, the books were shelved.

Now I am 42, and had my first lesson yesterday . Why ? It is something I have always wanted to do , simply for my own enjoyment , and it is time I stopped procrastinating.

Interesting thread!

When I was a young kid I really, really wanted to learn. I pestered my parents all the time. Whenever I was anywhere with a piano or keyboard I would play it, working out melodies and just tinkering around. But we had no piano, and my parents did not have the sort of money to go out and buy an expensive instrument that I may or may not stick with, and the answer was always no.

When I was 13, I forced their hand. There were 2 piano teachers on site in my school, and I went and spoke to one of them who agreed that I could practice in her music room before school and during lunch. So I started lessons and progressed pretty quickly.

Two years later my grandmother died suddenly, and her piano came to my parents house - I finally had an instrument. My enthusiasm continued and I played a lot until I finished school. I took music as a secondary school subject and needed to do a practical at a particular level in my final exams, so I worked really hard to get there (and more or less did, though with some glaring gaps, especially sight reading!).

I went to university, and while I was still living at home, I was out most of the time and no longer had lessons, so my playing became sporadic. After a couple of years I moved out, and with no piano to play, I stopped playing.

About 12 years ago, my husband bought me a DP as a birthday present. I did some basic relearning at that stage - and I found I really did need to go back to basics at first. However, I was not consistent about it and when the children started to come along shortly after, the piano was more or less forgotten about. On the rare occasions I did play, it was really frustrating because I couldn't remember anything.

2 years ago, we moved house and in the new house, we have a good place to put the piano - somewhere conducive to play. The kids were that little bit older and more independent (my youngest was then 3.5), and I found that for the first time in years, I was actually able to claim some time for myself. I decided to get back to the piano with a bit of consistency, and I haven't really looked back.

I took lessons as a kid, but was a real underachiever. My musical focus was on clarinet. I wanted to be a high school band director, so got a music degree. But education didn't help me reach my goal - my personality and lack of social skills got in the way. Eventually I went back to school and into a totally different field (computer science) and was much happier. Finally "retired" last year.

But years ago when I turned 50, I decided I needed to get back in touch with my creative side. Took painting classes for awhile before deciding that it was time to return to my first love - music. I picked piano because the keyboard is the king of instruments - there is no other instrument that is so versatile.

I spent a year working through the Alfred books by myself before I commited to lessons. Been with the same teacher now for almost 5 years and having lots of fun.

Sam

As I have said I never had any interest in piano as a child. It was strange really. We had a music room with a medium sized grand. My father played very well and I am sure he would have taught me had I asked. My elder brother had lessons when he was doing music O Level but abandoned it immediately after and I don't think he has ever tried again.

A dearly departed old friend suggested I play. He had more faith in me, than I had in myself. Sadly, he passed before he got to hear me. We played a lot of old time string band music together, so we did have those good times. I started a few years ago at 50. It seems like all of my other playing and theory experience culminated into the piano endeavor. It was, and is a true joy.

Year 198somethig. Young Luca asks his parents to take piano lessons. Parents reply as follows: "ARE YOU SURE!?!?!?? Are you ready to practice every day for hours, for the years to come!?!?? No TV, no complaints, nothing, if you start you have to commit".

Young Luca spends weeks pondering if he is ready to abandon childhood and jump into the unknown, with apparently no way back.

Young Luca gets cold feet and abandons the idea, but still admires people that can play.

Fast forward over thirty years.

Christmas 2013. Luca is almost 41 and takes his daughter to her piano lesson. It is the first time he sees what it is like and LOVES it.

Luca still remembers his parents words, but at this point he has got an engineering degree from a semi good university, he has played competitive sport for a decade, he even did the military service. Luca is not that scared of discipline and commitment any more.

Luca asks his wife to see if his daughter's school has courses for adult beginners.

Luca started his lessons in March 2014 and is very happy he did. He has been practicing every day for more than one hour ever since. He is not a particularly fast learner, but has steadily made progress.

Thanks for reading,
Luca

I had a year or so of lessons as a child--no family money for more. Later a very generous musician friend of the family gave me flute lessons and some music theory. As an adult, I felt a house had to have a piano. I played a bit now and then, used the piano to learn choral music--and then my brother gave me a book of Chopin's Mazurkas. I discovered rubato and was hooked.

I played on my own, took a few lessons--but didn't really study until after I developed RSI from computer use and was forced off the instrument for two years. That's a whole other story! (I was incredibly lucky to recover by learning Taubman ergonomic technique.)

It's all led to a lot of well-spent money on lessons and a grand piano, and many well-spent hours.

Great stories, everyone. Your love (and perhaps obsession--but a *good* kind of obsession) with piano shines through. I didn't read a single "because Dad said I had to."

As a child growing up, we always had a piano. I muddled through the John Thompson books, but never had a real teacher. My mother played a little and had the books for me and my sister, but we were mostly self taught. At around 14, I started to play the guitar, and didn't play the piano much after that.

Fast forward 40 years. I don't even remember mentioning the piano to my husband, but one Christmas he bought me a keyboard. I was instantly hooked and played every day, until about six months later, I had a serious back issue. I decided I couldn't sit at a computer all day (I was an engineer at the time) and then sit at the keyboard for hours w/o seriously compromising my back. I put the keyboard away until I retired at age 59. I immediately bought a Roland HP508 and got a teacher and have been playing since January of this year. I am loving it and play about 2 hours a day. It's like coming home....I will play until my fingers or mind fail me. (Yoga cured my back, btw)

I totally hear you. Even though we are not the sponge-like creatures we were as children (sponge-like meaning that we assimilate ideas/abilities rapidly), neuro-scientists are finding that the human brain is much more resilliant than previously thought. It is now held that the brain is an ever changing and developing organ; not the peak-at-35ish-then steadily-decay brain of yore. Well, thank God for that! So I play, and will continue to play. Age does not matter. Physical disability matters.

Interestingly, I also was quite fluent at reading music after so long away. Never even thought about it really, was just able to pick up where I left off. It's my strongest suit, since I have no technique whatsoever. :P

I played guitar for years on and off, both classical and rock. I always enjoyed learning to read music for the classical guitar but never progressed as fast as I did reading tab and playing rock.

I also love movie themes and games themes. I had heard these played on classical guitar and started learning them myself. As I searched you tube for more I came across piano arrangements for the same themes in the search results and after listening to several (Kyle Landry is a prime example) I was hooked on how full and rich the piano sounded compared to the guitar.

I bit the bullet and bought an 88 key digital piano in my modest budget range and ever since it arrived I have spent at least 3 hours a day learning this wonderful instrument. I am enjoying learning sight reading so much more now and can grab most sheet music within my humble range (beginner) and play it straight from the score (slowly at first) which I could never do with the guitar. My only regret is that it took me until 53 years old to discover who much I love the piano

What a relief! And you are as young as you feel so I don't even think of the big 65 looming up!

Still only a youngster then!

For me, it was my younger cousin. When I was 19, I lived in Boulder, CO and my 17 year old cousin came to live with me for the summer. He plays many instruments, and we found an old 61-key Casio in a friends closet, this thing was beat up, missing keys, etc. Really it was like a 59-key. Anyway, my cousin was always messing around on it and was showing me different chords and stuff.

It got me interested in learning to read sheet music, because he could learn things by ear but I could only play stuff if he told me exactly how to play it, which in effect is exactly what sheet music is. After he went back to TX I bought a 61-key of my own (age 21 at this point), and bought some sheet music. I got better and better until the point where a 61-key wouldn't cut it for me anymore, to progress further I needed 81 weighted keys. The problem was I had no money at the time.

I inherited $1000 from my deceased grandmother not long after I had that realization, was just a few months past age 22. She was a musician, herself, and I decided she would approve of me blowing most of that cash on a keyboard, so I got a KORG SP-250 for around $700. After spending that kind of money, I had to justify it by continuing to play, and still do, at age 27. Although, I didn't play very often for the past two years, although within the last 3 months I am playing frequently again.