Piano World Home Page Forums Our Most Popular Forums Adult Beginners Forum Im 45. In reality, how far can I go?

I started at 45. Much less playing as a kid than you, a few years of formal lessons but little interest and little practice so almost no progress. almost 30 years of never even touching the piano.

I'd say the age thing is not insignificant, but still a lot less important than other factors. Most of the things that are limiting my learning were there already at much younger age, maybe with the exception of my job, which is now much more demanding that 10 years ago.

I wish I could say you can go as far as you like, but it seems one never can when it comes to piano. There's always that "better playing" you can kind of see in the future but never reach.

If not handicapped in some ways, have the willpower to do all the work required and work smart with a good teacher, I'd say a middle aged person can learn to play relatively advanced music well in 5-15 years. There are simply too many variables to say anything more specific. There are also two paths of achievement to consider: The quality of your playing and the amount of repertoire learned. The latter very much depends on the time you can devote to learning pieces and how well you can read or memorize. After about 4 years I find myself much further on the first path than the second.

There's a lot of great advice in all previous posts. Maybe the question of "how far can I go?" could be rephrased as "as long can I go?"

If you work well with your teacher, if you put your focus on learning and the learning process and enjoying yourself as you learn. Then with time, patience, practicing, listening to your teacher, and following what interests you however far you get will be pretty far! It may not be a case of how far can you get but one day you'll wake up and say "Wow, I've come pretty far!"

Enjoy the piano journey and only good things happen!

You could ask that question of any activity; running, cycling, sports in general, artistic projecths of every description oincluding music and piano.
People here have made magnificent progress in all genres of piano simply because. . . they really wanted to.
You are limited by your brainpower (intellectuallity) finger eye brain coordination, and physical limitations which may or may not be age related. Many older folk have taken up sport, whereas younger ones may be worn out through pushing too hard. . .
Much fun is to be had, and good music to be played within whatever limitations you may perceive yourself to have. And we all have em. . .

Have fun!

Good answer.


Yes, and in what direction. Some may take you further, but from what perspective? For classical performance you're well past your prime. I don't think many people here though would be considering anything like that, yet are creating wonderful music to be enjoyed for a lifetime. I'm thrilled with some of the stuff I play now that I couldn't 3 years ago. When it starts to really grab you, that is reward enough. It is in the journey, whatever you make that out to be. There are also many options for proceeding.

Welcome Sam.

How far can one go, in term of music performance ?


Some extra thoughts when such topics come up that often occur to me ( as just a piano beginner).

Music does not have to be complex is another thing in order to appeal and be a success , so it also depends how far you want go and what type of music you intend to make and would be happy to make ... I think anyway.

U2/Coldplay and big bands make big venues all the time, pull bigger crowds than any classical concert will do any day, by playing just A C G:)

Is edge a good pianist/guitarist, technically no, but are the tunes enjoyable to listen to, yes, well, I think so.

I often think for many, and in Classical this would be far more true, how far can one go is in direct relation to complexity and difficulty of playing the actual music.

Creativity is another aspect. I've seen some musicians when I was younger when I used to play guitar/recorder a lot that could play music, they could improvise on the spot, not particularly technically skilled, but they would come up with stuff there and then and sound good.

On the other side, I have also seen and been around grade 8 classically trained musicians at that time ( we often used to jam and have fun with groups) that didn't even don't know where to start as soon as you pulled the music sheets away, they could sight read really well like there was no tomorrow, but ask them to play along with anything, or create anything on their own, nothing would come out. They were quite open about it and said so.

I suppose, different aspects come into it. but being Creative is a big part of music I feel and knowing how to get the best out of yourself with whatever technical limitations one may have, and we all have them.

Personally I don't ever think about how far, I only think that I may be little bit better next month then the previous on the piano, and enjoy the ride day to day, that's fine for me, I am a simpleton that way

This has more to do with charisma and marketting than with creativity.

+1

First you must enjoy it. Second, try to be realistic but be ambitious, consistent with practice. Set rather small and short time targets if you have to. And by all means whatever you learn, don't rush and try to be patient. You must find balance and not to take too much at once because:

- you get overwhelmed,
- you get discouraged, and…
- you eventually quit.

This happens and there was story about one individual who shared his journey with piano. He eventually gave up, even though he managed to learn big pieces such as Chopin's Nocturne Op. 9/1, Preludes etc. I know he achieved something because he shared his progress with people in this forum. Before, I did not understand why he left but now I do. It's very easy to fall into that trap of "I'm not good. I'm not progressing" etc. Someone who studied psychology could probably explained the reasons. I'm not going to

So, enjoy your piano. You two will be together forever

In reality, you'll be able to play the vast majority of piano repertoire for your own and others enjoyment.

Impossible question to answer. Only time will tell.

When you're 75 you will have been playing 30 years. You can make a lot of music in that time.

I started less than a year ago as my 60th birthday resolution. I had fiddled around over the years on piano, coming from a family of pianists and I had a couple of semesters of functional piano in college. That's about it. I am a percussionist so I didn't start from scratch but playing piano always seemed a very daunting challenge. And it has been.

I've come a long way in a year but still have trouble with pieces that an eight-year-old can play. So what. I love the time I spend at the keyboard. It has become an integral part of my life. I've come pretty far relative to where I started. I don't know how far I'll go but if I make it to the ripe old age of 90 then I'll have had 30 years of playing. That's not too bad.

If you need validation from others to achieve your musical goals, you probably won't get very far. I think the people who gain the most satisfaction from playing piano are ones who truly love music in all its forms and love to explore the different composers and genres. They are the ones who listen to music and attend concerts. As many have said before, there is no arrival point - it's all a magical journey.

http://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-26384712

Some things to ponder in this article. So if you agree on the "10 000 hours to mastery"-rule, playing 1 hour every day would make you a master after roughly 27 years

Personally I lean more towards the ideology that quality of practicing matters. With high quality practice this could be a much lower number (but not a low one by any means). And obviously training more than 7 hours weekly would get you to your goal faster.

But let's be realistic, it definitely IS about the journey. Only reason I am pointing this "rule" out is that becoming a "master" has actually been studied to some extent. I also think that there are a lot of people out there that have played the piano for more than 30 years with steady practicing and would not be considered masters. My guess is that this has to do with quality of practicing. To master anything you have to be constantly challenging and analyzing yourself and increasing the level of difficulty. Even lifting weights you have to change your routine several times per year, watch what you eat, rest properly and analazy how your own body is respondiny. Simply practicing "something" is not enough.

This process also gets quite tedious after years and years, when you are simply playing for your own enjoyment, instead of trying to make piano your profession. So my guess is that the quality of practice for most adults learning piano tends to diminish as the years go by. I don't think there is nothing wrong with that and personally I have not set my goal as becoming a "master". Rather I have specific pieces that I thoroughly enjoy listening to but that are currently beyond my skill. So I set my goal to reach a level where I can play a particular piece to my satisfaction. If I reach that level I guess I will pick another piece and set that as my goal.

I don't even play piano but I'll share some observations of having a young son that has practiced just about everyday for over 2 years and made good progress. I'm there every step of the way being his cheerleader.

As a little background, my son is 9 and has been playing piano for 2 and a half years and has an excellent highly qualified teacher. His teacher recently told me he's now considered an (early) intermediate player.

I realize being 9 is much different than being 45. However, I'm not sure if I was the one learning to play I would have learned any faster than him. In some ways, I think (I'm in my 40s) my learning would be slower as my son has a much better sense of rhythm and learning a new language is easier when you are young.

What I will say though is that the first two years, I felt largely that my son was "flying" through material. He went from primer through Level 2B Faber with relative ease. However, the music in these levels often sound like "learning" pieces. At 45 will you be able to tolerate playing pieces aimed mostly for kids? I could see this being a struggle for me.

My son is now working with an older set of Level 3 books (non Faber) and progress seems much slower as the pieces are more challenging. IMHO- my son really needed a strong foundation so that he could learn to play pieces that are often dubbed as "Easy Piano". FWIW He's still for the most part playing arrangements not real pieces.

I suppose the TL;DR is that it takes much more work than you'd ever imagine to learn to play piano. Get yourself a good teacher and realize that you might not learn faster than the average 7 year old and it's really okay. As others have mentioned, just enjoy your journey.

>In reality, how far can I go?

As far as you really want to go. You get what you work for.

Nobody knows for sure where his road on learning to play piano ends when he starts. But you probably can predict yourself. How did you fare in previous endeavours? Did you stop when it got tough?

But if you are serious about it now and love piano music, it really does not matter. Just start working and playing and enjoy.

I think a better question is: how long will it take to achieve the level *you want* to achieve, what practice techniques are required?

What do you want to play? Blues, Chopin etudes, pop, sight-read, improvisation etc.

I think you want to avoid vague goals and inappropriate practice regimes.

PS. I'm 46 and have the same concern as you.

This book discusses briefly the 10,000 hour mastery idea, and is an all around good read. Folks on this thread may find it interesting.

Guitar Zero: The Science of Becoming Musical at Any Age
by Gary Marcus
Link: http://amzn.com/0143122789

I avoid articles and books on the 10,000 hours to mastery idea. Didn't this notion come from Gladwell, who isn't a pianist? The reason I think this message is self-defeating is the idea that one has to toil for an incomprehensible amount of time struggling to get good at something and then, bingo, at the 10,001 hour you are a master. How does that concept help people enjoy the process of learning a skill if they think it will take that long to get sufficiently good at something? Maybe some get inspiration from this concept, but count me out.

We need to look at that concept in a broader perspective. Being a -good- musician is a perfect storm of body, mind, and emotions.
You need to be able to play and unfortunately, the only proof of being able to do it or to have the chops to have the potential to do it... it's actually to work your b-side hard and get it done.
You need the understanding of the music meaning you can't always robotically listen and repeat... they invented the CD player for that and works fantastic with much less effort.
You need the emotional / communication aspect developed on par with the other two. You can play as good as you want but if you can't communicate it it's the paradox of the tree falling into the inhabited forest. Or, being great in

The bottom line is that assuming that one actually can become a master of something, it does take a huge effort to do so independently from the discipline.

For how I see it, we never learn to play the piano, we just get a little better without ever reaching the true mastery.
Considering how many kids (and adults ) start playing the piano every year and how few true musical masters there are on this planet, it clearly states the odds.

I'm 45 and would be thrilled if I can someday master the Snoopy song. I'd create my own Carnegie Hall and invite everyone and their dogs and star in my own concert.

Then I can rest and confidently declare: veni, vidi, vici.

But first I need a piano.

Why is that? I've seen piano students in music grad school...graduates in piano-performance from top conservatories and they couldn't make music or "play" music without sheet music. However, the Russian students did. Why is that? What skills were taught to those Russian pianists that were not taught to the American pianists? What are those skills called so I can ask my teacher to teach them to me at some point?