Has anyone learned to play an instrument as an adult? Is it realistic to do that without hiring a tutor? To be more specific, I want to learn to play the piano. I have never played a musical instrument before.
It’s useful to realize that “learn to play” is not a thing. It’s not a concrete goal.
Do you want to learn a particular song? That’s not only doable, but easy. You just get the sheet music, figure out music notation sufficiently to break the sheet music into tiny sections, and practice until you can play the song.
I always find learning a particular song to be a good starting point with any new instrument. Even if that song is “hard”. It just needs to be something that you really want to learn to play. If you love Moonlight Sonata, start trying to learn Moonlight Sonata. Don’t start with beginner piano lessons, particularly if you don’t have a teacher forcing you to grind through them. Because you simply don’t do them. But you will practice Moonlight Sonata.
Also, I think it is a valid approach to go for moderate stretches just “teaching yourself” and then checking in with a tutor to correct bad habits. I expect some people will disagree with me on this, on the grounds that the bad habits will already be entrenched by that point, but I think it’s just a matter of balancing your priorities. Some bad habits have to be acceptable if you’re mainly doing it for enjoyment.
I learned piano as a kid (10+ years training) but started on the mandolin and banjo as an adult (shortly before turning 30). I started learning mandolin on my own, using online tutorials and other teaching materials. In retrospect I tried to advance too quickly and didn’t drill enough on the basics, reaching a local maximum and getting frustrated about my inability to improve further. Even a small amount of early interactive tutorial would have helped me a great deal in correcting problems of hand positioning before they became habitual.
I also found that I was terrible at playing with others even though I felt like I was doing just fine playing along with online tracks—lack of awareness was a significant hurdle. I started to learn the banjo a year later and took lessons from the start—learned some things at the very start that improved my mandolin playing even though the mechanics are very different (at least on the “picking” hand).
From my brief attempt with Scottish bagpipe lessons, I can say that without a tutor it’s very difficult to detect and correct bad finger positioning and bad posture habits.
I haven’t checked any available manuals, so I can’t say whether proper position is addressed in any detail. But it’s very counterintuitive, and certainly different from the finger positioning you’re used to if you ever played a recorder flute at school.
Another problem is that my teacher was left-handed (like me) and invented his own positioning system, which made it harder to follow lessons from any other source. I talked about this with my teacher’s teacher and it was quite the eye-opener.
22 years old here, so not entirely adult-brained yet. I am in the process (well, while recovering from a surgery I’m taking a break, but...) of learning to play piano myself. It’s slow going but pretty fun. If you have prior musical experience (for instance, in choir) it will be much easier.
I’ve mostly been having difficulty finding appropriate (and interesting) sheet music myself. I mostly have been playing video game tunes, and many of those aren’t particularly easy for beginners.
I might or might not be an example of someone who has done that. I learned to play guitar from scratch at 28 years old. However, I had previously learned to play the piano when I was a teenager, so that might have made it easier. However the two are very different instruments. YMMV.
A lot of the difficulty in picking up a new instrument may just be lack of time. When I was a teenager I was spending 5+ hours a day playing the piano. I am not exaggerating in the least. As an adult it is very hard to find 30 minutes a day of time. It took me about 3 years to become very good at the piano. Another few years would probably have made me even better. This is consistent with the 10,000 hour rule. A naive calculation would conclude that it would take 30 years of practice at 30 min/day to become equally good at the guitar.
I’m 24 and I currently learning to play the piano without a tutor since last year, I play for my amusement and also because i like to learn things on my own, I surely have bad finger positioning and so, but If your goal is less about being the best piano player and more about having fun / flow, I think is totally realistic. But I you hire a tutor it will speed things up.
The main reason to be concerned about finger positioning is to avoid repetitive strain injury. You want to be able to keep using those fingers, after all.
I tried this once, but then I kept spending all my free time online, so I haven’t learn anything meaningful. So I guess I am not the right person to give advice, but my opinion is that it is realistic, if you persevere. I know two people who learned playing the piano this way; one of them plays really good, the other one has only memorized a song or two (but it sounds great anyway).
Do you have the piano? Do you have free time to practice at a reasonable time of the day (because your neighbors might be unhappy about hearing you practice in late night)? Buying a keyboard with headphones could be a solution.
I asked people to recommend me the best book for learning. Unfortunately, I don’t have it here, and I don’t remember what it was.
I found it more motivating to play using a metronome (so when I don’t press the right key at the right moment, I consider it a failure and start again). Playing this way reminds me of Dance Dance Revolution, and generally feels like playing a computer game.
Do you know the musical theory? It actually makes sense from mathematical point of view, if you understand the somewhat crappy notation. Tone = frequency of vibration. The tones are a geometric progression, where 12 “halftones” = double the frequency. Note that there are 12 keys (both white and black) in an octave; there is a halftone between each two adjacent ones. The white keys correspond to lines and spaces in the music sheets; you reach the black keys via prefixes.
There’s probably already a course on youtube or a textbook to check out from the library. As a first-timer you’ll have to put extra work into learning musical notation and other conceptual stuff.
Has anyone learned to play an instrument as an adult? Is it realistic to do that without hiring a tutor? To be more specific, I want to learn to play the piano. I have never played a musical instrument before.
It’s useful to realize that “learn to play” is not a thing. It’s not a concrete goal.
Do you want to learn a particular song? That’s not only doable, but easy. You just get the sheet music, figure out music notation sufficiently to break the sheet music into tiny sections, and practice until you can play the song.
I always find learning a particular song to be a good starting point with any new instrument. Even if that song is “hard”. It just needs to be something that you really want to learn to play. If you love Moonlight Sonata, start trying to learn Moonlight Sonata. Don’t start with beginner piano lessons, particularly if you don’t have a teacher forcing you to grind through them. Because you simply don’t do them. But you will practice Moonlight Sonata.
Also, I think it is a valid approach to go for moderate stretches just “teaching yourself” and then checking in with a tutor to correct bad habits. I expect some people will disagree with me on this, on the grounds that the bad habits will already be entrenched by that point, but I think it’s just a matter of balancing your priorities. Some bad habits have to be acceptable if you’re mainly doing it for enjoyment.
I learned piano as a kid (10+ years training) but started on the mandolin and banjo as an adult (shortly before turning 30). I started learning mandolin on my own, using online tutorials and other teaching materials. In retrospect I tried to advance too quickly and didn’t drill enough on the basics, reaching a local maximum and getting frustrated about my inability to improve further. Even a small amount of early interactive tutorial would have helped me a great deal in correcting problems of hand positioning before they became habitual.
I also found that I was terrible at playing with others even though I felt like I was doing just fine playing along with online tracks—lack of awareness was a significant hurdle. I started to learn the banjo a year later and took lessons from the start—learned some things at the very start that improved my mandolin playing even though the mechanics are very different (at least on the “picking” hand).
From my brief attempt with Scottish bagpipe lessons, I can say that without a tutor it’s very difficult to detect and correct bad finger positioning and bad posture habits.
Do you reckon that this is because of a lack of resource about the subject or because it’s usually overlooked?
I haven’t checked any available manuals, so I can’t say whether proper position is addressed in any detail. But it’s very counterintuitive, and certainly different from the finger positioning you’re used to if you ever played a recorder flute at school.
Another problem is that my teacher was left-handed (like me) and invented his own positioning system, which made it harder to follow lessons from any other source. I talked about this with my teacher’s teacher and it was quite the eye-opener.
22 years old here, so not entirely adult-brained yet. I am in the process (well, while recovering from a surgery I’m taking a break, but...) of learning to play piano myself. It’s slow going but pretty fun. If you have prior musical experience (for instance, in choir) it will be much easier.
I’ve mostly been having difficulty finding appropriate (and interesting) sheet music myself. I mostly have been playing video game tunes, and many of those aren’t particularly easy for beginners.
I might or might not be an example of someone who has done that. I learned to play guitar from scratch at 28 years old. However, I had previously learned to play the piano when I was a teenager, so that might have made it easier. However the two are very different instruments. YMMV.
A lot of the difficulty in picking up a new instrument may just be lack of time. When I was a teenager I was spending 5+ hours a day playing the piano. I am not exaggerating in the least. As an adult it is very hard to find 30 minutes a day of time. It took me about 3 years to become very good at the piano. Another few years would probably have made me even better. This is consistent with the 10,000 hour rule. A naive calculation would conclude that it would take 30 years of practice at 30 min/day to become equally good at the guitar.
I’m 24 and I currently learning to play the piano without a tutor since last year, I play for my amusement and also because i like to learn things on my own, I surely have bad finger positioning and so, but If your goal is less about being the best piano player and more about having fun / flow, I think is totally realistic. But I you hire a tutor it will speed things up.
The main reason to be concerned about finger positioning is to avoid repetitive strain injury. You want to be able to keep using those fingers, after all.
I tried this once, but then I kept spending all my free time online, so I haven’t learn anything meaningful. So I guess I am not the right person to give advice, but my opinion is that it is realistic, if you persevere. I know two people who learned playing the piano this way; one of them plays really good, the other one has only memorized a song or two (but it sounds great anyway).
Do you have the piano? Do you have free time to practice at a reasonable time of the day (because your neighbors might be unhappy about hearing you practice in late night)? Buying a keyboard with headphones could be a solution.
I asked people to recommend me the best book for learning. Unfortunately, I don’t have it here, and I don’t remember what it was.
I found it more motivating to play using a metronome (so when I don’t press the right key at the right moment, I consider it a failure and start again). Playing this way reminds me of Dance Dance Revolution, and generally feels like playing a computer game.
Do you know the musical theory? It actually makes sense from mathematical point of view, if you understand the somewhat crappy notation. Tone = frequency of vibration. The tones are a geometric progression, where 12 “halftones” = double the frequency. Note that there are 12 keys (both white and black) in an octave; there is a halftone between each two adjacent ones. The white keys correspond to lines and spaces in the music sheets; you reach the black keys via prefixes.
EDIT: This may be useful for the piano.
There’s probably already a course on youtube or a textbook to check out from the library. As a first-timer you’ll have to put extra work into learning musical notation and other conceptual stuff.