“Some guy said to me: Don't you think you're too old to sing rock n' roll?
I said: You'd better check with Mick Jagger.”

― **Cher**

*Goodreads, quotes*

Can you learn music at any age?

Sometimes when we get a little bit older, we would like to learn something new, like learning a new language, a new sport, or a musical instrument. But when we pick up our new hobby, we could be bothered by this question: “am I too old for this?”. It doesn’t matter if somebody in our environment asks this to us, or if we ask it ourselves. We just want some confirmation at the start of learning a new hobby. Because deep down it’s about the fear of being a fool to even try at your current age.

The truth is that you can start learning a musical instrument at any age, as long as you put in enough hours. Of course, your body isn’t as flexible anymore when you are of a certain age, so playing the guitar for example can be quite a challenge for some. But it’s not impossible to do.

Learning a musical instrument is like learning a new language as well. Imagine yourself to be a child again that has to accumulate a whole slew of vocabulary and grammar to be able to speak. So that’s one of the main first things that you’ve got to remember when starting this journey: don’t be discouraged if it doesn’t work in the first week, month, or even year.

It might take a while. But that has nothing to do with your age.

You can learn music at any age if you master this:

Patience: putting in the hours to get good

If you practice for only one hour, you will only see a small amount of progress, and this isn’t very satisfying. Most people will give up way too fast because they aren’t seeing any progress. Well, you could compare the practice process like grass that is growing: you know it’s happening, but you cannot see it happen in time because it’s going really slowly.

Discipline: working for your future self

In order to get those hours, we need discipline and sometimes we need to do things even if we don’t like doing them. Sometimes, when I’m lacking the discipline to do things, I’d like to listen to Jocko Willink. He’s going as far as saying that discipline EQUALS freedom because when you are disciplined to do the stuff you don’t like doing now, you are constantly doing your future self a favor.

Practice: making music a habit in your life

Practice is an obvious one, but a lot of people skip this part because they feel practicing on a daily basis is too much of a burden. So one of the best practical tips I give my guitar students is to only practice for 2 minutes a day. This way you are lowering the bar for yourself a lot.

Everybody can set aside for only 2 minutes a day, no matter how busy you are. The idea of having to pick up the guitar and beginning the new activity is often the hardest part. Once you are sitting down with your instrument, you feel like you want to continue, and the idea that it is already okay when you’ve hit the 2-minute mark makes it easier to do.

The Importance of setting clear goals

What would you like to accomplish with your instrument? Do you want to play just for yourself, or would you like to give a small performance for your friends and family, or do you want to reach a real stage and play in public? And which genre would you like to play: pop, rock, jazz, classical? Those questions are all pretty useful to answer for yourself since they will help you to pick the right teacher and the right learning material straight from the beginning.

And let’s say you want to learn the guitar: what kind of guitar? Electric, acoustic nylon string guitar, acoustic steel-string guitar, bass guitar, ukelele?

And once you’ve chosen one, what kind of material are you going to study? Do you want to become a great accompanying player that knows how to play strumming patterns really well with chords? Or do you like to learn famous melodies or riffs on your guitar? Or maybe you just want to learn scales and eventually learn how to improvise with them?

Do you see what I mean by picking a goal? There are a lot of options out there, and setting a goal as specific as possible will get you to attain it much sooner.

Manage your expectations

Okay, so let’s say you’ve just begun your piano learning journey for a couple of weeks in and you find out that your cousin that’s 14 years old can play way better piano than you. Don’t beat yourself up! She’s probably been playing since she was 7 so comparing yourself to someone younger like that is totally unfair to yourself.

Just remind that age doesn’t really matter and that it will take you a couple of years too to get to that level.

Find some form of group that you can experience music together with

Any form of social interaction combined with music is one of the best motivators for learning music. And it’s very simple: you just don’t want to look like a fool to the others when you are rehearsing with your band, so you’d better prepare really damn well for your band practice. You see: practicing in a group of people on a regular basis is like your first couple of performances.

First, you play for yourself, then you play for just one person, and then a band, and then with each other on stage in public.

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