Piano Lessons for Adults
To stay fit and capable of anything, one must exercise their body. Similarly, to keep the mind sharp and ready to be used at a moment’s notice, one must continue to learn new skills. Learning to play piano for adults is more than discovering and honing a new skill set. It’s also the best tool to gain an understanding of the fundamental concepts behind music – rhythm, melody, and harmony. An adult's brain has more capacity to understand and maintain a longer attention span than a child's brain. Adult brains are much larger than a child’s, meaning they can learn a new skill and gain new knowledge much faster. Piano is one of the most rewarding skills you can learn in life, and as it involves many parts of the brain working in harmony. That's why we see many adults who benefit greatly from learning to play piano later in life – it is very effective at keeping the brain sharp and young.
IS IT TOO LATE TO LEARN TO PLAY THE PIANO?
You're never too old to learn piano! In fact, we believe it's easier to learn for adults beginning piano later in life. The brain’s plasticity (its ability to learn new concepts) slows down later in life. This is due to an interesting phenomenon called myelination. Basically, as a child, your ability to use your brain is like an off-road vehicle. It can go anywhere, but it can’t go very quickly. Its ability to make new roads and go where it wants is unparalleled, but its speed is limited, and distractions are constant and difficult to avoid. For adults, those pathways become much more solid – like highways covered in asphalt – and your ability to use your brain is like a sports car. Although it can’t go off-road as easily as it used to, your ability to use the roads already built is exponentially faster, and it is much easier to concentrate for long periods of time. Because those roads are very solid, building new connections is easier, and using the information you already know to connect to new information becomes as fast as lightning.
This means that learning new skills, like learning piano, intentionally becomes much, much easier as an adult. Your brain is trained to understand knowledge, to pick up new skills, and fit them within your existing framework. Sure, kids may have the advantage of being really good at learning new skills through instinct alone, such as a child picking up a language just by being around it. However, this is offset by the adult brain’s much more developed capability to understand new knowledge, and by the adult’s improved ability, discipline, and desire to concentrate on new concepts.
So, to answer the question, it is never too late to learn the piano, or anything for that matter. Adults of any age benefit when keeping their brain sharp from new stimulation and keeping their hands dexterous by practicing the piano. All our adult students have mentioned how much easier typing has become thanks to their daily piano practice sessions, and how much more control they have of their individual fingers. Our piano instructors help with this by teaching scales (and other exercises) to build dexterity and control. When you learn pieces or songs where you can apply that dexterity and incorporate the music theory behind them, we can ensure that the theory and practice go hand in hand.
The process of learning an instrument is the same at any age, whether you start piano lessons over 50 or under five. It consists of learning one technique, practicing it repeatedly until you own and fully understand it, and moving on to the next one. Though your brain is more elastic at a young age, the experience and discipline you bring to learning the piano as an adult is instrumental in continuously making progress.
The Beginner’s Mind:
One thing that many adult students struggle with is returning to a beginner’s mind to be able to more effectively learn to play the piano. A beginner’s mind is basically an attitude towards learning where you accept new information from the position of a beginner, without applying the years of experience you have gained by just being an adult. This is difficult for most adults as the knowledge you have gained over the years about how to learn and approach new subjects often gets in the way of learning the almost alien skill of playing an instrument. Starting from fundamentals can be frustrating after years of being an expert at many subjects, but it is necessary. When taking piano lessons for adults, a beginner’s mind helps to reduce frustration at the sometimes slow progress. This can be due to the busy adult’s limited availability of practice time, or the hurried way of wanting to learn new things before the fundamentals are mastered.
At Boston Piano Lessons, our piano teachers for adults strive to cater the lessons to every student’s needs and abilities, and to ensure that piano lessons fit within your busy schedule. We offer concrete goals to work towards, and time-proven methods to get those fingers to listen to what we want them to do as quickly as possible. Our many years of working with adult beginner students has put us in the unique, expert position to customize these lesson plans specifically for adults, and to see (and hear!) the results that you are taking our lessons for.
Our Methods:
Adults can learn to play the piano, but it takes a qualified teacher that knows how to cater their lessons specifically to adults. Though each child is different, the methodology used to teach them is more or less the same, as it is based on their brain’s current development and abilities. Adults already have a lot of established knowledge, and a lot more executive function that they can use to learn the piano, so our job as teachers is to fit in our lessons to the person’s goals, available practice time, and to develop their already existing connection to music.
We do this by customizing the lessons to the person’s favorite music. Want to learn classical music? Chopin’s Prelude in E minor is a great place to start, after learning the basics of sheet music. Want to learn how to improvise in Jazz? We teach scales, chords, and have you soloing over basic standards in as little as a month. More of a pop/rock person? Learning the fundamentals behind a Beatles song only takes a few weeks. All of these situations are accompanied by teaching music theory that is applicable in these genres. We find it is helpful to have a framework to fill in rather than striking new ground right away.
Having concrete goals like this leads to a clear sense of progression and helps us as teachers to make sure that you are achieving the results you want. The most important thing a teacher can provide, especially at the beginning of learning an instrument, is to make sure that the student is sitting correctly at the piano (so that every movement of the fingers is supported by the rest of the body, and every movement is the least stressful – you make a lot of fine motor movements when playing the piano, and learning the wrong habits can quickly lead to injury and/or frustration with slow progress), as well as teaching how to most efficiently use their practice time to improve quickly.
The next thing that we as teachers do almost instinctively is to learn which methods of teaching are most effective to each student. Some are visual learners, some do better when all the information is presented and then the student is asked to solve problems with it, while others do their best when they just practice the movements over and over. Just like when you are getting to know someone, you learn what they like and don’t like. Our teachers must learn your most effective learning style and adapt their lessons to teach in that way. For example, some students need to have the music theory first, so that when they apply it during their practice, it has a place in their minds, and the practice is more effective. Others learn better through doing the exercises first, mastering them, and then learning the theory behind them.
Personally, I think it is one of the most fun parts of teaching – finding the best way to present the concepts to each student. It makes it feel like I am not teaching the same thing the same way every hour, and it is my pleasure to find the way that is best to teach you, not just teach the subject.
Is it too late to learn to play the piano?
You're never too old to learn piano! In fact, we believe it's easier to learn for adults beginning piano later in life.
What's the hardest part about taking piano classes for adults?
Many adult students struggle with returning to a beginner’s mind to be able to more effectively learn to play the piano.
What are some tips for learning the piano as an adult?
Start by taking piano lessons with an instructor who caters their lessons specifically to your unique needs and abilities.
What types of music can I learn to play on the piano?
Boston Piano lessons teaches classical, jazz, pop, rock and whatever else you'd want to learn!