Learning Music as an Adult Can Serve Many Different Roles 

For many people, music lessons in adulthood fill a different role than they did as a kid. Whether you’re picking up an instrument for the first time or returning to one after years away, learning music as an adult can serve several purposes depending on your goals. In most cases, it aligns with one or more of the following:

• Therapeutic purposes
• As a hobby
• As a passion project

Therapeutic Purposes

Learning music through music lessons can be a fun, relaxing, and stimulating experience.  Your teacher should approach the lessons so that there isn’t necessarily practice requirements but as experiences designed around fun with no pressure. Talking about favorite music or bands or groups or songs, learning bits and pieces or entire songs, only dealing with technique and theory if the student specifically requests it or learning to play the bits requires it.   Other than that, each lesson should be based around a fun, music centered experience. 

As a Hobby

Learning an instrument as a hobby means there will be more work involved in terms of practice.  But that is depending on the student’s goals.  Does the student want to play a particular song? We’ll need to learn the drum beat, or some chords, or the words and melody.  Does the student want to learn to read music so they can buy some sheet music? We’ll need to learn about clefs, pitches and where they live on a staff, and note types with their durations. 

This isn’t all that different than the therapeutic reasons, these two are fairly well entertwined.  The main difference will be that in addiction to the aspects above, there will be a bit more required of the student in terms of practice. 

Passion Project

Student’s who have a passion for music but maybe had to give it up to focus on their working and/or family life. These students probably already have a handle on some aspects of music and playing, they might actually be quite advanced and just need some polishing to get back to where they were.  

It must be said that none of the above categories are exclusive.  There can be cross over between any and all of them.  Actually, odds are very high that if you fall into one category, there will be aspects of the others in your experiences.  Hobbyists can take it a little seriously but still feel much more relaxed and refreshed after a lesson where we talk about their favorite band and why that band sounds the way they do or why they wrote a particualr song the way they did.  

Again, the main difference between each category generally is how much time the student can dedicate to practice and the depth they want to go into techincal areas of the music.  Additionally, these categories don’t have to be set at the beginning and left there every single lesson.  Because of the nature of my preferred teaching method, if the student doesn’t have the bandwidth for a heavy lesson, or if there is a particularly gnawing question that can go deep, we can hone in on whatever the student wants lesson by lesson and even moment by moment. 

The Look and Feel of Each Path

Structure of the Lessons

My general structure for a lesson is as follows:

• Warm up our musical brains and muscles to an adequate level. 
• Start with a review of the previous material. 
• Move into new material conceptually, if there is adequate master of the previous material. 
• Practice material on the instrument and show how to physically play the new stuff. 
• Finish the lesson with a review of what we talked about in the lesson with suggestions for practicing.

But all of this can and will change based on the needs of the student. If what you need is

• Time to process a part or a song, we’ll just chat about it until you gain clarity. 
• Nitty gritty mechanical work, we’ll dive headfirst into the techniques you’ll need to master to pull off that part. 
• Philosophy of why music is also math, history, and language, we’ll talk through that.  

Expectations

As briefly mentioned above, the three different lesson formats have different expectations that have increasing oblicgations depending on the seriousness of the goal(s).  When the goal is to reduce stress, take your mind off work or home responsibilities for a bit, then the expectation is that we’ll have a fun and stimulating lesson.  I will ask that you practice any things we talk about, but it isn’t required nore is it important.  The important thing is relaxation.  As we move twards hobby or passion, there will be a greater expectation placed on practice and improvement.  This, as always, depends on the goals and needs of the student and is completely flexible based on their changing goals.  

 Commitment Levels

My goal is to provide a lesson experience that the student wants to keep coming back to. Commitment is important in the reaching of goals, but isn’t necessarily a commitment to me as your teacher, its a commitment to yourself to attaining the goal.  My job is to enable you to get there.  That’s really all there is to it.  

Getting to the nitty gritty of commitment, for actually engraining a concept, it must be practiced and repeated.  For an instrument like guitar, this also means developing finger calouses so it doesn’t hurt as much to play the instrument.  This takes a commitment to spending time with the instrument.  Depending on the seriousness with which you take to learning concepts verses pure enjoiment, I suggest a minimum of 15 minutes a day of practice for any study that is more than stress relief or enjoyment. 

I understand that all adults have very limited time. Learning music as an adult will focus around your enjoyment and how much time you can realistically and practically commit to the process. So, if all you have is the time of our lesson, that’s perfectly fine. If you can dedicate any time to practice outside of the lesson, even better! But it’s more about your enjoyment of music than, “earning an A” so to speak. The A comes when you’re having a good time and picking up something new, fun, and useful.

My Adaptablility 

My teaching style is purely based on the goals and needs of the specific student for the specific lesson.  I generally start out by asking how you’re doing, what you’ve worked on since our last lesson, and if you have any questions or concerns.  From there, I can gauge how the student is doing, where we should go, and how we should get there.  

As mentioned before, gauging how the student is doing and reacting and structuring the lesson based on things like their current mental and emotional bandwidth, how much work they put into the lesson material from previous lessons, and the nature of our conversation leading up to the actual music, the lesson can range from extremely low pressure to working up to an upcoming performance, recital, or audition.  As I keep saying, it all depends on what the student needs and wants out of the lesson.  

Myths About Learning Music as an Adult

When learning music as an adult, do you need “talent”?  

I don’t even know what this means, frankly.  It’s an age-old saying, “I can’t play a lick of music, I don’t have any talent.”  There are very few and far between cases where I’ve found that a student can not get better at playing and nearly every time its because of drive or interest, not physicality or mental acquity.  Are you going to be a Segovia or an Adele?  Probably not, but is that really the point? 

Shouldn’t the point be to learn to actively participate in something you love passively participating in? As Dave Grohl has roughly said, “You’re going to suck, just keep sucking and eventually you won’t.”  As a matter of fact, one of my absolute favorite things about music is listening to students, artists, and friends develop in their musical ability.  You can listen to an early Clash album and hear a distinct  difference and even maturity between it and their later albums.  Same with early Bruce Springstein verses later Springstein.  Really, you can insert literally any artist and listen as their technical facility, song writing ability, and voice evolve over time.  

So, no! When learning music as an adult, you do not need to have any special talent except interest.

What if I don’t want to perform?

You’re starting a personal journey building a relationship with an instrument.  You dictate the terms of that relationship and no one else.  If you just want to play covers for yourself or your partner or your dog, there are no rules and there is absolutely no shame or judgement.  Again, you are taking lessons to enrich your life, not live by pressures someone else might want you to live up to. Enjoy yourself and I’ll make sure we reach your goals, whatever they happen to be! 

Is it okay if I never read music?

Absolutely.  Music existed long before there was written notation for it. If you just want to learn songs and structures. If you just want to better appreciate the music you listen to, you don’t really need to read music.  There are advantages to learning to read, but these are your lessons based on your goals.  It’s my job to enable you to reach those goals.  

Do I have to play with other people?

If you want to play by yourself, that’s perfectly fine.  We can learn more solo material or we can play with songs.  Traditionally, music is a communal experience, again, this is your journey and you set the direction you want to go.  I’m just a guide.  

How long will it take before I can play a song?

It depends.  I can show you how to play a song in the first lesson.  You will probably not understand what you’re doing, but you’ll be making music.  But if the question is really, “How long until I play the song I want?” It depends on a bunch of factors:

• The difficulty and complexity of the song.
• How much and how consistently you practice
• If there are aspects that you need to understand and be able to play before playing your chosen song.

What I mean by the last point is we may need to learn a different song or part of a different song before we can really get to playing your song.  In most of these situations, a little bit of patience and a lot of hard work will get you there.  

Am I too old to learn to play?

Absolutely not!  There are studies that show learning music as an adult helps with nuro-plasticity and a number of other benefits for your brain.  I’ve had students in their 50ies, 60ies, 70ies, 80ies, and even 90ies.  Are there challenges you might face as you age?  Absolutely, but if we stay focused on the fun and set your goals and expectations properly, you’ll find music lessons fulfilling and stimulating, regardless of your age.  

In Conclusion

Learning music is a beautiful and rewarding thing.  It should always be fun and stimulating and aligned with what you want to get out of it.  You don’t need to dream of Madison Square Garden.  The point is to have a fun outlet, learn some songs, talk about something you like with someone who’s passionate and knowledgable, and relieve some stress by focusing on something other than your responsibilities and obligations for a time.  

If this resonates with you, please feel free to check out my Lesson and Booking information and try a lesson with me with a Free 30 minute Trial Lesson or 50% off an hour lesson!  

I look forward to helping you take your mind off life for a bit, learning some music, and having a great conversation!  

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