Piano Forum

Topic: Switching to piano from another instrument late in life  (Read 1683 times)

Offline brogers70

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There have been lots of "is it too late" threads dealing with people who want to start piano as adults. I'm wondering what is the experience of people who have switched from playing another instrument well when they were young, to piano later in life, say in their 30s or later. How far were they able to progress? What sort of problems did they run into? Were there aspects of technique that they found especially difficult?

I switched from classical guitar to piano when I was 40; I was already quite comfortable with music theory, and I had a good bit of experience performing in public and in competitions. It's definitely taken me longer to develop technical facility than it would take a child/teenager. After 15 years my teacher just started me on some Chopin Etudes; I've played a good number of Mozart and Haydn Sonatas, a few Preludes and Fugues from WTC, some Brahms Intermezzi. Nothing requiring really advanced technical skills. I'm not sure what the limits are; I'd like to be able to play some Beethoven Sonatas, Pastorale and Les Adieux, among others, and I'll just keep practicing a lot and see where it goes.

I wonder if there are other folks here in my situation and what their experience has been.

Offline indianajo

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Re: Switching to piano from another instrument late in life
Reply #1 on: June 13, 2013, 03:28:51 PM
It has been a day and nobody has answered. I'm the opposite of you, I took piano age 8 to 16 but bought my first guitar age 35.
I think one key skill it helps to develop at a young age, is control of the fourth and fifth fingers.  Both guitar and piano give practice at this skill on the left hand but many guitar players don't use the fourth and fifth fingers of the right hand.  Most adults of my age carry their fourth and fifth fingers around as so much dead weight.
Fortunately, querty keyboard skill is a modern training ground for the young, so many children that grew up after 1976 in the age of the PC will have used their fifth fingers some on the shift and enter keys, at least.  I'm a bit dismissive of the skills taught by the touch screen cell phone.  
As far as guitar goes, I learned 8 chords or so and some finger picking, so I upgraded to a brass string guitar.  That was a mistake, my skin doesn't grow callouses.  Neither do my fingernails have any sort of strength, being quite flexible and fragile.   So unless I want to strumma strumma sitting down around a fire at summer camp, I'm back to concentrating on piano (and now electronic organ).
 

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