I think my view can probably be best summed up with this idea...Find 100 people over 40 who can play a Chopin Ballade or Scherzo and ask for a show of hands for how many started the piano for the first time after 20...My strong gut feeling is that you will not see any hands raised. I may be wrong and there may be someone HERE that started as an adult who can play an advance opus in a proficient manner. I personally have never met such a person. I have met many who can play these pieces however and, to date, they all started young.You may not buy the brain plasticity idea, but is there really any doubt that the young brain is forming neural pathways at a speed that exceeds that of an adult? Or, perhaps the PROBLEM with the vast majority of adults is NOT that they cannot be wired - but that they cannot be UN-wired. I had two students that come to mind, both adults. Neither of them could play a note with their middle finger without some other finger also playing a key. I kid you not. There was nothing I could do in 3 lessons to get just ONE note to sound from these people's right hands. Their hands were apparently neurologically 'wired' as a single unit or there was some abnormality that was turning the hand into a fist as opposed to individual fingers.....Now, for any who read this... out of genuinely wanting to understand this - have any of you started as an adult (call it starting the piano for the very first time at 18 or older) and ended up being able to play a major work of Chopin, Beethoven, Brahms, Debussy - you know - something that would be a good piece for an entrance audition to a good music school? If anyone has done this, I think it would serve this thread well if you could speak up with your experience. And, no, I have not read every post in this thread... so maybe someone already has. Could you do so again?
The average student struggles to consistently practice piano away from the teacher.
Typical lessons are once a week, which means a student does not have access to a teacher 6 days out of 7. So of course a student will be practising away from the teacher. (?)
And when in the presence of a teacher, then the student is learning and not practising.
It is really quite simple what I said. The average student struggles to CONSISTENTLY PRACTICE AWAY FROM THE TEACHER. How is that confusing I dunno...
Maybe you have had experience...
It could mean that the student's struggle involves being away from the teacher and practising away from the teacher (which is how I understood it).
You say this average student is lazy. Well, when you are lazy, you are not struggling, you just don't bother. If the student is struggling, then the student doesn't know how to practice, or has problems with part of what he is supposed to practice?
LiW, your message was not clear the first time. We can always assume what someone means to say by guessing, but I prefer to find out what they actually meant by asking questions. Thank you for explaining what you meant to say. Now it is clear.
You know I like to string on conversations especially if one member is trying to make me look like I am writing something confusing, wrong etc when it is clearly not.
I would be more interested in discussing those ideas. Can we move on to that now?
What's the real difference in learning speed, which can't be surmounted by "willpower"? Is it intellectual memory? Muscle memory and undoing old habits? Inability to conceptualize as fast as one used to? Mental/psychological hangups? Inability to focus deeply? Plain old lack of time? Of course, one could argue "declining neuroplasticity", but that answer is nearly tautological, and therefore kind of useless from a practical perspective.
I do think it's theoretical because real life tends to interfere, but IF we consider that good teaching, physical health, time, motivation and mental strength are all there, I would say the only limits are inborn properties such as cognitive and physical abilities and "musicality" (which is not so easy to define). If those too are present, I don't see how one cannot progress far as a late starter when it comes to skills and individual works. One may still be behind those who have learned 20 or 30 years longer with similar resources because the repertoire is so big and some of the depth in playing comes from experience and maturity with the music. But I don't think that is even relevant except in the highest level of professional artistry.But if you are looking for empirical evidence, it's just impossible to find because it would be extremely rare to tick all the boxes above.PS: I don't even consider a 17 year old an adult but a teenager.
Agreed with you on the empirical evidence part. I would say it's also true that most adults don't develop strong interests in new topics for whatever reason. It could perhaps be argued that that a reduced drive to learn something new is in itself a consequence of having lower neuroplasticity. Most people seem to argue that there is significant decline in capability in addition to all of the factors listed -- that even given a hypothetical adult who has the time and motivation, they will just not be able to progress as fast as a child would by an order of magnitude, and give up during the process. There is also the aspect of individual variability which is very tricky to talk about -- if someone in their 40s is functioning as well as an average 20 year old (mentally), does that mean that they retained their abilities, or does it mean that they were far above average when they were 20, and declined in terms of ability?
The bump post is questionable. Watch out for edits. The first post from this user contains an external link to a questionable site. Reported.
In case anyone is confused, it appears that the person who bumped the post has since been removed. The other post went to the usual "we'll do illegal activities for you if you pay us" site.
... when I was around 17, without guidance and without a piano until very recently, and I'm pretty sure I will get to playing the Chopin ballades eventually ....
...This took a few months. I could play one or two grade 8 pieces shoddily after a couple of years. Comparing this to what posters have commented about their progress as more mature adults (reaching grade 2 after around 3 years for example), the difference is absolutely insane. I wasn't a young kid when I started but a college student. Surely the difference doesn't have to be that large? It's scary from my perspective because I start questioning whether I can ever "make it".
Most people aren't very determined when they start to play, and that very fact will skew the statistics immensely to the point where it doesn't really even matter to a person who is ready to commit a lot of effort.
However, the fact that the primary factor affecting the progress of the average student is, for example, time spent practicing, doesn't mean that it's impossible to talk about the average progress of a student who spends a certain amount of time per day with a good teacher etc. It just means that such a study would be hard and probably expensive to conduct, and hasn't been done yet.
There is also the aspect of individual variability which is very tricky to talk about -- if someone in their 40s is functioning as well as an average 20 year old (mentally), does that mean that they retained their abilities, or does it mean that they were far above average when they were 20, and declined in terms of ability?
There is also commitment. Many adults may not be willing to devote effort into the serious commitment that is needed to learn an instrument well. There are too many competing activities for them to devote themselves to serious learning of a new skill.
Typically in the US band instruments are taught in a group setting. A few students who are more interested or more talented might be encouraged to take private lessons but I wouldn't say that is the norm. Therefore the kind of technical instruction you are picturing is less evident than you would think. School band directors have to be generalists and know a little about every instrument, but not necessarily the fine points. Private lessons go into a little more detail but with many teachers the focus will be on expression, musicality, solo preparation, etc., with an avoidance of really discussing mechanics. It is goal focused and not process focused. I personally sought out a teacher who knows and teaches the mechanics at a detail level but that is fairly rare. Prior to that, the best lessons I had were simply playing next to someone really good, and trying to absorb all I could about how he/she was doing it. Every gig is an audition, but also every gig is a lesson, if you're paying attention.
Timothy42b. I agree not all adults will complete their ambition or pastime in wanting to play piano efficiently. But you do seem to write off all adults as never achieving as the learning is much slower.
Tim, I want to turn some of what you just wrote on its head.To start with professional musicians. If you play with a group, or if you are a soloist, you have the skills to be able to do that. You did the work to reach it.
Well, you should at least have the level of skill to fit in that particular group, and they vary considerably, but basically I'd agree. But with a couple of caveats.The professionals that I play with (or used to!) did not wait until they were good, practicing in the solitude of their basement for years. They started in beginner band with every other raw beginner, and developed their craft over time, generally moving to more accomplished groups as they were able.
Learning a skill like piano is more difficult for an adult than for a child, and in some ways is more difficult than other tasks an adult takes on.
... There is another philosophical point that is important to me and maybe nobody else! It has to do with the basic approach to playing an instrument. For many it is just like math, the attempt to master an esoteric skill that has no real world application. Adults pay for lessons, buy quality instruments, and practice diligently solely for the satisfaction of learning the skill.That is a concept so alien to me that I had difficulty believing it was true for my first year or two on piano forums. Why would anybody do that? Yet reading posts on the two main piano forums, it is clear that most adults approach piano that way. The motivation is purely internal.
I can tell you that this is not true for any of the musicians I know personally. We all take lessons and practice for the purpose of playing with groups that we enjoy, and an external reinforcement is a huge part of why we do it. Of course mastery of any element of skill is internally rewarding for us too. But such mastery has additional rewards, like the respect of our peers, like being invited to play with higher quality groups, like (sometimes, and before COVID) paid gigs.
For me as a professional pianist it is mostly a private joy which then effects my entire life. Of course it is nice to share the music with others but ultimately you are alone with the music a great majority of the time. Music is a strange and mysterious force to me which foremost is a personal relationship which is mostly private but also opens up to the public.
What does the "average student" look like? (Read 8048 times)
