Taking up a musical instrument as an adult

There is a piano in a lot of houses that nobody plays, a guitar in a lot of lofts, and in a lot of people over 50 a quiet certainty that it is too late — that musicians are made by the age of ten and the rest of us are the audience.

The research says otherwise, and so does every adult beginners’ ukulele group in the country.

What a year actually produces

A 2024 study in BMC Geriatrics followed 156 adults with an average age of 69 and no previous musical training. Half took weekly piano lessons for 12 months, with a keyboard at home and roughly 30 minutes of practice five days a week; the other half attended weekly music appreciation seminars. After a year the piano group showed moderate improvements in articulation and dynamics — the mechanics of playing — and both groups got better at hearing differences in melodies. Two findings stand out. People with no background acquired real skills. And age and cognitive reserve “did not identify any links” to how much anyone improved.

Nobody became a concert pianist. Everybody became someone who could play the piano a bit. That is the realistic goal, and it is a good one.

Choosing an instrument

Hands. Arthritis, stiffness and hand size all matter. Piano and keyboard are kind to hands: nothing is pressed hard and you can play with three fingers while you learn. Ukulele has four soft strings and a small neck. Steel-string guitar is hard on beginners’ fingertips; nylon-string is gentler. Violin demands a twisting left wrist. Recorder, tin whistle and harmonica need very little hand strength.

Hearing. If you have any hearing loss, get it tested before you spend money — the Alzheimer’s Society’s advice is to get it tested in mid-life regardless. Fixed-pitch instruments (piano, keyboard, harmonica) are easier than ones where you make the pitch yourself (violin, cello, trombone).

Space and neighbours. A digital piano with headphones, a ukulele, a recorder or a muted trumpet can be played in a flat at 10pm. A drum kit cannot.

Cost. A playable ukulele or recorder costs less than a restaurant meal; a secondhand digital piano or beginner’s classical guitar is in the low hundreds of pounds or dollars. Rent brass and strings first. Avoid the cheapest instrument in the catalogue — one that will not stay in tune teaches you that you cannot play.

Music you already love. This matters most. Folk: a whistle or fiddle. Jazz: a keyboard. If you sing in the car, a ukulele to sing over. You will practise what you want to hear.

How to practise

The habit is the hard part, so make it small. Fifteen to twenty minutes, most days, at a fixed time. Not an hour on Saturday: Dunlosky’s 2013 review of learning techniques found that skills are retained for longer when practice is distributed over time rather than massed, even for the same total hours.

Inside those twenty minutes:

• Five minutes of the boring bit. Scales, chord changes, long notes. Slower than feels reasonable.
• Ten minutes on the piece, but only the two bars you cannot play. The hard bit, four times, then join it to the bar before.
• Five minutes on something you can already play, so you finish sounding like a musician.

Keep a scrap of paper on the stand: what you worked on, what to do tomorrow.

Teacher, group, or both

A teacher who has taught adult beginners is worth the money early on, even for six lessons. They fix the hand position that would have cost you months and tell you what to practise. Many teach by video.

A group is what keeps you going. Ukulele groups exist in almost every town in the UK and US and are famously welcoming to beginners; so are community choirs, and brass bands and folk sessions usually have a learner side. In the UK, u3a — the network of learning groups for people no longer in full-time work — runs instrumental groups and ensembles; Age UK notes membership is usually cheaper than a formal adult education course. A group gives you a weekly deadline and people who notice if you do not turn up.

Realistic milestones

• One month. A clean sound and three chords or a five-note scale. Hands ache a bit. Normal.
• Three months. A simple tune all the way through, slowly; one song you can accompany.
• Six months. You can sit in with a beginners’ group and keep up most of the time, and you are starting to hear what is wrong and fix it.
• One year. You play a bit: a small repertoire, a new easy piece every couple of weeks, and — as in the study above — you hear music differently.

Progress is jagged: a good week, a fortnight where nothing moves, then a jump. Keep turning up. If you want the habit side scaffolded — eight weeks of what to do each day — our Sharp course works for instruments as well as languages and subjects.

This week

• Choose the instrument using the five questions above; rent, borrow or buy it.
• Book a single lesson.
• Find the nearest beginners’ group — search “ukulele group”, “community choir” or “u3a” and your town.
• Do fifteen minutes today. Then read Keeping your mind sharp after 50 for why this matters beyond the music, and Five memory techniques that work at any age for how to make practice stick.