« | Home | »

Can a 50 Year Old Who Knows Nothing About Music Learn To Play Guitar?

By Mike Hayes | August 27, 2010

Quite often I meet a student who tells me they have always wanted
to play the guitar but they were told their fingers were too fat;
on other occasions students will tell me they were told that
their fingers were too short.

Usually the people who are telling me this are guitar students in
their 50’s to mid 60’s, some are in their 70’s; they are coming
to me for one last try and it’s not just face to face lessons
where I encounter this, here’s a typical correspondence for my
online subscription community: “I am 75 so I have all kinds of
trouble trying to “stretch” my fingers so they can work with
chords. I am not getting any younger, so is mine a hopeless
case????”

As you can see there is a common theme, can I learn to play the
guitar or is too late? The truth of the matter is that it does
not matter what age you start to play guitar, it certainly does
not matter if your fingers are ‘too short’, too long’ or ‘too
dumb’… students have actually told me that they thought that
they had been giving dumb or clumsy fingers at birth.

It’s actually quite distressing to hear these stories; one guy in
his mid 50’s told me he had wanted to learn guitar all his life,
when he was sixteen he tried to learn however his ‘teacher’ told
him his fingers were too fat to play guitar so his parents made
him learn the piano accordion (which he hated), eventually he
gave the whole idea of learning music away.

Is it possible to learn to play latter in life?

Most definitely “YES”

Can someone in their 50’s who doesn’t know a note of music learn
to play guitar?

Absolutely, and they should!

Am I just trying to think positively? No, here’s the musical
facts of life:

Music is a language that anyone can learn, in fact learning to
play guitar latter in life has some distinct advantages.

(a) generally people at this stage of life know that you have to
take things s-l-o-w-l-y, there’s no hurry it’s all about
‘quality’ not ‘quantity’.

(b) most likely these people have some spare time that they can
devote to an interesting pass time of hobby without too many
distractions.

(c) there’s a BIG advantage learning to play guitar from the
beginning, if you learn it correctly you don’t have to spend
countless wasted years trying to un-learn bad habits!

With very few exceptions students in the 50 to 70 age group tend
to learn guitar for relaxation, rarely miss a lesson, and hardly
ever ‘drop out’ and are very highly motivated especially when
they start seeing results.

The truth is … you don’t have to stretch your fingers trying to
play impossible chord shapes – it’s the notes in the chord you
are trying to play and there’s heaps of easy ways to play chords
on the guitar, sometimes you only need one or two fingers, the
trick is to learn the language of music that way you will know
how ’spell’ chords and ultimately be able to design your own
chord shapes.

Topics: Beginner Guitar Lesson | No Comments »

Comments

You must be logged in to post a comment.