Am I too old to start learning a new instrument?

culpepper

GoldenShadow wrote: »

I have a dream to learn the violin. I am aware its supposed to be ridiculously hard, but I'm not sure how hard?!

I play piano and have done for 12 years now (since I was 9). I'm almost a bit scared to effectively start anew and be completely rubbish

I had a fabulous piano teacher and for anyone struggling to read sheet its a matter of not enough practise/understanding what is in front of you. I did music theory as I learned to play and that really helped, too

I haven't really found it hard so far.
To start off with, it is 4 finger positions on each string and the easier tunes don't tend to use all the strings at once .
The hardest bit is getting the bow to stay at the right angle so that you dont screech ,scrape or play two strings at once.
Youtube has loads of helpful stuff.

A metal practice mute is very handy and one of those little tuners that you clip on to the peg box .

My violin is quite old and needed new strings so there was a lot of tuning to do till the strings had settled.
OH's violin is old too and his has fine tuners on all the strings which makes it easy to get the string's tone near enough perfect.
Mine only has one so takes me longer to tune.

Rom_london

Never too late to start a new anything. it's just a bit harder, so we have to push ourselves!

Jazzy_B

My 15 yr old decided she wanted to learn lever harp last year. I started taking her to a monthly workshop in addition to her lessons, and the vast majority of beginners were retired ladies. I've seen their progression over the year, and it really seems to depend on practice time. Some have come on in leaps and bounds, whilst others who don't have lessons or much time to practice have stayed at the same level. They all enjoy it, and it's great that they can play together regardless of ability. Perhaps it might be worth looking to see if there's a group locally.