Has anyone learned to play a musical instrument when you were older? I'm interested in those where this would have been their first musical instrument.

Define “older”

I changed instruments later in life from guitar to violin… I suppose that does not count though.

im 28 and bought a drum set about 2 years ago with the intention of finally putting some of the beats down that were in my head, and jamming with my buddies that have been playing music their whole lives.

it is so much more difficult than i imagined!

i take lessons once a week and my drum teacher has mainly preteens as students so i will be waiting on my lesson to start and will hear these kids going off on the kit, which is kind of discouraging.

*but i have continued to practice and have overcome many hurdles and currently rock AMAP with my band “Jelly & The Jukes”

(i did take piano lessons for 4 years while in elementary school, but i dont remember much)

I have been playing the piano since four, the saxohpone since 10, and the guitar since 12. The hardest one is the saxophone, but may be because I did not start with the clarinet.

I took violin for two months as a 1st grader. Now I’ve taken up the bass. My problem is I want to dart past the fundamentals, but you can’t do that. You have to practice those first!

Even then, with enough practice, I think I’ll maybe only end up as good as Bob Hardy in Franz Ferdinand, and that’s a big maybe. He’s passable for someone who started as an adult. He took up the bass a short while before Alex Kapranos started the band. By the time they recorded the first album, he’d been playing for about a year.

I’ve been playing drums since 5th grade, piano since 8th grade, and banjo since 2007. Banjo is definitely the most rewarding of the three, but I think playing both drums and piano sets a really good foundation for learning anything else. I learned a lot of music theory with piano and developed a pretty good sense of rhythm with the drums. The hardest part of learning instruments (in my opinion) is getting from one “level” to the next (like a video game, haha). Moving from sounding like a child (a complete beginner) to sounding like a decent player (novice) is one big transition. The transition I seem to have the most trouble with is moving past just being decent. I know all of these terms are completely subjective, but they are simply the way I evaluate my own playing. I would say I am still a novice at both piano and banjo, but I have moved past that in playing drums (only in the last two years though).

My best advice is to saturate yourself with that instrument. Get a tutor, buy books about it, find out how it’s made, listen to music with that instrument in it, or find a group of people interested in playing that instrument and/or jamming. Jamming is one of the best ways to get experience playing. I’m not going to lie – it was embarrassing at first but in the end it helped me a lot more than anything else I tried.

took up piano in my late 50’s….when I inherited a beast of an instrument. I took to it like a duck to water.

I started with the accordeon at around 8–9 but never was that good. I had a few goes on my sister’s piano, then moved onto the synth at around 13. At 15 I picked up a guitar and at 16 the drums and the sax. Age never had anything to do with it. The only instrument I am confident with is the guitar (which I started fairly late in life). I am not great, but I’m good enough to play for a crowd. I usually hire session musicians for the albums though.

What instrument are you thinking of learning? Nothing is that hard if you devote the time for it.