Many of the adults who write to me are in their fifties. The children are older, the calendar finally has a little room, and a song they have wanted to play for decades is still waiting. Almost every one of them asks the same question first: is it too late?
It is not. But it is different from starting at eight, and pretending otherwise does not help anyone. So here is what genuinely changes, and what does not.
What changes
The hands take longer to warm up. A child sits down and plays. An adult hand that has spent the day on a keyboard or a steering wheel needs five minutes of slow, easy playing before it is ready for anything difficult. That is not a weakness; it is simply the first five minutes of a good session.
Small print is harder to read. Many method books are printed for children, small and crowded. Larger music, a good lamp and a bench at the right height do more for a fifty-year-old reader than any exercise.
New movements need more repetitions to settle. You will understand a passage on the first day and play it comfortably on the tenth. Expect that gap, plan for it, and it stops being discouraging.
What does not change
Your ear. You have been listening to music for fifty years. You know when a phrase is beautiful and when it is not, which is the hardest thing to teach a child.
Your understanding. When I explain why a hand should rest its weight on the key instead of pushing, an adult understands in one sentence. That understanding shortens everything that follows.
Your reason. Children practice because someone tells them to. You practice because you want to play Clair de Lune, or Let It Be, or Time After Time. A clear reason is the strongest teacher there is.
A plan that fits a fifty-year-old life
Twenty to thirty minutes a day, six days a week, is enough. Begin each session with something easy you already know, spend the middle on the one small spot that is not yet right, and end on something that sounds good. Keep a notebook of what you practiced.
Choose one piece now that you want to play by next year, and let everything else point at it. If you are not sure which, the page for adults in their 50s lists the songs people your age most often want to play.
The one thing you cannot do alone
The hardest part of teaching yourself is that you cannot hear your own playing from the outside. You play the right notes and it still sounds wrong, and you cannot tell why. That is exactly why I read and answer recordings: send me a minute of your playing and I will tell you, in writing, the one thing to change first.
For the songs, the obstacles and a plan for your first three months, see piano lessons for adults in their 50s.