When kids are exploring their interest in learning to play the piano, adults try to encourage the young person to have a go at learning and to try their best. This is not bad advice at all. We adults know that kids genuinely don’t know how much they are going to enjoy taking lessons, practicing and most importantly, how far they can take their skills. Kids have no idea how good they could be and where their enjoyment of playing the piano will take them.
It is always important to encourage a child or teenager to perfect their technique and to be acquiring more skills. When their potential is unlimited, why allow the young to limit what they are learning and how much they can learn?
It is different for a retired person who wants to take up playing the piano and a child or teenager starting piano lessons because the older person knows exactly what they want to get out of learning to play the piano – their vision is specific and realistic.
So while I will always encourage everyone who has the desire to play the piano to have a go, I will not pretend that the older person should aim to build a huge amount of skill, when they just want to play the piano at a fairly simple and basic level.
There is nothing wrong with an older person deciding that they would like to only play 5 pieces of music, or they don’t want to learn classical music, they just want to be able to play simple chords, or whatever their goal happens to be.
Even though learning to read music properly and learning about the theory that provides a structure and framework for music, are really useful for playing the piano, for the older student, it is not essential.
For the vast majority of people, learning to play the piano is something a person does for their own personal pleasure. For the minority like myself, where learning to play the piano has become a loftier goal, then I would always encourage these goals, no matter how young or old the person was.
Realistically, the significant majority of people that are looking to learn to play the piano in retirement, are wanting to play for their own person enjoyment. This means that while reading music is helpful, it is not essential and also while understanding theory is also helpful, it is not a requirement. Even playing really well is not necessary, as long as a person is happy with playing simple music. You don’t have to even be considered good at it, you just have to be good enough for your own enjoyment.
So if you have toyed with the idea of wanting to learn to play the piano because you don’t know whether you will be good enough – you only have to be just good enough to make yourself happy.