I was having a discussion with my husband the other morning which started with the fact that a relief teacher, who I had met the previous day, claimed that they had retired five times already! My husband’s comment was that he was either bored or short of money and that regardless of the reason, my husband thought that he hadn’t prepared properly for retirement. My husband then concluded with the comment that most people don’t plan properly for retirement.
Regardless of whether my husband was correct or not is actually irrelevant, but it got me thinking. If you are not retired yet but are in the preparation phase, there can be a few things that you can do before you retire, to prepare to learn to play the piano in your retirement.
After actually making a decision to learn or re learn to play the piano in your retirement, the first thing you should do is to get a piano or electric piano or maybe a keyboard. What you get is very much dependant on your lifestyle (or rather future lifestyle) and how much you are willing to spend on the musical instrument. I have written a lengthy article about the various factors that you need to take into consideration, that you can access by signing up at the bottom of this page.
First of all, it is possible to take piano lessons before getting a piano to practice on, but this is something that I would not recommend at all. If you are not sure of whether learning to play the piano is really what you want to do, so you want to take some lessons to see how it goes, then I would recommend hiring an instrument or borrowing a keyboard. You can make progress during the piano lessons but it is actually quite frustrating for the student when they enthusiastically start piano lessons but can’t follow through with practice because they have nothing to practice on. Then what often happens is that the frustration of slow progress (because of no practice between lessons) results in the piano student giving up on their dreams before they have ever really gotten started! In short, always get a piano (or electric piano or keyboard) first.
Once you have a piano, then it is time to find a piano teacher. Don’t rush this process. Find someone you will connect well with and is willing to teach you your preferred style of music. Feel free to explore your options so that you will get someone who will help you with your particular goals. If you live in a less populated area and think that your options for a piano teacher may be limited, think again because there are many piano teachers that teach over the internet through platforms like Zoom.
In preparing for retirement, also consider buying some music that you would like to play. It doesn’t even have to be music that you can play immediately, but it might be motivation for you to persist in your efforts so that you can eventually play these pieces of music.
Realistically it doesn’t take a lot of planning and effort to go from decision to having piano lessons, but the preparation is worth it because it really sets you up to be as successful as possible.