While I spend a lot of time talking about retirees who want to learn to play the piano, I don’t often talk about those retirees who want to learn to play the piano again. I’m talking about those people who learned to play the piano when they were young and then for whatever reason they get to a point in life where they regret quitting and wish to learn to play the piano for a second and final time.
For those of you that have literally not touched a piano in decades, of course you are going to be somewhere between rusty and not remembering anything at all. This is all good, because your starting point is what it is and there is no point having regrets and thinking of the ‘if only’s and the ‘what if’s.
So even if you are in the category of not being able to remember anything at all, you are actually incorrect – you know that you need to put in regular and consistent effort to get anywhere. You would also remember how to practice. What you cannot potentially remember is how to read music and where to find the corresponding notes.
Because I have taught a number of students that claim to have forgotten everything, I known that while initially these returning to play the piano students don’t remember anything when they get started, they find that they start to remember all sorts of information. This has not just happened once, it has happened with EVERY single student. Usually after a period of time, that can vary quite significantly, the student will remember everything that they ever learned.
Probably my most dramatic example of this was with a lady I taught. This lady started to re learn to play the piano with me when she was in her fifties and she had not touched a piano in just over forty years. When we first started, she could not remember anything at all and we had to start from the beginning. After a couple of months, some of the note names she had learned when she was a kid, had come back to her. The more time went on, the more she would try and guess what I was going to explain and almost all of the time, she was correct. After 6 months of lessons with me, she had remembered absolutely everything that she had learned as a kid.
My point in sharing all of this, is to encourage those of you that would love a second chance to learn to play the piano, because everything you learned years ago can and will be remembered.