Too Old To Learn Guitar
When are you too old to learn guitar?
The answer to this question is a resounding, NEVER! Anyone can learn to play the guitar, at any age. That is the truth, however, as with everything else in life, the devil is in the details!
Practice is key
Knowing how to practice correctly is essential. Anyone can learn at any age if they know one most important thing: how to practice correctly. How you practice is the single most important factor in whether you, or anyone, of any age, will be successful in learning guitar. This is because the biggest obstacles to learning guitar are physical obstacles. You must use muscles you have never used before. You must get your fingers to make movements they have never made before, and they must make them smoothly and quickly.
Physical learning comes first
When you first learn guitar, you are attempting to teach your fingers, hands, and arms new abilities. That means you are not actually learning the guitar; you are engaging in how to move your body to be able to learn guitar. This means your muscles, nerves, and brain learn to do new and unfamiliar movements. As long are you are prepared for the physical aspects of guitar, no matter your age, then you are ready to learn.
Find the right teacher
Many guitar teachers are not teachers, they are guitar players. And there is a vast difference. Guitar players know how to play the guitar, but guitar teachers know how to cause other people to play the guitar. And this is the type of guitar teacher that is going to help you learn no matter how old you are.
When you have these three things in mind and you understand that learning to play the guitar is not only learning chords, but learning body movements, what it will do to you physically, and how practice is going to keep you going, you will be able to learn guitar no matter what your age is. So, in theory, you are never too old to learn.
The biggest key to learning to play the guitar is finding the right teacher to help you. As stated above, many guitar teachers are out there. And a lot of them are teaching because they aren’t earning money playing. They need to money to help their guitar playing career. These are not the teachers you want.
You want a teacher who is obviously a player, but someone who wants to see others learn as well. This kind of teacher understands what you need to learn and will know what you, as an individual, need to do to get to playing level. They will be patient and understanding that you are new to this, and they will help you learn at your own pace and in the style of music you want to learn in.