re: Any of you take up playing the guitar late in life?

I started when I was 55 but have gotten out of practice. All these threads are getting me interested again.

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My buddy's dad took up bass guitar in his 50's. About a year later he was in a cover band that was doing little gigs around town.

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I've found that progress comes in steps with guitar. You can't let yourself get frustrated and practice is key, it's all about muscle memory. One day you'll be struggling and the next you may hit that "next step" and figure something out that makes it make more sense, or makes a certain skill easier. I've been playing music for 20 years (20 on drums, 10 on guitar), and idk what I would do if I had to quit completely. Just practicing and playing small gigs are enough to keep me sane. Remember, everyone sucked at something before they became great lol. Good luck!

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I've found that progress comes in steps with guitar. You can't let yourself get frustrated and practice is key, it's all about muscle memory. One day you'll be struggling and the next you may hit that "next step" and figure something out that makes it make more sense, or makes a certain skill easier.

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Yup. If guitar taught me one thing, it's that patience is most definitely a virtue. It can be quite monotonous practicing something, trying to get your technique just right, but when you finally do, it's an amazing feeling.

I started bass at 44 and have been playing gigs around Baton Rouge for a few years now.

Picked it up at 26, laid it down at 31~....
At 47, picked it back up and since then I spend at least 30min everyday. Utilized YouTube videos by Marty Schwartz to learn songs. Nowadays, my training is more organized, learning theory and becoming more familiar with fret board. I don’t have any aspirations of gigging in a smoke filled bar on my time off, only to provide the personal enjoyment of hearing a song and being able to pick up a guitar and rendering a close version...

I used to concentrate solely on major chords and bar chords were just “too complicated”. After a while, it was evident that bar chords would be greatly needed.

Wish I had trained since a teen, but it doesn’t stop me nowadays. Very rewarding hobby.

I'm 34 and a lot of older people I know are not challenging themselves to do new things. IMO, it seems like continuing to learn new things in general keeps your mind sharp and gives you something to talk about around people instead of a boring job or some other gossip that has no real value.

I also notice a lot of people on the whole age spectrum won't try to do something new because they know it won't come easy. It seems to be a more and more rare trait to dig into something and put the time in to be good at something. Day of the internet I suppose.

If some 50 year old dude was born with a really nice "country and western" kind of deep male singing voice, he could pick up the acoustic guitar and within a year have a nice little 45 minute set of songs to sing and accompany himself on guitar.

He could be good enough for coffee shop gigs and stuff like that. BUT, the key is -- that VOICE is the reason why people like the show -- you aren't going to become Brent Mason in the span of a year.

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This app, “SimplyPiano” is really helpful. It starts you from the very beginning and you can’t progress until you are competent with the material.

If you’re at all interested, it’s worth downloading and seeing how it works in the free/trial mode. So far I’ve learned an absolute TON on how to even begin “reading music” which was my biggest fear

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Inherited an old Yamaha piano from my parents when they moved. Got it tuned so my daughter could take lessons and I also started. I'm 41 BTW.

Never played any musical instrument so I couldn't read music and didn't understand theory. I'm 6 months into lessons taking with the same instructor my daughter uses. Pretty cool because we are both doing it at the same time. I'm a little further along than her but it's because she never practices.

I wanted to learn how to play the banjo. I couldn't find a banjo instructor in Baton Rouge so I figured I'd learn guitar and just switch over. How hard could it be, right?

I took guitar lessons when I was about 33 or so for 2 years. Once I felt comfortable, I purchased a banjo. (BTW a cheap banjo is around $700) I got it and quickly figured out that if you don't play with speed, whatever you are trying to play is unrecognizable. On the banjo you are playing both lead and background. After trying for a year I put it in it's case.

11 years later I pulled it out of it's case and started watching videos on youtube (Jim Pankey). I went one after another and now I can play a little bit. My speed is up a lot and I enjoy it. I'll never play in public, it's something I do for me.

Also, the banjo has one less string but is not easy to play. I was finger picking on the guitar easily when I tried to switch to the banjo. It just didn't translate like I expected.