Life Kit - It's not too late to learn a new instrument

Episode Date: January 11, 2024

Whether you grew up playing music or you never progressed beyond "Hot Cross Buns," it's not too late to pick up a new instrument. Let fun lead the way and lose yourself in the joy of learning. Joel Snape, who picked up piano at age 40, offers tips for beginners.Learn more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoicesNPR Privacy Policy

You're listening to Life Kit, from NPR. Hey everyone, I'm Liliana Maria Perciruiz, in for Mariel Seguera. In 2019, Joel Snape moved back to his family home in England to take care of his dad, who had suddenly become seriously sick. My dad was always kind of a, he would putter around with music. And he had this old Yamaha keyboard and I was like, piano is kind of always something I've thought about trying. And so I thought maybe this is a good time to try it. Like maybe this is now or never. And it really gave me something to kind of focus on and put my energy into that felt a bit positive among like the other stuff that was

happening. Joel is a journalist and he does lots of YouTube videos about the things he's learning about. OK, I've been learning piano for about four and a half years now, and though people have been very nice about my progress, I think I could have probably learned more and improved faster if I knew then what I know now. Joel was 40 years old when he started. Basically very little experience playing music.

I think I remembered the old mnemonic, every good boy deserves favors from like school. So that was as far as I had ever got with learning to read music. So yeah, he didn't really have a musical background, but he was drawn to music and the piano in particular. It sounds really strange, but actually when Westworld came out, that had a big influence on my wanting to learn the piano because they've got those beautiful piano arrangements of pop songs like Amy Winehouse.

I think I had seen the depth of the piano and all the things you could do with it. Picking up an instrument as an adult can be intimidating. You're starting from scratch and playing dinky songs with three notes when some little kids can play Mozart. It can feel really embarrassing and the opposite of fun. In this episode of Life Kit, journalist Ruth Tam, who's picked up the ukulele recently, talks with Joel about learning an instrument as an adult. They'll discuss how to get motivated, strategies for practice, and how to stick with it. I grew up playing piano and trumpet, and even though I really enjoyed it, I never felt like I could play without sheet music.

Playing music felt like solving a math equation. Challenging and fun, but ultimately extremely technical. But recently, I picked up the ukulele. And that's required me to feel my way through a song. I'm learning to play more intuitively, and yeah, it's breaking my brain a little bit, but I can also feel myself rebuilding my relationship to music at the same time. I chose the ukulele because it just felt easy. It's small and portable, and I could get one for free. Shout out to my sister who's a music therapist and always has like two to three ukuleles at any given time. My advice I I think, would be to just start with whatever you have.

I found Joel Snape on YouTube. We're learning different things. He taught himself piano, but he has plenty of advice for anyone learning a new instrument. If all you've got is like a keyboard that you found lying around your parents' house or that you can find, you know, for cheap on Craigslist or wherever, then do that. And then upgrade maybe as a gift to yourself when you know that you're really passionate about it

and you want to make a go of it. Joel tried learning guitar years ago because that's what he thought dudes like him should learn how to play. But he didn't like it. And it's only when he decided to sit down at the piano that he was genuinely excited to learn. One of the biggest things to overcome when you're picking an instrument is to not pick the kind of instrument that you think a person like you should be playing and go for the instrument that you actually want to play, you know. So I guess in your heart of hearts, what is it that you would actually like to be good at? Right now, I've got a basic ukulele and I'm going slow. I'm learning strum patterns and building finger strength. But I would like to graduate to the guitar at some point. And that's

why I wanted to know what Joel's goal was when he first started learning the piano. I think I had about two or three pieces that I really, really wanted to be able to play on piano. So one of them was No Surprises from Westworld. There's a cover version of a Pixie song called Where Is My Mind by Max Siren. I just thought it was beautiful. I think another thing that really shaped me wanting to learn was in King's Cross St Pancras, which is one of the big stations in London. They have two pianos just set up there for anybody to play.

I think one of them was donated by Elton John. And I've always liked dropping by there to kind of hear what people are doing. And it was one of my goals when I first started out to get to a standard where I'd feel comfortable like playing on one of those myself and hopefully not totally embarrassing myself. So takeaway one, make this whole learning an instrument thing fun. And that starts with playing an instrument you actually want to play and practicing songs you actually enjoy. But sometimes you have to work up to that, because when you're a beginner and you only

know a few notes or some simple chords, you're stuck playing things like Hot Cross Buns or When the Saints Go Marching In really slowly. And that can feel really tedious and maybe even a little infantilizing too. So I asked Joel, how do you fight the part of not just feeling like a beginner, but feeling like a straight up baby? Yeah, I mean, that's definitely a struggle. I think something that helped was that my learning was kind of self-directed. So I did jump in at the deep end and start trying to play stuff that was like probably too hard for me. So I was going through it, almost having to look up every note as I went along. So I was working on that, but I was kind of lucky that my wife plays the trumpet and knows a bit about music. So she

kind of went, look, this is far too hard for you. I'm going to get you something easier. And she bought me a book called Alfred's Piano Basic, which is the one that I now recommend to anybody who asks me like what my favorite resources are. And that's really basic stuff. And so I kind of split my playing time between the two of them. So I'd spend, you know, maybe 10 minutes, 15 minutes a day doing scales and then later arpeggios and chords. And then I would maybe spend like 10, 15 minutes working on lessons from the book. And then if I'd done all that I would kind of reward myself by spending you know 10 minutes and then 15 minutes on a couple of really hard pieces that I decided I was going to work on so you like had your vegetables and then gave yourself

dessert that is a great way of putting it yeah I would like I would like get the get the good stuff in and then and then reward myself with where you know the stuff that was where I wanted to be eventually takeaway to practice with a plan how did you develop a habit of practicing every day first of all did you practice every day yeah in the early going I practiced pretty much every day and I practiced a lot I mean I think the most important thing about forming a habit is setting time aside when you're definitely going to practice so maybe that's you know now for me it's first thing in the morning and then when my wife and I kind of alternate who puts our six-year-old to bed so when it's her turn to put him to bed I know I can get like a solid half hour of practice in because that's how long his bedtime routine takes so

those are kind of times when it's almost non-negotiable that's just what I do at those times that really helps and then I guess the other thing about having a habit is like it helped that I always knew what I wanted to practice next. So in any given week, I would be working on scales. You know, I might be working on C major and I would always be doing that. So I could sit down at the piano and go, okay, today's C major. That's what I'm doing. So those are my two big tips for habit for me, I think. Have set times to do it and know what you're going to do before you sit down at the piano. What would you say to the type of person who wants to learn music for fun about the importance of doing scales and technical drills? Like why is it important to eat your vegetables musically? Well, I mean, I think

scales and technical stuff just make you more comfortable on the keyboard. It sounds like it's like boring and tedious. And I guess it can be if you're being forced to do it, you know, when you're a kid and you'd rather be doing other things, But just seeing the metronome tick up every day and feeling like your fluidity of your fingers go up can actually be a super satisfying experience. You know, it's kind of like leveling up in a video game almost. That's a fun way of putting it. Speaking of leveling up in a video game, I feel like you made learning piano a serious priority. And I think it's hard to go from wanting to do something to actually committing to do it, like the unsexy fun of sitting down and playing and practicing and being bad at something

consistently every day. Like you made it sound like kind of easy for you, like that it was obvious that you would do these things and that it was obvious that you would you would do these things and that it was a non-negotiable and I'm wondering how did it actually feel at the time um yeah hand independence I think was the thing that felt the hardest and there were days when I was like I'm not sure I'm going to be able to do this maybe like the neurons in my brain to pass it to wire together in this way so it wasn't always easy but I think it kind of helped that I do have experience of kind of learning stuff as an adult so my other big hobby is Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu which is kind of the polar opposite of piano in that it's something

that you have to do with other people you have to go to a gym and do it. But it's also just, it's a hard thing, like, and it's something I've done for a long time. So I think having done that, I kind of went into learning something else as you enter this stage where it's like not necessarily fun because it's novel and there's this stage where you're in between being an absolute beginner and being like maybe an intermediate person and you're kind of maybe some people call it like your learning edge you're like past the point of your comfort level and it's just like very deeply unsettling to be so consistently bad at something and I'm wondering how do you navigate out of that stage yeah I think I probably still do have moments like that where I'm like have I really you know learned as much as I should have given the amount of time that I've been practicing or you know and I think the hardest bit to get over was probably about six to nine months in where I was like I've been

practicing this you know a long time now I've probably put in a couple of hundred hours and there was stuff that I just still wasn't getting um and I think what kind of helped with that a little bit was just kind of take almost taking a break from the stuff I was banging my head against and trying to do something else. So I think at the time I was trying to do, there's a Mozart piece called Sonata Facile, which means like, I think like easy sonata or beginner's sonata. And that's not easy at all. It might have been easy for Mozart. And I was comparing myself against other people I'd seen learning online as well. That's never a route you want to go down, comparing yourself to other people on the internet.

That's the last thing you want to do. Takeaway three. Find resources that work for you. Maybe that's a professional teacher or group lessons. For Joel, he found some really great free online resources, even though he does ultimately want a teacher. I definitely think I should get a teacher, yeah. It's one of my goals for this year.

It's just a time issue, you know. I know you can do online teaching, but I think I would rather sit down with somebody. And at the moment, I've got a job and a six-year-old, and I've still got a Brazilian jiu-jitsu habit. So I've got lots to do. So in the absence of having access to a private teacher, I'm wondering if you have any creative,

low-cost alternatives to that. I mean, you're a YouTube guy. I think there's like lots of resources on YouTube. Anything that you would recommend for others, either on YouTube or elsewhere? Yeah, So, I mean, I, I really recommend Alfred's Piano Basic. So certainly the first book, um, I actually got into the second and third books, but I think once you've done the first one, that gives you a really good grounding to kind of move into the others. I think, um, if anyone's on reddit the piano subreddit is kind

of a super helpful environment they're really friendly to beginners uh but they also have little challenges where they'll be like oh we're all going to try and learn this piece this month just you know record yourself playing it put it up you know and nobody's going to criticize you they'll give you feedback if you ask for it uh but they're very supportive and they've got a lot of great resources. That is a nice feeling, even though you're an anonymous person talking to other anonymous people. Nice. Okay, let's pull back a bit.

Why is learning a new instrument worth all the time and effort? I think, for me me learning a new instrument has kind of broadened my appreciation and understanding of music um so i can listen to you know classical pieces and stuff like scott joplin now and and kind of appreciate it in a way i just didn't before and i can sort of tell the difference between different composers i think on a day-to-day basis it's kind of one of the few things that I do in my life that doesn't involve staring at a screen. It's almost like a form of meditation you know when I go and sit down at the piano I'm concentrating on that one thing and it takes my mind away from work and everything else that I've got going on in my life. And it lets me just sort of breathe and relax.

So it's great for me in that way. It's something you can make progress on in a little way every single day. Well, pretty much every single day. Depending on the day. There are days when I sit down and I'm like, yeah, that wasn't great. But, you know, if I've been banging my head against a difficult piece for a long time and I feel like I'm actually maybe getting worse at it then that's at some point I'll like be sensible enough to just play something else for fun for a

while you know like pick pick something easier or or just pick up a book and like sight read um you know something a lot easier but that sounds nice and cool and that kind of reminds me of what i'm doing it for what would you play the next time you go to king's crossing well one that i am working on is uh hans zimmers he's a pirate it's the theme tune from Pirates of the Caribbean. And it just sounds great. Wait, the theme to the Pirates of the Caribbean is just called He's a Pirate? Yep.

Yeah. It's jaunty. It's very jaunty. It's a toe-tapper. Thanks, Joel. I'm going to leave my closet where I'm recording this interview and practice my ukulele now. Amazing. Well, thank you very much for talking to me. Good luck with the ukulele. Thanks.

So here are some recaps from my time with Joel. Keep it fun. No one's making you do this. This is for your enjoyment. So keep that in mind with what instrument and songs you choose to play. Practice with a plan. No one who ever said, oh, it might be nice to learn an instrument, magically learned how to play that instrument. Determine when you have time to be mentally present and then fill that time with a specific practice plan.

If you're Joel, that means eating your vegetables before dessert, so doing some technical drills followed by playing some fun songs. Find resources that work for you. If you learn best with another person, or if you're looking for accountability, you might want to find a teacher to work with you. Or you can turn to online resources. There are a lot of free YouTube channels or subreddits for people learning new instruments. That was journalist Ruth Tam. This episode of Life Kit was produced by Sylvie Douglas. Our visuals editor is Beck

Harlan. Our digital editor is Malika Garib. Megan Cain is the supervising editor, and Beth Donovan is the executive producer. Our production team also includes Andy Tegel, Audrey Nguyen, Claire Marie Schneider, and Margaret Serino. Engineering help from Stacey Abbott, Gilly Moon, and Phil Edfors. I'm Liliana Maria Perciruiz.

Thanks for listening.