You Don't Have to Start When You're 3 Seconds Old
Empower yourself to pursue musical mastery at any age and overcome the obstacles of late starts. Your musical journey is just beginning.
“BuT MoZaRt StArTeD wHeN hE wAs 3 yEaRs OlD!!!!!!!”
Yeah. I know. And Mozart also had major emotional problems his whole life.1
Every musician has stories of people showing them videos of young children playing challenging pieces of music. There are copious amounts of these types of videos all over Youtube, and some of them are even inspiring! However, the rationale many individuals have for showing musicians these videos is usually less than noble. Some of these nefarious purposes are as follows:
To say that you’re not as good as this person is.
To ask why you weren’t this good when you were this age.
To say you’ll never be as good as this person is because they achieved something unique and special by doing it at an earlier age than you.
To cut you down to size by showing you someone else younger than you are doing the exact same thing.
Anyone who shows young musicians these videos is usually intentionally trying to sabotage their progress. These people will protest that they’re doing no such thing, and they’re just showing it because it’s cute, or fun, or amusing. However, it doesn’t matter what the person showing these videos to musician professes to be their purpose, the only thing that matters is what these showings actually accomplish, namely: exacerbating insecurities, encouraging discouragement, and bringing up the need to defend oneself. No one needs to see videos of people younger than them playing better than they do in order to progress as musicians. Musicians (even young ones) are not playthings whose feelings you can exploit for your own sadistic pleasure.
There are, of course, exceptions to the rule of thumb not to show videos of child prodigies to young musicians, but I trust your discretion enough not to need to enumerate them here.
Child Prodigies
People’s beliefs around child prodigies typically contain one of the following:
Children must begin learning instruments at early ages because children have superhuman abilities to learn things and we must take advantage of this
If they don’t start at this early age they will never be as good as people who do
Per usual, let’s examine these one at a time.
1. Children Have Superhuman Abilities to Learn
This belief assumes that children are born with abilities that disappear as they get older. This ability is usually thought to be “brain plasticity.” I’ve pointed out elsewhere that brain plasticity is not unique to young children, and in fact, can be increased by merely learning, but here is another citation for that.2 The fact that young children have extremely pliable brains makes rational sense if we realize that young children are completely clueless about the world and must learn everything from how to breathe, to how many limbs they have, to how to recognize faces, and the list goes on.
Even if we were to suppose that the amount of brain plasticity children have is a boon to their skill acquisition rates, children are learning so much so constantly, we must assume that their mental bandwidth is taken up in large part with things every adult has already figured out (like how to walk and talk). A much more reasonable explanation for the high degree of brain plasticity in young children is that the degree of brain plasticity you have increases and decreases according to how much you’re learning new things. If you don’t have to learn new things as much, you shouldn’t need as much brain plasticity, and your brain responds accordingly. This second line of reasoning explains the science just as well, and liberates us from having to believe in the scarcity mindset that children have a restricted amount of time to learn things.
The other ability people with this belief fall back on when the first is proven to be bogus is the idea of a “blank slate.” That is to say, infants do not know anything, so they have a blank slate. And I guess for some magical reason once people’s minds have been sullied by information it’s impossible or at least very difficult to unlearn something or learn an additional something. This claim loses its potency when we see how quickly people uptake new information when the correct way of doing something is presented and is realized to be more efficient, and more enjoyable. People usually only have trouble unlearning a mistake when they don’t recognize the precise nature of the mistake in the first place and therefore can’t correct it.
All of this isn’t to say that children are not more impressionable than adults. They certainly are. I was once a kid, though, and most of my memories that left a lasting impression from that age were small, seemingingly insignificant moments that could happen to anyone. Keeping this in mind, perhaps one of the best ways to educate a child is to expose them to a lot of different things, so we can maximize the amount of these small, yet salient, moments.
Children do not have finite, superhuman abilities that diminish as they get older. This means that there is no time limit for developing skills. There is, however, a time limit for childhood. So let them cherish it.
2. My Child Will Not Be as Good as Others who Began Early
Vincent Van Gogh didn’t start painting until he was 30, Laura Ingalls Wilder didn’t publish her Little House children’s book series until the age of 60, Alfred Hitchcock’s most famous films were made between his 54-61st birthdays, Alan Rickman didn’t get his first role in film until he was 46, and the list goes on. Many other famous people in creative occupations who did begin working in their vocations at early ages didn’t release their greatest works until much later in their career. There seems to be a startling lack of evidence for any correlation between the year someone started a vocation and a subsequent rise to fame, and yet this fact doesn’t seem to effect the torrential downpour of pressure put on children by their parents to become child prodigies.
Maybe it should.
The only potential disadvantage people who begin playing instruments at older ages have is not having had as much time to learn or pay attention as others. However, this difference can easily be made up for by enthusiastic beginners who chose to begin learning of their own volition. This enthusiasm and freedom of choice enables the student to learn at rates that easily match or surpass the learning rates of others who were forced into it. Any perceived disadvantage late starters have, then, lasts only a short while.
If this enthusiasm and freedom of learning is so valuable, we can conclude conversely that any child who is forced to learn anything misses out on these advantages. The opposing position of our current topic is, thus, easily arguable.
Furthermore, it’s absurd to believe that “years played” has any bearing whatsoever on someone’s skill level—this would be to say that time elapsed (or repetition) yields learning which I’ve debunked thoroughly here. Everyone knows someone who has been doing some occupation for years and still doesn’t know anything about what they’re doing. These are the people who refuse to learn or pay attention, typically because they are the people who most strongly believe in immutable talent, so they believe paying attention and learning doesn’t matter.
Children do not need to begin their musical education at early ages in order to not fall behind, nor is there any real disadvantage to beginning music education later on. There is, however, a very real disadvantage that can come when this learning is forced on them against their will.
To Late Starters
Many of the reasons parents feel a need to compel their children to learn instruments at early ages are similar to the reasons people shy away from learning instruments later on. However, there are other reasons that are unique to this second group of people, such as:
It’s too late for me.
I don’t want to look dumb.
I won’t be able to do anything with it.
Let’s explore these one at a time:
1. It’s Too Late For Me
Too many people believe in time limits, calendars, and clocks as if these were the driving forces of human life. This leads people to believe in faulty ideas like “we learn by repetition” as if the time spent on learning something is the cause itself of the learning. This also leads people to believe that some life experiences, opportunities, and joys have passed them by because they got a little older.
Now, tell me. Is joy reserved only for youth? Everyone else is just condemned to be miserable for the rest of their lives?
Of course not. That would be absurd, abusive, nihilistic, and contrary to human prosperity.
The idea of a time limit might apply to people who are over 90 years old (but also might not), but for everyone else, this is a little silly. What are you too late for, exactly?
Are you too late to live life? ‘Cause that’s what you’re saying. If at 50, 60, 70 years old you’re still not doing what you want, what’s the point of life?
If, ultimately, you feel like you need permission from someone to go ahead and learn the instrument you’ve always wanted to learn, I give you permission. This is me giving you the permission you always felt like you needed. So go ahead and start. Begin. Commence!
But here’s the thing, you don’t need my permission. You’re on this earth, aren’t you? Then you have the god-given right to choose what to do with your life. Don’t let the gatekeepers, narcissists, and nihilists tell you what you can and can’t do.
2. I Don’t Want to Look Dumb
You already look dumb.
Just kidding.
Kind of.
In all seriousness (and even though it might sound clichè), the coolest people once looked dumb. They had to in order to get to where they are now. There is no way to get good at something without being a beginner.
This purported reason for not learning to play an instrument isn’t a reason at all. It’s actually a confession of a secret fear.
Why are you afraid to look dumb? Are you afraid ridicule?
Let me tell you a secret: other people don’t matter. The important thing is that you live your life for you and not anyone else.
Even if other people did matter, they’re usually not thinking things that are as caustic and vitriolic as you might think.
I can’t speak for anyone else, but whenever I see someone later in life learning something new (which is a rare occurrence, but has happened to me a few times) I think that it’s a very noble and courageous thing they’re doing and I look at it with admiration. I believe many people feel the same way. If this is the case, then this fear has almost no basis in reality, and it’s safe to let go of it.
3. I Won’t Be Able to Do Anything With It
(Rolls eyes dramatically)
Here are a bunch of ideas of some things you can do with your new skill:
Play at a local church
Play at a local restaurant
Ask around to local museums or exhibits to see if they’re letting anyone play in their community
Set up your own concert at a park and sell your own tickets
Put a performance up on bandcamp.com or YouTube.
Book a recording session in a studio and send all your friends your new album for Christmas.
Start your own private teaching studio
Go out in the mountains and find some random animal and play music at them and post the video on YouTube and watch it go viral.
This is the age of the internet. There are no excuses.
Another note:
Most musicians consider it anathema to play for free, and I think that this is a mistake. Read a couple of online articles about marketing, and you’ll discover that offering things for free is a great way to attract more business. The key is to offer other things at the same time, right? So if you play a concert for free in a park, have some friends or family sell your merch nearby or play for tips. There are a bazillion ways to monetize making music. It’s the music industry for heaven’s sake. Y’know, the one on which $28 billion dollars are spent every year, globally? You might’ve heard of it before.
Even if none of this performance stuff is appealing to you, this doesn’t mean that you won’t have anything to do with your new skill. Even if the only person who listens to your music is you, that’s still an audience of one. And if one person enjoys hearing you play, then it’s worth it.
And if your ultimate objection to learning to play an instrument is that you don’t have a reason to play…double check your premises, because music is for everyone and everyone has a reason to play.
Final Thoughts
Parents, it’s okay to let your kids be kids. There’s no rush to have them learn instruments as soon as they exit the womb. In case you forgot, they were just barely born, and they have their entire lives to do all of these wonderful things.
For anyone who is thinking about learning an instrument later in life, or to those who have actually started, you have every reason to be optimistic about your prospects. You didn’t miss out on any potential skill or opportunities by starting later in life.
To both parties, don’t believe any of the faulty reasoning I’ve debunked in this article, and don’t go on any guilt-trips sponsored by your not-so-friendly neighborhood narcissist either.
https://www.mentalhelp.net/blogs/wolfgang-amadeus-mozart-personality-disorder-or-bipolar-disorder/
https://drnicolecain.com/how-to-promote-brain-plasticity/