John O'Conor's comments on Adult Music Students

Undergod

Gazdoc999 wrote: »

I was a junior at Guildhall (piano and double bass) and did piano there as a part-timer for a few years with 1:1 lessons with a great teacher who has sadly now died. I realised early-on that I wasn't going to make a living out of music, so I switched to science. I now work with nervous tissue (that is not anxious Kleenex by the way).

I came across John O'Conor for the very first time last month, when I happened to see a You-Tube video of his Beethoven Summer School. It seemed jolly enough and he did get some of the students to perform at a higher level with more confidence. I was not too sure about his comments about one of the students, not on open air anyway. However, as an actual performer he has never registered on my raday, which is odd 55 years into a life of interest in classical music and the piano.

Whatever else anyone says, the nervous system does alter around puberty. It becomes more difficult to learn totally new stuff, particularly where a motor action is involved. However, it is not impossible if you have lots of time to practise. Matthew Syed's book "Bounce" gives a lot of interesting and readable information about this.

Adult learners have a different learning style from kids and they need to be able to evaluate stuff and hang it on the Velcro of pre-learned concepts and experience. Otherwise, starting from scratch, they have to work very hard to establish a framework for the new knowledge.

Sightreading is probably easiest if you established the neural pathways before puberty, but I find that my reading falls away horribly unless I am on the instrument every day. Then, the key to success is to stop thinking and evaluating, at which point it all seems to happen quite well!

So, cutting out the science babble, the summary is: Yes you can but it is a hell of a lot harder and you are doing it at a time when Mummy is no longer doing everything for you around the house. (For those with a retinue of servants it would be easier, of course...)

Interesting post, thank you! Do you work with music cognition?

Gazdoc999

I work with pain these days, but had to learn a lot of basic neuroscience and I do keep abreast of developments. The use of functional MRI in the brain is interesting, with musicians having evidence of extradevelopment in certain key areas. Initially we thought this was the death knell for older learners, who we thought would not be able to grow new connexions.

More recently, some work was done on taxi drivers and this shows that they have more developed and denser parts of the brain associated with learning "the knowledge" they need for their exam/test.

As we don't see prepubescent folk zooming around learning routes for taxis in London, one can only assume that adults still have the capability to make these developments, but an alternative hypothesis would be that the guys who are going to be successful already have extra ability to make these new connexions. Like with the Russian athletes of the past, we might end up testing small kids to see whether they have the right genes to allow nerve tissue to remodel easily. Wild stuff!

BigStupidGuy

Gazdoc999 wrote: »

I realised early-on that I wasn't going to make a living out of music, so I switched to science.

... starting from scratch, they have to work very hard to establish a framework for the new knowledge.

Hi! Thanks for the post. I have two question if you don't mind?

First off what made you realise that you weren't gong to make a living at music?

Any tips for an adult learner trying to pick up this muscle memory? It can't be sooo bad when you consider that all adults have to learn a lot of stuff form scratch. I've been learning to drive and it's pretty easy to get the necessary muscle memory I think? And (obviously) I started learning as an adult...

equivariant

Interesting thread. I wonder what do people think is the most difficult instrument to learn as an adult? I am learning to play the trumpet and I find it quite difficult. I suspect that it is one of those things best learned as a child. That is not to say that I will give up - I really enjoy it. However I have low expectations

BigStupidGuy

equivariant wrote: »

Interesting thread. I wonder what do people think is the most difficult instrument to learn as an adult? I am learning to play the trumpet and I find it quite difficult. I suspect that it is one of those things best learned as a child. That is not to say that I will give up - I really enjoy it. However I have low expectations

If you put the quality practice hours in and believe in yourself (ie. take towards practicing with quality and intent) then all will be fine man. You'll get better everyday. And probably playing in orchestras confidently within 2 years if you like?