Being an adult beginner

As a music teacher with a more years of experience teaching adults than teaching children, I think I have a lot to share on the subject of learning an instrument from scratch as an adult.
I get a lot of "am I too old?"s and I really wish people wouldn't think like that. I always answer, you can't go back in time and have your soloist debut be with Berlin phil at the age of 12, BUT, you don't need to be a violin rockstar to be a good fiddler and enjoy the music.
Learning an instrument will do a lot for you as an individual, for the connection between your body and soul, and will also bring a lot to your social and community life. I made a list of reasons to call that music school nearby. :)

"The Turkish violinist" by Jamie Alexander

Adults DO learn fast

Childrens' brains are more plastic than adults', and childrens' bodies tend to be less stiff too. That's all true. HOWEVER, all children do when they learn an instrument is to follow directions, often mindlessly (I know, I'm being cynic, I swear I love children, but the younger they are, the truer this statement is).
Learning adults, on the other hand, have a mind capable of complex abstraction and much deeper learning. You will get music theory since the beginning and will learn to read music much, much faster than a kid.

Music is great for everybody's brain

Did you see that TED talk about how musician's brains are different than everybody else's? [in YouTube here] Reading music can be like a puzzle to your brain, with the difference that it has the potential for many different kinds of social interaction.

Adults enjoy it more

On that social interaction thing. Think playing in an orchestra, a band, or in a chamber music group. Community and school ensembles, in particular, are wonderful - you get to cooperate with people you might have never expected to team up with. The mild anxiety of the dress rehearsal, and then the feeling you get after a successful concert (and then there's the traditional stop by the pub or having dinner afterwards).

Also, for many of my students, learning an instrument opened a door to a new cultural universe. When you experience the process of making music, the way you appreciate it changes. By being more informed about new and old composers, styles, and atists, you'll acquire a clearer perception of your own taste in music. 

 from http://es.artquid.com/artwork/226228/despues-de-que-el-violinista-flamenco-amplia-astoshenko.html

Adult beginners inspire

And by bringing culture to yourself, you bring culture to you home and community. Children of musician parents have a better chance of appreciating music and wanting to learn an instrument themselves. Families of a musician go to concerts more often. It's great for your family and for the cultural life of your city - ballet and opera companies, orchestras, concert halls, emerging artists and composers, they all survive on public appreciation.

"The old violinist" by Mark Landis. http://www.intenttodeceive.org/gallery/

Bonus: adult beginners are so supportive of each other!

There are some really nice resources out there for adult beginners to consult and be inspired. I will list the violin ones, because that's what I know best. If you know of any others, please let me know.

The Violin Guild is one of my favorite facebook groups, has many insightful and inspiring posts from amateurs and professionals. There are tons of violinists (and adult beginner) groups in FB, some of them area-specific.

Violinist.com has an adult beginner blogger called Krista it's worth the read;

ViolinMasterClass has some nice videos of technique if you need a quick review of something you went over in class and don't quite remember how to do when you get to practice (common complaint for both young and old btw).

If you are an adult beginner or are thinking about learning an instrument, please share your story on the comments section. What is the best part? What is the hardest?


***
I wrote this text as an aid to help me organize a speech in this course on Public Speaking I'm taking at Coursera; if you're interested on public speaking (or, like me, just need to know more about it for professional reasons) I definitely recommend this course.

Also I had lots of fun looking for images for this post. I tried to include only art I could publicize, but some links were confusing. I do not own any of these images. If you are the owner of one of them and need me to take it down, let me know.

A slow beginning

Hi there.
I know I said there would be one post per week. Truth is, I'm not used to such discipline anymore. I have about a dozen post sketches that are this close to be completed, but for some reason they won't complete themselves, no matter how long I stare at them blankly.

This is my last week of vacations and I'm stuck in Parkinson's law: too much free time, so no shit gets done. I do all productive stuff (including writing here) in homeopathic dosage, usually by the end of the day, when I feel a little desperate about how much time I already wasted.

As sitting my ass at the desk and actually writing is still a bit painful, it might take a little while for me to get going with this. But I promise there are already a bunch of interesting posts on their way.

See you next time.

Creative exercise: how I wish I could write?

Today, a few blog posts inspired by a creative exercise on a writer's blog popped up on my FB timeline.(Bing or google can help you if you want to read the original thing)
All authors are professional writers or have been blogging for years, and I'm neither, but have this blog for a reason. The exercise is just a short assignment: write a few paragraphs on how you wish you could write. Mine is down below.

Doing it yourself is a lot more fun than reading other people's, so I invite you to do it too. :)

I wish I could write sarcastic. Like some of my favorites, Vonnegut, C. F. Abreu, delicate, but cynical. I wish I could make my reader think about how useless all of this is, all of existence, all that we create and surrounds us; how pointless everything is, yet how unavoidable. I wish I could convey a sense of destiny. Not a mystical destiny, controlled by puppet master gods, but the uncouth fate that we humans carry, of being hungry skittish animals who learned to elaborate our instincts just well enough to think we're in control. I wish I could express it with words that didn't sound like self hate, or humankind-hate. Because I love being human, even when I hate it.
But above all, I want to write easy. My years of study convinced me there is enough nitpicking, enough especulating, enough fancy words just to look smart out there. My travels changed nothing of the countryside girl I am. What captivates me is the practical, the mudane, the daily. I want to write the essential, because it is the essential that I appreciate.
I want it easy also because I'm lazy.  The conscience that I will need constant, longevous practice just to assert myself as a mediocre writer wearies me. I wish I could simply spit out the perfect words, without the effort of reflecting, without losing momentum, above my crippling shyness and self-doubt. I wish writing was at least not painful, and the knowledge that someone might be reading, at least not panic inducing. I see myself giving up, a bit at a time, everyday. I'm just beginning.

Feedback is appreciated, grammar corrections included (just be nice please).
Thanks for reading!

All the best,
Mariana

A new beginning

Okay,
my name is Mariana. I'm a music student at LSU, violinist, DMA program. And I'm coming back to blogging after a few years. Maybe. Hopefully.

I had a blog, years ago, which had some good posts and was moderately busy. I opened that blog because I generally suck at expressing myself, and I though forcing myself to write something every week would help. And it did, it was great. I stopped writing on that blog because, as I moved to the US and started grad school, writing in Portuguese about  Brazilian daily news didn't seem to make sense anymore. However, that was everything I could write about - I didn't know enough of my new surroundings to say anything about it - and that's what my (two) readers would be interested in.
But the reason I started that blog was a lot bigger than commenting news - it was about learning to articulate my thoughts faster, and, the scariest part, publishing them for people to read! It was a big step for me, and something tells me I need to take another step on that same direction. So a new post will show up every week, possibly but not necessarily every Wednesday, about something current, maybe, or not. I don't know.

See you soon!