18 months ago I bought a melodeon. This was no rash purchase; it was going to happen some day and I was having a particularly good week and the time felt right, even though I knew it would be some time before I got round to learning to play the thing. So it remains.
I played the piano as a pre-teen. I can read music. But that was all 40 years ago and more. Anyone out there paying any notice to my posts will know that I have recently taken to singing like the proverbial duck to water, but truth be told, I’m a lover of instrumentals at heart. Where I really want to be is in amongst the musicians in a session.
I was at several such sessions over the Easter weekend – fiddlers, guitarists, box players attentive to each other’s chords and progressions, learning from each other, bouncing off each other. I see the fingers feeling their way over frets and keys, familiar with shapes and patterns. I imagine that these old hands know how to translate with facility the note they hear in their head through their digits to expression in sound. I’m sure that those who have been doing this kind of things for years will say they are always learning, but I see the skill, the craft, the instinct that can only come from hard practice and years of experience.
Why the melodeon? Partly precisely because I would be starting from scratch. I can understand the principles of changing notes depending on shortening a string, or the length of tube you’re blowing through; keyboards I get and have done since childhood. But the ranks of buttons at each side of a squeeze box leave me mystified. I watch the greats, trying but failing to make out a connection between what I see and what I hear, and loving what I hear. That mystery is what appeals to me.
But what chance have I got? I’m in my mid fifties now and I long to be jamming with people who have been getting to know their instrument as long as I have been breathing. Is it credible at my age to acquire that kind of nous, that feel, to really understand what your instrument can do?
Does anyone have experience of taking up an instrument late in life?
I have a friend who took up the melodeon so he could play a song in a production of a Midsummer Night’s Dream. Turns out it’s enormously addictve – all that exploring and finding out where the notes are, how they go together and what noise the buttons make if you press three at once. You’ll have a great time. Mind you, he did catch his tie in it once.
As a corncrake with a broken ear, I don’t envy the singing. I mean, I’d love to, just don’t have the equipment. But I’m agog at your purchase, hoping you will be toting it at Shrewsbury. One of my exes nearly bought me one for my 40th, knowing my love of the morris, but I guessed it before she bought, so she didn’t. Still itching to play something before I dee, over and above air bagpipes, air melodeon, air banjo and the rest. Tried the penny whistle for a while, attending weekly lessons at an irish pub until monday became work meeting night and wrecked my career as the new Spider Stacey. My question thus, for the Massive is, what should I start as someone half a decade older, I guess, than CC. It should be portable and attainable for someone with sausages for fingers and the co-ordination of a spasm.
Have you considered the kazoo?
Ouch.
Sorry – if it’s any consolation the kazzoo would be hopelessly beyond my ow musical skill set.
Yeah. Another melodeon player. I took up the melodeon at 50 – four years later I now own 4 in various states of repair. I have to say of all the instruments I play or have tried to play (guitar/clawhammer banjo/fiddle/english three-holed tabor pipe/mountain dulcimer lots of others ) – it remains the trickiest I think. Its the push /pull that screws with your head. I love it though. My general advice is that if you practice half an hour each day – within six months you will be able to play something to impress the family, and within twelve you will be good enough for the general public. Seek out Mally’s books. I envy your access to English sessions, (its all tiddlely-diddlely Irish over here).
I’ll change my profile pic in your honour.
“I now own 4 in various states of repair.”
That’s my future. Laid out before me. Clear as day.
It even has a name – MAS (Melodeon Acquisition Syndrome) closely related to BAS (banjo) and GAS (guitar). I have them all badly but only my wife seems to actually suffer as a result.
T shirt seen at Sidmouth last year. “I HAVE TOO MANY GUITARS!” said no-one ever.
I actually have said that. I got rid of about 6 of my guitars a while back because it was stupid and unnecessary and I wasn’t even in a band. For a time I was down to 3: one acoustic, one electric, one bass.
It has crept back up since 2011, but that’s cos I’m in a working band again: I added one by doing up my knackered and broken Strat, then my mate Ben did up an old eBay score of mine that I’d forgotten I even owned (see https://theafterword.co.uk/for-anyone-interested-in-guitars-or-craftsmanship/). Then I needed an electric 12-string for our last EP.
So I’m back up to 6 after having once had 9. But I definitely have felt that I’ve owned too many. I’m a bit embarrassed about 6, tbh!
I’m down to around 15 guitars which is a manageable number, although storing the cases is a major problem.
Then there’s the nagging guilt about how much money you’ve spent on them.
The guilt and the lies.
Which reminds me of a favourite gag.
“My biggest fear is that when I die, my wife will sell all my guitars for what I told her I paid for them.
I don’t actually own an expensive “name” guitar. My main squeeze is a self-built Jazzmaster; my Strat is an entirely pimped Squier (although only the body, knobs, switch tip and bridge are from the original guitar); the Silvertone is a done-up 60s eBay special and the XII was £500.
My bass is a Westone Thunder 1 (an outstanding 80s Matsumoku instrument) and my acoustic is a Fender that cost under £200 nearly 20 years ago.
And because most of them have been done up to my reasonably anal specifications, they’re all better than most of the big beasts I’ve ever played. More fun, too.
Can you teach an old Cat and an old Retro new tricks? Well, I very much hope so.
I admire your spirit of musical adventure but have sadly have nothing to offer but my moral support. Good luck to you both.
In answer to the question in the OP……yes, you can learn the instrument….you are never too old. You might never be able to play as well as the experts, but you can get to a decent standard with practice and a good teacher.
Manual dexterity is something that people don’t think about when learning an instrument. Your fingers have to be physically strong enough to be able to press the notes and keep doing so for the length of a tune….and then another, then another etc etc. Probably the best way to strengthen your fingers is to practice scales, arpeggios and finger exercises. They are boring and hard work(because you’re not actually playing a tune) but your dexterity will improve(especially your pinky) and all the while your ear is picking up the spaces between the notes, therefore you learn which notes fit without even thinking about it.
eg…if your mates were playing a simple tune in the key of C, then the chords would most likely be C F and G. You could probably play any note in the C scale at any time and it would fit. Then, when they change the chords, you could play the simple arpeggios in any order you like and they would fit. You wouldn’t be making a fancy solo but it would fit in and you work on it from there.
It does take a long time and it can be very frustrating but it’s been that way for all of us. In a year or so you’ll have a year’s practice under your belt. Think of where you were a year or so ago with your singing and see how much you’ve improved….well, it’s just the same.
Good luck!
Thanks for that. Is it not legendary about the young whippersnapper who asks the old hands the knack of a skill, hoping they’ll let him in on some golden secret, only to be disappointed that they all say ‘Practice’? I like the idea of the dull arpeggios (who mentioned those?) teaching my ear a thing or two. This is the area where I feel I will be playing catch up.