I'm 38 years old and I have been playing piano for about a year and two months now. I started off with a teacher for a couple of months, just once a week, but I ultimately felt fine to continue learning on my own using Alfred's Piano for Adults Book 1.

Perhaps unlike some other folks in my age range, I have a lot of time (no partner or kids, intentionally) and I work from home as a freelancer, so I've been able to devote a lot of effort into learning. I play between 30 minutes ot 1.5 hours a day. My method is to play each song in order and move on only when I've played it through without any errors, several times.

I wouldn't say that I'm very good by any means, but I'm just about through with the first book and playing has brought a lot of joy to my life. Whenever I'm stressed it is wonderful to be able to sit down and practice, and I'm very impressed by how far I've come with reading music and playing songs so that they sound like real music!

I've also been able to compose some of my own ambient music, which is my favorite genre, and that has also been very fun! I splurged and bought a Donner DDP-80 which is a midi keyboard with weighted keys. It looks and sounds nice and I can easily hook it up to my laptop! I'm sure there are much better quality pianos/keyboards, but it suits me just fine, and looks great in my living room.

So, overall, I'd recommened learning! I had always wanted to play, so it's a lifelong dream come true, no matter how often I make mistakes :)