It's Not Too Late to Get Started in Music!

There is a misconception that one needs to be "talented" to be able to play music. Granted, being talented in something can make you achieve certainly more in a particular field than an "average" person trying, but that doesn't mean said individual lacks the tenacity and capabilities required in learning the fundamentals of music and applying them to create basic melodies and even songs.

The beauty of music is that its foundations are without boundaries in the sense that they aren't constricted to a certain age, gender, or even socio-cultural environment. Imagine if there was a window for learning music that entails the adept to be between the ages of 5-9 years old, possessing a desire mainly for Renaissance music, and is from an Aristocratic background. They would certainly be teaching music at an earlier age and only to a select, elite audience. What a destructive way to propagate the heavenly language!

I posit that the appreciation for music and its creation is instinctive. As Leonard Bernstein stated in one of his famous lectures at Harvard, singing is essentially "heightened speech," often to convey an intense emotion. Further, the sing-song teasing that we used to chant at each other during our younger years are in themselves songs (with lyrics and a melody that, at least in Bernstein's examples, fall under a major scale). If as young children we could sing this basic melody without any proper scholarly instruction, then it is most possible that we already possess the most basic foundations of music without even knowing it! And this is where the paradoxical relationship between the concept of Music and the notion of Basic lies: because of the relative complexity of a musical phenomenon, we simply aren't aware of its simplified product.

I personally did not seriously hold an instrument until I was 12 years old. The first cassette I ever bought was when I was 11. It's safe to say that I didn't have any "musical inclination" or rabid interest, and that I wasn't adept at any instrument at all, unlike some musical geniuses who seem to know their instruments inside and out the minute they're born.

I decided to start playing guitar around that time, although I felt that I was too old to begin learning, as this was what my teachers and other relatives would tell me. Although it is true that your appetite for learning is greater in your younger years, it's ridiculous to think that it's impossible to learn an instrument at any age provided you're physically capable, and so I began learning the guitar first with a teacher and then on my own. 10 years later, I'm still at it and in the process of learning other instruments, even moonlighting as a DJ for small gatherings. The desire to learn feels the same as the day I first picked up my first guitar.

In my opinion, the number one deterrent to learning the basics of music is the lack of passion for it. If you are really interested in something so much that it consumes most of your lucid moments, then that should translate into you finding out as much as you can about it. You don't have to be young, classically trained or talented to learn the fundamentals. You just have to have that unquenchable thirst for music, and to acknowledge it.