Thanks Bryce for posting this. It gives me hope!! LoL!!

Mark

As an engineer/scientist I have long been interested in the workings of the brain. Neuro-plasticity used to be taboo among the medical community. Today plasticity is an accepted, albeit not well understood, phenomena. This MD (Norman Doidge) has written a seminal book on brain plasticity: “The Brain That Changes Itself: Personal Triumphs from the Frontiers of Brain Science”. A great read, and the number of refereed medical neuro-plasticity articles in prestigious publications such as JAMA, New England Journal of Medicine, etc. is astounding.

Not only is there no excuse, we know that cells continue to grow, although at a lower rate, in the human brain, there is also better developed neuro-muscular-skeletal coordination on mature people (up to a given age, at which point we see diminishing function), which gives access to “proprioceptive feedback”, sometimes wrongly associated with “muscle memory”. What older people lack is the fast synaptic firing when compared to younger persons, but for me learning an instrument is a slow-paced journey. I will be happy to learn to play well (a subjective term) some classic rock, Blues, and other favorite genres of mine.

So to your point Bryce, age is not an excuse for not learning, lack of discipline, lack of understanding, and the “incorrect” practice are the most notable impediments IMHO. That’s why it’s so important to learn from the right instructor the correct material in a structured manner that is iterative and always contrasts the new material with what has already been covered, something so hard to do that most academic professors flunk this test.