why adults learn this faster than kids, and why nobody says so
Let's get this out of the way first, because I think it's the thing sitting on most of your chests right now.
You are not too old for this. I don't mean that as a pep talk. I mean it as a fact I've watched hold up over and over, and one that almost nobody in the piano-teaching world says out loud, because it doesn't sell lesson books to eight-year-olds.
Here's the thing behind the thing. Kids learn piano through repetition and time, mostly. They have both in surplus, and they have almost no self-consciousness about sounding bad in front of someone, which honestly might be the bigger advantage. An adult sits down at the keys for the first time and there's this whole extra layer of feeling. You're thinking about how you sound, whether you look silly, whether you should have done this fifteen years ago. That layer costs you something. It's real, and I'm not going to pretend it isn't.
But here's what you have that a seven-year-old doesn't. You can read. You can follow a system and understand why it works instead of just doing the motion because a teacher said so. When I show you that a time signature is really just a fraction telling you how to count, you get that immediately, because you already know what fractions are. A kid has to take that on faith for a couple years. You don't. That's worth more than it sounds like it's worth. It's worth more, actually, than a lot of practice hours.
So when people say adults learn slower, what they usually mean is adults feel slower, because they're comparing themselves to some idea of a prodigy kid, or to their own kid who started lessons at the piano bench you're currently avoiding. That comparison is doing you no favors. Get rid of it.
What actually happens when you start
Your hands are going to feel dumb for a while. Not because they are, but because they've never done this specific coordinated thing before, and your brain is building new wiring for it. This is completely normal and it happens to every adult beginner I've ever worked with, no exceptions.
The part that trips people up is fingering. Which finger goes on which note isn't obvious, and if you guess wrong on a hard measure, your hand will happily memorize the wrong pattern and then you'll spend twice as long unlearning it as you would have learning it right the first time. I know this one from experience, and it's a rough lesson to learn twice.
So here's my actual practical system for this. When you hit a measure that's giving you trouble, before you play it again, stop and write the finger number in pencil, small, right above the note. One, two, three, four, five, whatever finger it needs to be. Then play it slow with that number in front of you. Then play it again without looking, to see if it stuck.
I keep a spiral notebook just for this. Not fancy, the ninety-nine cent kind from the school supply aisle. Every hard measure I've ever fought with has fingering penciled over it, circled, sometimes crossed out and rewritten when I realized my first guess was wrong. I showed it to Clyde from the ward once and he looked at it for a second and said it looked like a crime scene diagram. Which, fair. It is a little unhinged looking. But it works, and I'd rather have an unhinged-looking notebook than a hand that learned the wrong pattern and won't let go of it.
A quick word on posture, since I know somebody's worrying about it
You've probably seen the diagrams. Curved fingers, wrist level, hand shaped like you're holding an invisible orange. That's fine advice eventually. Right now, at the very beginning, I think it's oversold. If you're so focused on curving your fingers just right that you're playing the wrong notes, that's not helping anybody. Get the notes right first. Fix the hand shape once your brain isn't already on fire trying to find middle C. This is a preference, take it or leave it, but I've seen too many beginners freeze up worrying about their wrist angle instead of just getting through the measure.
A caution, since we're on the subject of hands
If your hands or wrists start actually hurting, not just feeling unfamiliar but genuinely sore or achy, stop for the day. That's your body telling you something, not a weakness to push through. Fifteen honest minutes with good posture beats an hour of pushing through pain that teaches your hands the wrong lesson entirely.
Before next time
Find one measure this week that gives you trouble, even a short one, and pencil the fingering above it before you try it again. Don't play it five more times hoping it fixes itself. Write it down first.