What Age Do People Start Learning An Instrument?

I recently asked a question on my FaceBook page and to everyone subscribed to the Hello Music Theory newsletter what age they started learning their instrument.

It was really interesting to see all the responses, so I thought I’d write it up and share what the most common age to start is.

Just a few things to note before we get into the results:

• I have a small sample size – Only 334 people have completed this survey so far. I will update the data as I get more results to make it more statistically significant.
• These are self-reported ages – I can’t verify the responses.
• Some people reported their school grades – I’ve used the average age for that grade in these cases.
• Some people said from birth – I’m not sure you can start learning an instrument under the age of one, so I’ve listed these responses as two years old.
• I’m not a statistician – I’m a musician and maths was never my strong point. There will probably be errors in my numbers – please correct me (kindly) if you see any!

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I’d love it if you would add your age to this survey. Complete this simple form, and I’ll update it with your age shortly

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Right, with that out of the way, here are the results so far as of May 2024. I will update the results as we get more responses.

The Results

So, the results were slightly surprising to me, although they were generally in line with what I expected.

The highest reported ages were:

1. Five years old – 49 people (14.67%)
2. Eight years old – 41 people (12.28%)
3. Seven years old – 40 people (11.98%)
4. Nine years old – 33 (9.88%)
5. Four years old – 25 (7.49%)

Breaking it down by decade, we get the following:

• 2-9 years old – 225 people (67.36%)
• 10-19 years old – 68 people (20.35%)
• 20-29 years old – 1 person (0.29%)
• 30-39 years old – 3 people (0.89%)
• 40-49 years old – 2 people (0.59%)
• 50-59 years old – 7 people (2.09%)
• 60-69 years old – 11 people (3.29%)
• 70-79 years old – 13 people (3.89%)
• 80-89 years old – 3 people (0.89%)
• 90+ years old – 1 person (0.29%)

It’s really great to see 35 people (10.47%) of people starting to learn over 50 too. It seems that once the needs of raising a family and having a career start to dissipate that people have more time to devote to things they wish they had done as a child.

Another wonderful thing was the number of people STARTING to learn an instrument over the age of 80. There was even one person who started at 91! Incredible.

They are a testament to the fact that it’s never too late to start learning music!

Anyway, thanks for reading this far. I’ll update this post once I get to 500 responses, so please complete the survey above if you didn’t participate in my FaceBook post or email newsletter.

And below are all the results in a table.

Table of Responses