What age did you start playing the instrument you teach?
This might be a bit boring but I am in need of a bit of inspiration on a saturday lull. This is not a competition, just wondering what age you started playing and if you always wanted to do music? Nothing more nothing less.

I started aged 5 and yes I always wanted to do music.

Anyone else?

Clarinet, age 8, Saxophone and Flute, age 16.

Loved it then. Still love it now.

Violin age 12.

YES! Not all string players have to begin in nursery! Although I do love teaching teeny kids with 1/16 violins

I was five when I started the piano (I had been pestering my parents for a while apparently! ) and nine when I started the flute.

If it's the instrument I am teaching (voice):

I cannot really say, because I have always been singing since childhood. Getting more serious about it probably started roundabout 14/15, when I sang in school plays and choirs. I just had a few formal singing lessons though before I auditioned for Uni. Form there, I got my voice formally trained for 8 years all inclusive (still learning though, and still getting supervision).
I also studied three years of piano there because I had to (and that's what it still sounds like ).

Non-professionally, I played the violin from the age of 10 or so and took lessons until I started studying singing at the age of 19 (that's when we leave school when we decide to do the equivalent to A-levels). I was pretty good on the violin back then, but I am really rubbish today. I wish I could practise the fiddle more, but sadly the day has just 24 hrs., and I also need to sleep and eat

Flute at 13 for2 years. The again at 43. Piano at 45.

Piano - 6 years
Clarinet - 8 years
Saxophone - 14 years
Bass Clarinet - 18 years

Piano-39

Clarinet at 9, piano at 16, and recorder at 3, properly at 21 and lessons from 24.

I am about to teach flute again which I started at 14.

Piano at 7, singing at 9.

I've played the piano since I was 12 (4 years), the flute since I was 14 (2 years) and the organ since I was 14 as well (Again, 2 years), but I don't teach yet! I plan to though, once I get better!

Jacob.

Recorder 6
Clarinet (my best instrument, and favourite one to teach) 7
Piano 15
Flute 22 ish
Saxophone 24

I play a few other instruments for fun but these are the ones I teach. My daughter has just begun the recorder, of her own accord and VERY informally (about 10 minutes a week when she wants to) at the age of 3 1/2 - aww!

I started playing piano aged about 6 - until 16. Then restarted aged about 37 and seriously two years ago, aged 39.

Piano - 3

Piano aged 4

Flute aged 12 - but I don't teach flute

Just realised what the actual question was

I only teach piano.

Piano aged 6 - oops, but I don't teach it, sorry!

What I DO teach, I started learning (very gradually and intermittently) at about 24-ish.

No! This thread is ruining my dreams!

Nearly everyone started when they were under 10! I started piano at 6, but then stopped for 8 years, and wasn't even nearly grade 1 when I played previously. I started flute at 11, but then had a two year gap,and wasn't even nearly grade 1 on that.

So really I started flute at 13, and piano at 14.
So it's ruining my dream of becoming a flute teacher, because everyone else started younger

of course it won't stop you becoming a teacher. I started the oboe about 3 years ago (13 years old then) and if my probably-won't-come-true dream of becoming a professional doesn't work out then being a teacher would be very enjoyable.

You don't have to be a great performer to be a great teacher.

Piano - aged exactly 4 (my first lesson was a present for my birthday as I had been begging my reluctant parents to let me play for months beforehand!)

Piano at 14 - more than 30 years ago
Flute at 10

Piano 8-18 to Grade VIII, then restarted at 42 to re-do Grade VIII as refresher, going on to diploma just afterwards. Partly on account of my mum's desire to see me get diploma (after she died 13 years ago). Did it for her (though ironically she was no longer with us to see it) and to prove I could and (most importantly) for myself. I haven't regretted it.

LR

I first "sang for my supper" on holiday at an hotel at 4and a half. started piano then too. and violin at 8. started teaching at 15 (piano), took lessons in singing seriously at 17, then entered one of the major music colleges with 3 principal studies. piano, singing and viola. swopped piano for the organ after obtaining LRAM for piano teaching. I taught myself the recorder at about 57. I now teach singing, piano and recorder, paperwork to Scholarship level, and have so far clocked up well over half a century of teaching, performing and composing. I was so lucky to have my schooling where it was recognised that I would have to be a musician as I had no interest in the other subjects except mathematics and English, and I was given practice time every day, instead of domestic science. art, physics, chemistry, though I did biology. Phew! So my life has been full of music and still is -- Having the right parents and a loving home life made it all so easy for me. I always encourage people who want to learn music - it is a wonderful hobby at any age, and a wonderful profession for those who are willing to devote their time. Good luck to all music lovers.

Just to reassure you: flute at 14; recorder at 9.

One of my best friends at music college didn't start playing until she was 14, and was just as good as everyone else.

Clarinet - 8, Sax - 15, Flute - 21ish. I started playing the piano first (4) but haven't had the opportunity to teach that yet. I always wanted to do something musical, but disliked the idea of teaching when I was younger. Love it now!

I really want to teach, but I only started singing lessons when I was 14 and will be starting piano lessons very soon at 17. Is it too late for me?

Nope

Two of my instruments I started at 16, and I now teach them both. Take your time, absorb as much info as you can, and in time, I'm sure you'll realise your dream.

I don't think so. I started singing lessons at 35.

I think determination and an ability to work hard are far more important than the age when you started.

Edit (I did something wrong and I cant work out what I did or ho to delete this )

Please dont let this turn into a thread that depresses people (like some others elsewhere on the forum).

It is not a competition! We all take different routes. There is no right or wrong.

Piano 6; recorder and flute 16.

Bx

Absolutely. And it can be a disadvantage to have started young. For example I actually have no idea how I learnt to read music, simply because I feel as though I've always known, so I've had to learn from various places - books, tutors, pupils (!) - the different ways that people find it hard to learn how to read music.

Yes! I certainly identify with that.

Yes, it is like trying to remember how I learned to read or write!

I was 8 when I started piano lessons but had been messing about with my Dad and reading through tutors myself before that.

I was 8 when I started formal singing lessons, but I didn't take any grades until I was 30+ when I did grade 8 after having done grade 5 theory as a crash course. By that time I'd done three years of nurse training, and some years in the civil service. I then did two diplomas before going to Trinity to study singing in my mid 30s.
Singing or teaching singing as a career never entered my head until my 30s. I was just lucky that when it did, I didn't have to start as a beginner as I was already (unknown to me) grade 8 standard.

Piano: 6
Organ: 12 or 13, I think

All seems rather a long time ago now! This feeling was reinforced when I discovered that some of the pieces on the present Piano syllabus also appear in the exam books that my wife and I still have from 15+ years ago (Duncombe on grade 1 and Gounod on grade 3 are the ones I've spotted). The board have clearly decided that those pieces came up such a long time ago, there's no problem with using them again!

I played the Gounod for my grade 3 32 years ago. it must be an old favourite!

Recorder in primary school; I remember doing a couple of TCL exams, and being petrified

Oboe at 12
Flute and violin at 13 (later as good as gave up with the fiddle)
Sax in the sixth form
Clarinet at university, though never really took it seriously til I became a peri!

So no, we don't all have to start at 3 to be good at what we do... though I sometimes wish I had!

Piano - 3 years old (my mother was a teacher). Violin 12 years old.

Three?

yep! I read the teble clef before I read words.

Susie also began at 3. See further back.

I started playing the piano at the age of 4 and a half. Yes, I always wanted to do music.

My husband started on cornet at 3!

My daughter has just started the recorder at 3. She kept trying to play mine so I bought her her own cheap pink one! We did a bit by rote, then with a CD, and she is now working on 'Traffic Jam' in Recorder From The Beginning, Book 1. I suspect we'll be on just B and A for many months. She does 5 minutes at a time, a few times a week (whenever she asks to!) and has just begun to play her tunes on the glockenspiel too, after playing them on the recorder. She can read a few words (names, signs etc), but I suspect that treble clef is going to be her first language!

Although I'm pleased that she's interested in music, I'm keen not to do anything formal yet. After all, last month she was obsessed with dot-to-dot puzzles and the month before that it was colouring in. There was a sticking phase too. As long as she's happy, she can play with whatever she likes! I think the interest in recorder comes from growing up in a home where lots of people come to learn instruments!

Edited to add: I turned round this morning to find my 13 month old daughter trying to blow my clarinet! (With a 3 1/2+ strength reed on it - ha ha!)

Yes though my mother wasn't a teacher, she just found a kindly elderly teacher nearby who was willing to have a go. And all credit to her, because she found materials that were suitable to my age, (even 46 years ago they existed!!!) and gave me just 15 minute lessons. She must have had the patience of a saint and she even had to lift me on to the piano stool - I wasn't a very athletic child - too much playing the piano, heh, heh!

I think though that you have to remember that when a child starts at age 3, or 4, or 5 progress is going to be slow - unless they're a Mozart-like prodigy, compared with older beginners, eg a boy pupil of mine began when he was 12, insisted on doing every exam all through the grades and achieved grade 8 at 17/18 - which is exactly when I achieved grade 8, although I now realise that I had a much wider experience of repertoire as we went along so maybe that was an advantage. My parents knew nothing about music, so there was absolutely no pressure or even expectation.