is it too late to learn piano at my age?

definitely not.

Go ahead. Give it a try. I hope it works out for you and you find that you love it.

Nope. It's not too late. Go for it!

There's only one way to find out.

2 questions:

1. Do you have hands?
2. Do you have a piano?

If you have answered 'Yes' to these questions, it is not beyond the realms of possibility.

Jeff and Beau Bridges both learned how to play the piano as adults for a movie. Neither of them played beforehand. Obviously they had the advantage of professional full time instruction for 6 months, in which they didn't have to do anything else, but the answer is no, it's not too late for you to learn to play the piano.

I took up the piano for a year, at age 16. I gave it up, but what I learned has stood me in good stead. I can read music to some extent, and understand the various musical notations. My understanding of musical technique has enabled me to enjoy listening to music all the more. I can still doodle about on the piano, when the mood strikes me. I am in a chorus, and understanding musical notation has really helped me.

I think that if you want to take up the paino, go for it. You may never get to the stage at Carnegie Hall, but playing will give you a lot of pleasure. Good luck, and enjoy!

I'm 56 now, but I can still remember pulling myself up at the age of 2 and touching my first piano keys. Knowing even then that I wanted to learn how to play that "thing" one day. A rough life prevented me from ever getting near a piano again, but I did manage to teach myself some guitar over the years. In the 80's I managed to take two semesters of piano at a community college. But they only focused on music theory with little to no time actually playing a piano. I didn't remember a thing and still can't read sheet music without a major struggle.

Last year I got a good ebay deal ($35) on a new Casio CTK-5000 keyboard, thinking, "Now, at last, I will learn how to play." I got frustrated soon and set it aside, with only having myself to teach myself, as has been my whole life. (Disabled, can't afford lessons. Buying that keyboard was even a stretch.) Last week I picked it up again and thought, maybe there's a better way. So I just tinkered around on it, picking out tunes by ear, entertaining myself with all that these new keyboards can do. Then I stumbled on two short e-books I found online in some binary newsgroups. "How to Play Popular Piano In 10 Easy Lessons" by Norman Monath, and "Play Piano in a Flash" by Scott Houston. I read the second one because I had seen him do a pledge-drive show on PBS, and lights went off. All the chords were just simple repeating geometric patterns! A thousand times easier than learning all those complex guitar chords. Then I read about half of the first one "Popular Piano In 10 Easy Lessons" and it explained the patterns to all the chords that the "Piano in a Flash" book didn't cover.

That was 2 days ago. Last night I thought I'd put what I had read to a test. I got out one of my guitar cheat-sheets (I've played guitar by ear for ages). My cheat-sheets are just chord names and words, no notes, no other notation. From that alone and what I learned from those two small books I was able to play "Vincent - Starry, Starry Night" by Don McLean on a keyboard from start to finish. Not fast, not without mistakes, but recognizable, and it still sounded really nice even when played that slow my first time. Here it is over half a century later since first wanting to play piano/keyboard and it only took TWO DAYS to figure out how to play one! If only someone would have told me so long ago what I just learned in only two days.

No, it's never too late, and it doesn't take a lot of time. Get those two small books, read them.