It would be great to have played an instrument since the age of 5, but I would rather hear about the players who picked up the harp later in life and managed and managed to 'master' it.
I think Jerry Portnoy started playing harp at the age of 25, does anyone know of any other pros who started playing later in life?
@belfast_harper: I like where you are going with this! I'd too like to hear about the players who started out later in life (like me), but still managed to become monster players!
I think it was Adam who related a story about a student he has/had who picked the harp up in his 50's and who, I believe in 2 or 3 years became proficient enough to be gigging in NYC with multiple bands.
The story was an inspiration for me.
Now the guy was apparently a maniac about practice, I think there was an anecdote about him practicing even while on the can. It was something ungodly like 6-8 hours a day, every day...something like that.
Now I've got nowhere near that degree of discipline/enthusiam/time to do that, not to mention how to practice efficiently. But I figure if it's possible for a guy to do that, then it's certainly possible to get halfway competent (whatever that means) in that period of time, with a reasonable amount of practice.