Karlsson on the roof: “..I am clever, reasonably fat man in my best years”
Little Brother: “Which are the best years?”
Karlsson: “All of them!”

(quoted from Astrid Lindgren’s renown children’s book “Karlsson On The Roof”, 1955)

You don’t need to be smart or fat to learne the guitar although it may help. The truth is that all the years are the best for starting. Much depends on your goals: developing the classical guitar technique still takes 16 years, and it is good to start at the age of 6. However, there are people who have started as “late” as 18 or even 28 and still become professional players. On the other hand, there are too many of those who start at the age of 6 just because their parents want it, and we never hear from those players.

My regular beginners’ course is for grown-ups but the youngest participant was a 9-year old girl and she was very good. The oldest participant of my online-course was a 79 y old Irish man. 65+ y is common.

Often I try to find similarities between guitar playing and sports and it goes here, too: if you don’t start early enough, then you will not get to the Olympics but for your own fun and fitness you can do sports whenever. My daugher Katariina was 2 years old when she first attended a guitar recital. During the concert she was crying but later took herself a 1/4 size guitar from my shop and started to imitate playing. I tuned her guitar to the open D so she could play on the open strings: