Playing any instrument can be quite a difficult and rewarding experience for everyone who tries it. However, I feel that it can be extra hard for people with ADHD. I started playing the saxophone in 1983. In high school, I was in marching band, concert band, jazz band, and pretty much any group that had openings for an alto saxophonist. I would play during the school year in college and take the summers off. There were years when I would not even touch my saxophone. I have always wondered why I could not practice regularly and year-round. When I was diagnosed with ADHD, I finally had my reasons. I also came up with ways of dealing with these difficulties. Here are some of my struggles with learning to play a musical instrument and my solutions.
Difficulty sustaining attention: attention is one of the key foundations of ADHD, and learning a musical instrument necessitates attention to a task for a relatively long period. This could become more difficult once the novelty has worn off. The solution here is to add novelty. This could be a new piece of music or a new way of viewing a current piece.
Impulsivity: Impulsivity is the second core feature of ADHD and has a big impact on the learning process. It can show up as a failure to follow directions, jumping ahead in lessons to the more fun material without having built up a basic understanding, or playing without attention to rhythm or tempo. Here, I have used technology to help me. I have an iPad and the program ForScore. The layers in ForScore help me block off and focus on just the part of the piece I am working on. I can also highlight difficult areas to focus on. Adding colors to the score helps keep me engaged by keeping the music from looking like black hieroglyphs on a white page.
Frustration and impatience: Learning how to play a musical instrument takes time to acquire and practice, and in this regard, those with ADHD might quickly become frustrated or impatient with their learning process or their ability to learn things at a slower pace. Leaving the last 5-10 minutes of my practice to play whatever I want helps. This could be anything from making up silly songs to working on a piece for the pure joy of it. I love ending my practice with the closing theme to The Mupets Show.
Executive Functioning: Chronic problems with executive functions—organizing oneself to achieve goals, planning, allocating time and resources, and self–monitoring—can undermine efforts to master an instrument. For example, it requires students to develop and sustain regular practice routines, set goals, and monitor progress, all of which are impacted by ADHD. This is my biggest challenge. The solution has been to take lessons with a couple of people. They help me keep my goals realistic and keep me focused on my goals.
Sensory sensitivities: As with many people with ADHD, people with ADHD might find some aspects of playing an instrument, such as the feel of strings or the experience of playing extremely loud or high notes, less pleasant than others. When other people are practicing at the same time I am, the practice rooms do not isolate the sound, which can be challenging for me. I try to arrange my practice time when fewer people are around. I’m also getting used to focusing on my practice vs. the external noises.
Difficulty with Structure and Routine: it is important to develop a good practice regimen when learning an instrument, but even following a schedule can be challenging for someone with ADHD. I have learned that my Google Calendar is my best friend. I have practice times scheduled in my calendar. This helps me set aside time strictly for practicing.
These handicaps, notwithstanding the creative, spontaneous, and original ways they process musical material, people with ADHD can also bring a fresh, open, and often intuitive approach to music learning. Hyperfocus on areas of interest and keen attunement to their emotions can be valuable assets. Frequent, regular, cognitively demanding but fun and achievable overload with new, more difficult material can greatly enhance their enjoyment of learning a musical instrument. With patience, support, and practice strategies informed by tailored knowledge of how they learn, most people with ADHD can learn to play and enjoy a musical instrument. Adjustments to teaching methods, including breaking down slow groups of notes into smaller groups, adapting how music is presented and read, incorporating short periods of practice within larger units and minimizing interruptions, adding frequent breaks, making lessons shorter, and subdividing them into smaller units, all of these are likely to be helpful. Lessons in musical performance can help, as can finding a good teacher or joining a group with peers and mentors.