Almost same age. I am 53 in a few days and I just started playing bass 5 weeks ago. I've played drums professionally for over 17 years (started with 14), but after an accident i could not use my right leg as usal and it started to hurt after less than 30minutes of playing, so I had to quit. Was really frustraiting for me. After all the years I thought, why not play any other instrument and so I started with the bass. You're right, learning is quite much harder in our age, but I spend almost 2 hours a day for practice and it works better and better and my target is to play in a band again - maybe not as a professional (almost too old for this), but in a cover band to do some gigs a year and some jam sessions. @@drewhark Scales (playing forth and back) are one of the most important things to learn, same as all the notes of the fretboard - this is what all teachers are telling on and on. You also should do finger training and play all possible variations of 1-2-3-4, 1-3-4-2, 2-3-4-1- and so on over the total fretboard is a very good training - and with all notes - quartes, 8th, 16th. Always start very slow and than speed it up AND VERY IMPORTANT: always with a metronome!