Well, I'm 82 and started my musical journey at age 5 on an old upright piano. I played strictly by ear, and could listen to a song on the radio and by the next day, I could pick it out on a piano. I never learned to read music in all these years, at least not enough to hamper my playing ability,
At age 12 I learned to play a 6 string, acoustic guitar and began singing the songs along with my playing. I was self taught with the chords, practiced nearly every day for at least 2 hours and had calluses on my fingertips that were tough enough to hammer nails into inch thick boards - at least that's how they felt. I graduated to a 6-string, solid body electric guitar which I played for the next decade or more, often performing country bars and nite clubs. I even purchased a programmable, Roland Drum Machine which helped tremendously with my timing, which I thought was pretty darned good to begin with.
In the early 1970s, I graduated to a 12 string, acoustic guitar and added a in hole acoustic pickup, which I absolutely loved. This guitar provided a wonderful, full sound that was lacking on the 6-string guitars I previously owned. Then one evening, while my loving wife of now 60 years and I were at a restaurant having dinner, a guy set up a Yamaha PSR-500 arranger keyboard on stage, along with a Peavey KB-500 keyboard amp, and also his solid body 6-string guitar, which he also plugged into the amp. His show was fantastic and my wife and I remained there for the entire 3 hours he performed.
When he ended the night, I went on stage and talked with him while he was getting ready to pack up his equipment and go home for the evening. He unplugged the amp connection and allowed me to mess with the PSR-500 for about 10 minutes - I was in love!
The following day, I went to the music store in my town, Music Land, Bel Air, MD, talked with owner, who was a close friend, and purchased the keyboard amp. He didn't have that particular keyboard, and was mainly a Roland dealer, but said I could get a great deal on the keyboard at one of the nearby, Big Box department stores. I drove there in a few minutes and purchased the PSR-500 for just under $500 US. Granted, it was just 61 keys, but that did not hamper my ability to play at all. I quickly adapted from the 88 fully weighted key, upright piano to the 61-key light touch arranger keyboard and never looked back. My experience with Yamaha over these many decades has always been positive and the only repairs I have had to make were having some buttons replaced. There were several thousand hours and several thousand musical performances on my current arranger keyboard, PSR-S-950, and it were to ever completely die, I would purchase another in a heartbeat.
Now, if you are a home player, which at your age, and mine, we are usually retired, those weighted keys may not be a problem, though with one of my medical problems, distal neuropathy, I can no longer feel my hands and feet other than pain and pins and needles 24/7, I still enjoy playing with the arranger keyboard's light-touch keys. They just feel so comfortable, especially after a couple hours of continuous playing.
I guess the best scenario to weighted V/S unweighted keys I can provide comes from when I was a youngster in the employ of the US Navy. I was in the radio gang, a radioman, and had to copy Morse code, encrypted information sent to our ship from Norfolk, VA, which was halfway around the globe at times. I used a manual typewriter, Royal brand if I recall, and you had to pound those keys in order to get them to strike a letter through the ribbon, which was badly worn. In fact, we re-inked those ribbons once a week so they would last longer. After about 2 hours of typing, your fingers ached, were often swollen and I had to soak my hands in hot water for 30 minutes in order to continue my shift. Everyone else in the division did the same thing.
Just before I got out of the US Navy, in 1960, we got electric typewriters, IBM brand I believe, which had a rotating ball that was amazing. You barely had to touch the key and the ball would spin, slam the disposable ribbon, and provide sharp, crisp, clear letters on each page. I no longer had to soak my hands, no longer experienced pain after an 8-hour shift in the radio room, and as I stated above, I never looked back.
Just because you are 89 years old, doesn't mean you cannot continue to learn new things. At 82, I am constantly learning new and exciting things to have fun with. I just learned how to shoot an air rifle using a laser sight, mounted the sight on my gun myself, then purchased a laser bore sight device, which made the job of sighting in the rifle a lot easier. Additionally, I just purchased a drone with an adjustable, built-in camera that I am learning to fly using my smartphone mounted on a remote controller with two joy sticks. Still working on this one, though. Don't want to have a crash landing or fly into a passing aircraft.
Good luck on whatever you decide upon,
Gary (Another old codger!)
