Piano World Home Page Forums Our Most Popular Forums Adult Beginners Forum Is it possible to become an advance player at 30s?

Practicing for 10,000 hours is no guarantee that you'll become an advanced player. I'm weary of any "rule" that suggests expertise can be acquired by simply logging in hours, when in many cases the person logging the hours may be doing any number of things incorrectly and not learning (at least not in a way that will produce result recognized by society). They may practice without a teacher and use poor fingerings that actually run them into trouble down the road.

Without doubt, many keen new students hearing of the rule will expect from the get go that they will reach the 10,000 mark and then get discouraged when they don't even make it to 10, leading them to give up early on. It's better to avoid the figure "10,000" and simply say that becoming an advanced player takes lots of time and hard work.

As a diligent learner, you can undoubtedly reach a recognized level of expertise earlier than the 10,000 hours. At the best 10,000 is a good benchmark for some form of a achievement, at worst it misleads the student to passively logging the hours will get them there.

Thanks for the reply!

This is the most common response to the 10k rule that I hear. I am certainly no expert on it, but I think it presupposes an argument that is not relevant to the 10k rule discussion.

The 10k rule, so far as I understand it, supposes that it will take a minimum of 10k hours, assuming that the student does everything correctly, to achieve "success" (the term actually used in the book). I think that the notion that a student will not invest the time or the energy to do something correctly or consciously ("passively") negates the 10k hour rule, since I believe the rule supposes that the individual actually wants to achieve this thing, and will do whatever is necessary to achieve it. I also do not believe the 10k rule guarantees success, only that those who find that success have, generally, amassed the "required" 10k hours.

To pull out one line and address it more directly:

I think this is, relatively, semantics. At 2 hours per day, 5 days per week, it would take someone 19.23 years to reach the 10k hours mark. That's a lot of hard work and time.

I have not read every post on this thread, so this may be redundant, and is an extrapolation of my earlier post.

The 10K hours thing is bogus IMHO, one reason because it has attached to it a lot of ifs, ands, and buts.

First, the whole thing is based upon the assumption that "Practice makes perfect"; Thus, 10K hours of this thing called "practice" will allegedly yield (perfect) an "advanced player".

The problem is that any old practice does NOT make perfect. Instead, what practice does is make permanent whatever was practiced.

Thus, if one is practicing incorrectly, what will be made permanent is those practiced-in errors, limitations, dead-ends, etc.

The truth version of that quote is this: Perfect practice makes perfect.

Therefore, learning how to practice correctly, as it relates to how you as an individual person learns, is absolutely key to the goal of becoming an "advanced player" at any age, with any amount of time spent "practicing".

Also, there is the question of talent. Some claim that talent does not factor in here, that we are just programmable blobs of whatever, but I can tell you as a teacher that talent factors in big time.

I am not going to get into the talent thing very far, as it has been thrashed about here over and over. But simply put, years or teaching and playing music professionally has shown me without any doubt that some people learn to play quite quickly, others not so fast, others very slowly, and a few very very very slowly.

So, because you can't change your talent, if you want to become an advanced player (at any age), the thing to do is learn how to practice correctly.

The proven best way to accomplish that goal is to find and study with good/great teacher. If you truly are serious, enough so that you are willing to put in the 10K or whatever hours, a teacher should be at the top of your priority list. A good teacher will guide you in the best way to learn, help you to avoid dead-ends, and basically facilitate and ease the whole thing much better that you can alone.

Hmmm. It's hard to practice and hard to pick time to record. He's a nice guy but TV watching is what he wants to do in his spare time. He watch TV while I practice and we get louder and louder .. Throw in some loud noises from my dog's squeaky toys.. Ah my blissful home life. I am gonna create a sound proof music room someday.

I don't know when or if I'll ever be an "advanced" player, and I doubt I would ever call myself that no matter what. It means a lot to me, though, to be able to say I'm continually advancing.

Never fear, it is.

.... but it doesn't take that many hours for your listeners to think you play pretty darn good.

I agree with most of what you say. I suppose you could say that someone who uses that formula is likely or almost guaranteed to reach success on an advanced level.

However my concern is the reaction to it as illustrated in my above post. I think one should be aware of the 10,000 h/d rule, but take it with a grain of salt. 20 years is a long time, and it can be almost discouraging for younger players to think that they'll have to "wait that long" to become an advanced player.

Yes, it is about the journey, but the destination is fun too. I would like most players to be aware that the 10,000 is at least somewhat flexible.

I think the reason the 10,000 hour rule is bogus is because it is being misinterpreted. Gladwell has a whole chapter on it in his book 'Outliers'. I believe he came up with that concept.

The rule was not that "if you do something for 10,000 hours, you become advanced".

The advice given here is probably better than the made up rule. Enjoy yourself, practice the right stuff, with the right teacher, etc... Then, good luck defining advanced. It's more something that you can define for yourself. One day you say "Hey, I'm pretty advanced aren't I?"

YES.

Hmmm....so you can see......other part of the world......same thinking.....

Nil novi sub sole.........

Cheers

Johan B

Also Latin?....... But very nice....

Cheers,
Johan B