Piano World Home Page Forums Our Most Popular Forums Adult Beginners Forum How much do you practice?

I do it the same way, and I think it's the best approach. If I practise over an hour, the concetration level is really low, it's much better to split the practise to several sessions ideally, one session for each ''problem'' (individual pieces, scales, technical exercises, sight-reading)

I am starting to do more than a couple of hours a day, and weekends i do around 10 over the 2 days, I am a teenager

I don't practice as much as I'd like, due to work/family obligations and also other musicians playing.

Recently, i started doing this: My present goal is 8 hours a week.
When I get home from my lesson, I set my timer for 8 hours. Then whenever I start practicing, I start the timer. When I stop practicing, I pause it. This helps me to avoid a last minute cram.

I also make it a point to run over and run through a song or two when the opportunity presents itself. It might only be a few minutes but it all helps.

So I might not have as many long focused sessions as I'd like but the short ones help too. I usually manage a couple of long focused sessions where I really work on particularly hard stuff with lots of repetition.

I try and do 30 minutes every night before bed. Work has been crazy though the last few weeks (70+ hours) so any spare time is mostly just wind down quiet time before bed.

yuo actually need a lot of mental stamina to practice effectively. Hopefully I'll get some time off work early next year to spend some quality time practicing.

I'm going for my ABRSM grade 1 exam next year. Check out my blog to see my progress!

Yeah, me too. I don't really believe in practicing for more than 2 hours, it will exhaust me and I won't be focused anymore. I usually practice for 1-2 hours, 5 days a week. It actually depends on the difficulty of the piece I'm learning, though. I'm currently learning Chopin Op 62 no 2 and Chopin Op 10 no 5, quite difficult for me, so I need at least 1.5 hour of practice.

For the first 3 months, 20 minutes/day is enough.

However, you will have to--HAVE TO--study far more as you develop. Doing 20 minutes a day for 10 years will get you almost nowhere. Sometime you need to do 1-2 hours a day to progress steadily.

Learning piano is a progressive thing, and it's like being a baby again, learning to walk or talk or whatever. You waddle around and flop about for months and then you stumble around for a year or two, and then you get cocky and zip up and down in short bursts before you show off a couple years as you overdo everything. Then you get confident and comfortable and go everywhere for a decade or two before settling down and doing a bit of exercise while having a drink after work, etc.

Within a couple years you should gear up for 2-3 hours/day to push yourself upward. Chopin said over 3 hours is a detriment, and that's awesome... if you believe Chopin did it that way, which he didn't. Many pros can be a student's worst enemy to stop possible competition. You can practice about anything in anyway as long as possible during your first few thousand hours of practice, as long as basic technique is good, because you are building muscle and ear coordination to make you able to play fluidly. After that, when you are an advanced student, you have to settle down and focus on progressing while playing instead of just playing to understand how to play, or you spin wheels. According to the "Outliers" and the Andersen 10,000 rule of practice, it will take 10 years to settle into a dedicated study; that's the point when your mind will pull everything together and you will be able to become "a natural".

I play around 2-5 hours a day. Not all at once, I break it up... before work, after work, before bed time etc... if you play too long you start getting fatigued (if your playing and concentrating correctly) which can lead to mistakes and soreness. Try and break up your playing throughout the day...

and when you are practicing, actually give your full concentration. Full concentration for 20mins is better than an hour playing whilst the TV is on, or you're thinking about what chores, work, kids need to eat for dinner etc etc etc...

use your time wisely

I wouldn't say i practice at all. I file through my rep. and refresh myself on the tunes that grab me at the time. I want to do this for hours but my hands get tired, so it's usually no more than an hour, but it's every day. I don't recommend my approach to anybody, but this is what i do/want. I've only been playing piano for 5 months, but put in the thousands of hours on the violin and a few other instruments. I understand it takes time, and i can easily commit the time.

It's almost like there has to be another instrument of the same name. But Chopin disciple, or barrelhouse player like me, the common denominator is time. The new neural connections(pathways) take time be built. I think science confirms that forming new neural connections is easier if it's done routinely. I've been learning songs for fifty years. It would hurt more to stop, to not play music, than it would to continue.

Currently I practice A LOT, but it's only because it's the beginning of the semester, I think I'll eventually average on an hour per day for 5-6 days per week, I can get away with it if I keep a strict schedule.

I don't really practice as such anymore. I just play whatever I feel in the mood for, and when I am really starting to hit things pretty smoothly, I pull out the seriously advance things that I can't really play and I play some of the easier parts, or, if I am really firing on all eight cylinders, I expand into some of the harder parts to add them to my wish list. I may never be able to play some of these all the way through, but I only play for my own enjoyment, so I do what I like. Usually I can sit and play for about three hours or until body pain makes me quit. I have been known to put in three or four sessions of an hour or two in the same day. It all depends on whatever I have to do. I am retired and have lots of time. If I had been able to take lessons when I was young, I would do everything differently, but I have never had a lesson on the piano, so it has taken me about 45 years to get to the same level as my daughter did in three.