Piano World Home Page Forums Our Most Popular Forums Pianist Corner Does it take 10,000 hours to master the piano?

Malcolm Gladwell thinks so according to his book Outliers. Check out this chart and see if those 10,000 hours can be broken down into milestones. I'd be interested to hear any additional milestones that people have experienced along this timeline.

http://webaom.com/piano_practice

Oh no... not again...

Hi Chad and welcome. We've discussed this to death SO many times... The general idea is that talent alone is not enough, studying alone is not enough, so you need both (along with many other things). *I think*

Next?

The Gladwell thesis has been discussed here a lot, but I like your chart and brief article.

I don't think 10k hours is enough to 'master' the instrument IMHO.

I've seen that figure, and I've never thought it meant anything.

First off, it depends what we mean by "master." By my concept of it, some geniuses can master it in amazingly few hours, and many or most people couldn't even with billions of hours.

Do I master it now? I don't know.

In fact, I have no idea whatsoever what that whole thing is supposed to mean. The way I ever looked at it was more in terms of, how long it would be -- like how many months or years, not hours at the piano -- before I'd be ready to work on particular pieces. But I've spent probably several times the "10,000 hour" figure at the piano, and there are pieces I'm not ready for yet and never will be.

Sorry if I re-hashed an old topic. While this isn't a new idea, I'm hoping to use it to develop a bit of a guideline for people to set some musical goals and become clearer on how much to put in to practicing and generally what one can expect to get out of their practice time. I know that everyone's different and there are many variables, but having a loose guideline is better than none at all, in my opinion. Cheers!

I don't think so, because I think it's a poor way to view the thing and it can give people a wrong idea of how it'll all work, but it's interesting to discuss it.


BTW, maybe someone wants to enlighten me about what "master the piano" means, i.e. where the line is. Seriously -- I have no idea whatsoever what it's supposed to mean. To me, it's much more of a continuum, which is part of why the thing has no meaning to me.

I agree with Mark that students are different and they progress at different rates.

Still, I really like the idea of framing reasonable expectations for a beginning player who may be looking forward to a possible lifetime with the piano.

So you'll have to hedge and qualify some and talk more in terms of time ranges than dates and deadlines -- but that's I how I understood your chart when I first looked at.

In my opinion, it's a worthwhile effort and I'd encourage you to keep working at it.

I'm just about 4000 hours in, but not even close to 40% accomplished...

Well, I think it is fair to say that it takes a lifetime to master the piano - and then you must find a way of earning an income!

hours seems the wrong unit of measurement to me. consider wine for example: it may take N hours to plant/pick/press/bottle the wine but N years for it to truly become a masterful wine. pianos too; it's not just the active assembly hours but the inactive hours as well (e.g. seasoning the wood, etc.). doing + being.

which reminds me of something i once read -- could have been in ouspensky's "in search of the miraculous" -- something to the effect that a university degree takes 4 years, a PhD 8 years, to become a doctor 12 years and to master a musical instrument 16 years. that rings more true to me, but of course YMMV based on the many variables.

i also believe the book indicated that mastery of oneself took considerably longer than even that of a musical instrument.

And the number of hours doesn't matter because you must love sitting on the piano bench for most of your life playing and practicing the piano. You must love it, every minute of it.

The mastery begins to kick in around 20 minutes before hour 10,000.

It is not about money but about love.

I think it makes more sense to have short-term goals rather than such extended ones and that those goals should not be determined by an element of time.

Moreover, hours at the piano cannot easily be counted towards proficiency, as reaching that goal - however it may be defined - depends upon how efficiently and how intelligently one practices.

I would suggest that one have goals that are more easily defined and more easily attainable than those rather vague ones already suggested. Rather than think : "I'm going to learn this Sonata movement in X hours (total)" one should think : "I'm going to learn this Sonata movement by working on it regularly and methodically until I can play it to a performance level, (or examination level, or to my teacher's and/or my own satisfaction).


Regards,

....but only if you count the hours!! Otherwise how do you know....

When I think of what " mastering the piano " means, then I think of the kind of pianists that have been invited year in and year out to perform at the Concertgebouw's Meesterpianistenserie.

Murray Perahia comes to mind...for example.

10.000 hours squared wouldn't get me there.

had to run some theoretical numbers, just for giggles.

practicing...

4 hours a day 5 days a week:
260 days x 4 = 1040 hours per year. 10,000 / 1040 = 9.6 years.

2 hours a day 5 days a week:
260 days x 2 = 520 hours per year. 10,000 / 520 = 19.2 years.

i guess my takeaway is the more i practice the quicker i'll get better.

I'm good friends with a lawyer who can get this knocked down to 8,000 hours or so.

Call me.

Thanks, I was worried...