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So, the 10.000 hour threads intrigued me, I want to keep track of the time I spend practicing and I wonder if there are people out there who already do this. Also what methods they use..

Of course one can always use a simple timer but it's prone to error. (Forget starting/stopping etc.) I am looking for more automatic methods. Such as a digital piano keeping track of the hours it was open or a software piano that does the same, do these exist? Or any other external software that can do this by listening to midi signals?

Put a time clock by the door into the piano room with your card in the rack ... just kidding.

By hour # 100, one may begin to notice it's more about the fun, not the clock.

The 10,000 hour thing isn't worth keeping track of. That post or one similar shows up about every couple of months. It's not a guarantee. If you practice poor habits without any guidance for 10,000, you will play poorly - really well.

Instead, if you wish to play piano well, get a good teacher. Track your practicing, but instead of time, practice what you do. Adjust that as necessary and as you become a more accomplished pianist. Start out simple and gradually advance to more complicated music as your skills improve. You will make progress and play beautiful music along the way, and that is where the real enjoyment lies.

@Morodiene I guess mentioning the 10.000 hours rule in OP was a mistake, I hope this does not turn into a thread about it

So let me restate the question omitting that part, let's say I just want to keep track of the time I spend practicing, regardless of that practice being good or bad, for statistical reasons.

I dont keep track of my practice time. I simply practice and never note how long I take on a day to day basis. It is not something that I feel necessary to do.

LOL OK, it's just a pet peeve of mine

Still, I recommend more keeping track of tasks accomplished when you practice, and not time. Unless you are talking about scheduling your practice time, but I get the sense that's not what you mean.

I think there are a few online practice logs you can use. Here's one, but it doesn't seem to be very detailed (but it's free): http://www.onlinepracticerecord.com/

edited to add: Looks like there's one PW offers: http://www.pcsincnet.com/PW_Practice_Club/

Quality over quantity is something I strive to achieve. At the very beginning I was tracking practice hours. But it became too tedious since I often practice in multiple sessions in a day.

I do keep a practice log. I use the log to reflect on practice sessions, where I highlight accomplishments and identify issues that need to be addressed. The log has improved how I practice and what I practice. Sometimes I just write reminders like, "SLOW DOWN", or "SLOWER", or "LIKE I MEAN REALLY SLOW." In any case, I find the practice log to be a great tool.

I have been thinking of purchasing The Musician's Way: A Guide to Practice, Performance and Wellness. If you go to the book's website, there is a page of downloadable practice charts and other tools that might be of interest: http://musiciansway.com/downloads.shtml

Found another here http://www.compoundtime.com/

You can't enter a lot of info at first, but once you start the timer you can edit and put in more detailed info. I'm also guessing you can add this stuff in after you're done. If you start the timer and click edit, you can also Override minutes and manually enter them so it can be a timer or a log. There's also a section to enter measures which is nice and more details about what you did.

edited to add: I just discovered you can even put in a goal - so if you want to put your 10,000 hours in there as the goal it will track your progress LOL

Ok I made some Google searches and surprisingly I did not find much. Here is one possible software idea: A program that listens to midi events from the midi inputs of a PC and starts keeping time intelligently (e.g. starts automatically, if there is inactivity for a duration of t stops automatically). Because doing it manually is tedious and error prone..

The main problems here:
- Only useful for people who use software pianos (Pianoteq, Ivory etc.) Ok for me..
- Should wake up automatically upon receiving a midi event. (Is this even possible in Windows? Maybe starting when Windows boots is a better way)
- I have no idea whether you can transparently listen to midi events without disturbing the software piano that processes them. (Again is this even possible?)

Anyway; I will make some further searches on this topic and who knows, if it turns out possible and easy I may even try writing one program like that myself. Meanwhile bumping the thread for other possible solutions.

Excel spreadsheet. One column for the date. One column each for starting, stopping, and total time.

I would rather practice than keep track of practice.

sydnal, I have read your post, here:

subject: Calculating practice time

So, the 10.000 hour threads intrigued me, I want to keep track of the time I spend practicing and I wonder if there are people out there who already do this. Also what methods they use..

Of course one can always use a simple timer but it's prone to error. (Forget starting/stopping etc.) I am looking for more automatic methods. Such as a digital piano keeping track of the hours it was open or a software piano that does the same, do these exist? Or any other external software that can do this by listening to midi signals?

__________

Great post, sydnal.

Yes, you can certainly log all your piano time. But the difficulty is that everything you do and everything you learn is dependant on your ability and inability. So some pieces that you learn up to a performance level may take you 6 months, a similar piece may take you half as long because your previous experience in the previous piece helped you you learn it in less time.

If it takes the average person 10 years to be pretty good if they worked very hard, it is such a long stretch of time and what people do in a decade from being well, being depressed, only play the piano everyday or dating a new person, have having a family, everything do we affects everything so it could be difficult to understand what your logs actually mean. Remember, that each and every piece you learn and play makes a difference as to your outcome. Your choices may hurt your goal or your choices may very much benefit your goal.

I think you get the idea.

What you may be interesting in is that if you studied piano for 10 years and at the end of the 10 years you were rich, famous and the best piano play on the plant, that may be quite meaningfull to you and your loved ones.

If in 10 years you were not rich, not famous and not the best piano player on the planet, you could still be extremely happy playing the piano - BUT it could be that in 10 years that the person was rich, famous and the best piano player on the planet and they could be very, very, very unhappy because they felt they had sacrificed that 10 years and it was too big a price for the reward they got in their mind!

cheers,

3B21SAC

I feel the same way at times. Sometimes logging takes time away from practicing.

The...uh.... midi events timer?... How about when the cat starts walking back and forth on the keyboard?

I try to keep each session down to 15 minutes. Not doing too good. Other morning an hour went by before I checked the timer.

Best suggestion I have is to estimate. Can even base the estimate on how well you play. For me... I've been at this for months....how well I play?... I'd estimate a grand total practice time of ... two hours.

The 10K rule has been applied to many things. It's not worth worrying about. Your play is worth worrying about.

Worry?
Not for me.
Focus, concentration, attention, thought,
but not worry.

Maybe Alfred E. Neuman had it right after all.

Now I definitely think there is value in recording practice times and tasks. This can help tremendously when there is a lack of progress on a particular piece - you can figure out what you've done already or what you've not done, if you need to increase your time or your efficiency, things like that. It can also be a way to hold yourself accountable for your practice time if you are not quite as diligent with that.

It's not for everyone, but I think it can be helpful and not a waste of time, as long as time isn't what you're obsessing about.

I keep track of mine, but it is pretty simple - pencil and paper. I have a notebook - the same one that my teacher writes her instructions in - she uses the front, I use the back.

I just write down the date, then the time I start a particular task, and the time I stop. It only takes a second to do.

Last summer, when I was playing a particularly difficult piece (for me, anyway), I actually went back and added up the minutes I had spent on it. By hand (well, I used a calculator). 40 hours of practice to get Schumann's Arabeske playable.

But I don't add things up very often.

If I had to use a spreadsheet I probably wouldn't do it. I've already got the notebook there, and the pencil, so it's become a habit now.

And my teacher almost never writes anything in my notebook anymore. When I first started with her, I think she was unsure about how to approach my lessons. Since then she has learned that I am a self-motivator - no need to assign me anything.

Sam

How you practice is paramount. That means you are doing the right things in a focused manner. If you practice the wrong things then you have engrained something that will take three times as long to undo. That is not to say the "perfection" is needed either - this brings about its own anxiety. I fell into all kinds of holes with the first instrument that I studied with a teacher as an adult. Later on I learned to do things, where in a week I'd get further than in 6 months (because how I had been working before was that ineffective). There are lots of discussions on that idea in this forum.

I do not keep track of my time. I keep track of what I'm working on, how it's going, whether it seems to be going the right direction - things like that.

There are any number of free or inexpensive client billing computer apps. And then you pretend your piano is a client.

Fancier ones contain project management or can link to, or be parts of project management apps. So you can track time spent doing projects for your piano-client, like sight reading practice; scales, arpeggios and cadences (I group those three together), repertoire maintenance, polishing current pieces, learning a new piece, etc etc etc. And it calculates, pie charts, or otherwise keeps track of (if you're compulsive enough to consistently use the thing), how much time you're spending on different areas of practice.

I've played around with this, and go through phases. Sometimes it fulfills my inner OCD, and other times my practice is waaaaay more freeform. If nothing else, it helps me diversify my practice, and keep track of where I am within different learning resources.

I'm with Sam - pencil and paper. I have a loose-leaf notebook with a page (or pages) for each piece I'm working on where I write down what I've worked on and how it went, and then a log page in the front that's just how much time I practised and which pieces each session. Works for me.

Cathy