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I was doing this for awhile. Just in my notebook I would jog down how many hours or hour I practiced that day. I would check the time then check it when I was done to count them. After awhile when you sit there all day it doesn't even matter anymore, at least to me. Any time there is good time I would hope to believe.

Like others, I start with a spread sheet -- some of the items I practice are done every day, others on odd days and others on even days.

I use this timer. I've used other types and finally settled on this one because I just have to flip it. I usually practice any piece in 5 minute intervals. The 5 minute sub-divisions make me take that pause and figure out if I need to adjust what I have been doing -- should I focus on the measure that is tricky now or just keep trying to play the whole first page as I had been?? -- or whatever -- you get the picture. This keeps the practice focused and useful.

Also like others here, I have a loose leaf notebook with separate pages for each song, scale, etc. I quickly record the practice time as I go along (5+5, etc.) as I work on each item.

When I am through messing with any particular piece, exercise, scale, whatever I write down where I should begin the next time -- what to focus on first, what to add to that next -- allows me to quickly get up to speed the next time I sit at the piano to work with the item. Again, this minimizes wasted time and keeps my practice focused.

At the end of any day I can record the total time I spent on each item on the spreadsheet.

Pencil and paper, a spreadsheet are all good and simple suggestions. Automatically logging is clever but of little real value to my mind. Some folks spend as much time on logging and tracking their practice as they do on the bench. To me, all that tracking seems like a waste of time. Keep it simple. As an aside, some folks seem to spend way more time on the forum or other piano sites, than at the bench too, and that is another interesting choice.

If a person insists on software or an app, I suggest searching for running, or bicycling programs. There are tons of them, with so many data obsessed participants in both activities. Some fields might not make much sense for piano practice. However, a person can use them to suit their own purposes. For example, instead of entering a distance in a runners log, a person could use a code 1, 2, or 3 depending on the type of piano practice.

I do find that tracking with a computer app is more effective when I am doing practice that already involves the computer.

I have a number of what, in my music nerdydorky way, I consider "computer games". These are just about any program that takes MIDI input from my computer, stuff like PrestoKeys, Practica Musica, and Home Concert Xtreme. So it's pretty easy to timeclock in/out of one thing or another, when i'm on the computer already.

But right now, in my new house and different DP setup, I haven't quite figured out a convenient way to rig a shelf above my piano for the computer, so no "computer games" for a while. I'm not missing them much, but now I haven't been tracking my practice very effectively either.

Ha! I just got one of those for just the very same purpose (but I got the green one). I like your idea of keeping track of 5 + 5 + 5... I hadn't quite gotten that far with my plan. I just finished up a big project this weekend, and wanted to start using my cube this week, so this is all very timely.

If we have just inspired anyone else to try one of cubes, do note that different colors of cube have different time denominations. My green one has 1, 5, 10, & 15 minute timers on it.

I usually just write the starting date on the music, and then add comments and tempo, until I can write the end date and put the piece away. Then I have a simple spreadsheet where I enter the pieces with a few details, so I can see if I'm practicing as planned, but I don't calculate the actual minutes and hours, just the days spent on the piece, including days when I didn't practice at all.

But the Compound Time site and app mentioned by Morodiene is neat. I practiced for 53 minutes yesterday!

This is a brilliant perspective. Please realize I am speaking from a pedagogical perspective, not as an inherent educator of music. It reminds me of the old adage, work smarter, not harder.

Track benchmarks not time. It's a performance (not musical performance) based approach. My analogy is school. There may be 25 students in a tenth grade class, all of whom studied for the same amount of time. Some high achievers study extensively, others barely study. Only you know the extent to which repetition is warranted.

I starting using this yesterday as well. What I like about it is that it's a timer, so not a lot of time involved in switching pieces except at the beginning to add the name of your piece. Then it's just a matter of typing when you're done what you did. It would be nice to add some more features to it like being able to have an alarm when you reach a certain time, and make it a bit easier to see what you did (at least what measures you worked on) at a glance. Right now you have to edit the entry to see that info.

Well; I wasn't expecting so many people to have strong opinions against this so I'm a little bit surprised.. But I am not convinced For example, let's take the argument that it's not hours spent practicing but the efficiency of the practice. Of course I can't argue with that, but how do you define efficient practice? Isn't efficiency in the case of piano practice calculated by the proficiency achieved vs the time & effort spent? So how do you know or estimate if you are practicing efficiently without knowing one of those variables?

Time since starting piano study is not a reliable metric. Some people spend several hours daily and some just play half an hour a few times a week. That students in tenth grade analogy assumes that all students had the same amount of courses, what if you knew some attended only half of the courses? Would you not logically expect those students to perform worse, without even thinking whether their studies were more efficient or not? So time spent is one of the primary variables. Maybe not linearly proportional to proficiency and affected greatly by other multipliers but it's there. That's why I think it's important to be able to keep track of this.

As for the people stating its tediousness or that they would prefer practicing rather then keeping practice time, that's why I started this thread in the first place, I am searching for an automatic method. What if it was calculated without any effort on your part, would you still not want it?

Anyway, I have sort of improved my idea. I have decided listening to midi events is not the way to go since it only targets digital piano owners, who also have to use it connected to the computer all the time. A proximity sensor facing your piano stool (wall mounted, maybe mounted on a little pole), with some lightweight hardware for recording data would be much better I think..

Syndal, I agree with everything you mention. But what are you going to do with this information? I am never against collecting data, but at some point it needs to be useful, I would think.

What would be useful is if you could some how quantify the quality of the practice. Then you could devise an algorithm that provides a more meaningful metric.

For instance:
practice efficiency = 1, time = 60minutes, quality practice time (QPT) = 60
practice efficiency = 3, time = 40 minutes, QPT = 120

where practice efficiency is determined on a scale, where 1 represents lowest efficiency

Something like this could be helpful and enlightening.

@Scorpio

Well there is no harm in having more data. And imho it doesn't have to provide a solution to a grand problem, I think even such a personal evaluation would be vey useful: "Well I seem to have practiced 10 hours in August compared to 20 in July, I should really stop slacking off".. Because it's really hard to estimate the time actually spent practicing and human brain has many ways to trick and convince itself into laziness


As for better uses of data, I can think of some scenarios, not with a single persons data but with a lot of, statistically significant data.. E.g: There are lots of people following piano tutorial books and posting videos on youtube. What if we could know exact practice time for each of them at a certain point? I think it would make large enough a sample size for some statistical analysis. So for example if people who have followed the Suzuki books have a better level of development for a certain practice time compared to those who follow Alfred's, we can conclude that Suzuki Books are better. (Now of course everybody is different, some are geniuses, some have very sloppy practice habits etc. but given large enough sample group these will even out. I also assumed we can more or less estimate a persons proficiency by looking at the pieces they play and how well they can play them.)
This analysis' can be extended to many other groups eg. self learners vs people with piano teachers. People learning with repertoire vs Hanon/Czerny all day everyday etc. There are many unknowns but too little data.

I only started 5 days ago to calculate my practice time because I wanted to know how much time I really devote to it and how I use it.
I made a spreadsheet, every piece I'm working on has its own row, the same do the others activities (scales, reviewing older pieces, sight reading); each column is a day of the months. All I have to do is write in each cell how much time I practiced every piece/ activity during the day. I measure time using a basic chronometer I use for running.
I've printed a copy of the spreadsheet, so I don't need to go to the computer every time.

Results: I have a lot of gaps in my sheet, many activities and not much time, but in this way I'm sure I'm not escaping for many days in a row less favorite activities: ear training (I'm just starting it) or sight reading, that I need so much.

Regarding quality: I only write focused practice time.

While interesting, even if accurate data could be collected (which I believe it can't) it wouldn't show cause and result. Some say that students with a grand piano do better than others. The obvious flaw is that families that can afford a grand piano tend to have a lot more money than families that can't. That often means more stable parents, and often better educated parents.

Similar factors may be involved with choices such as Suzuki. It is much more popular in Japan, so that would skew the data. Is it that Japanese families tend to better because of the method chosen, or because of their tonal language, their higher income, more stable families? Again, cause and effect become murky.

Similar cultural influences might point to different method books being more popular in certain countries. Again, is the student better because of the book, or because the country where a certain book is more popular has other factors such as language, music education in public schools, and on and on.

So while the data might be interesting, it might be used to draw conclusions that are not valid. When collecting data, it may turn out that one set of folks are better or worse at recording their data, and that may account for the entire difference in results.

I see the first use as the best use. A single person might stay more motivated, and might have a better sense of their overall progress during a long journey. The data aspects are far too flawed to be meaningful. Even then, like a lot of things piano, small doses of tracking may well be better than going over board.

Hi Sydnal,

at first I've been also fascinated by this 10k hours rule, but honestly I'm giving up on it now. Currently I do have 800 training hours + about 70 hours of lessons. My method is to simply sit at piano and use wall clock to mark the time. I usually start with the scales, chords, etudes and then with music stuff going from classic to modern stuff. I try to do this several times a day which usually means I'm not able to perform everything from the written order. E.g. first 30 minutes for example I'm able to run thorough one scale with its chords and part of etude. Then another 30 minutes the same day I'm continue with etude. Another 30 minutes I replay scale, chords and try to play minuet (assigned as a task) and also read new notes (assigned as a task) and try fingerings. When I do more and more of this I'm more and more tired (or relaxed?) so I start more and more playing of music. Actually my project now is to keep in head several of minuets I already played from Anna Magdalena's book so I run over them and try to fix mistakes. Although those pieces are usually "put aside" and marked "done" by my teacher I'd like to form kind of repertoire so I'm still working on them.
Now, even this time of practising already known pieces I still mark as a practise time. I guess a lot of people here will not agree with that since the practise should be "focused" and I just play and try to fix few mistakes here and there, but I mark it anyway.

As per technical side of things. I do have Android phone, I've bought Documents To Go (as I like them, you make find something free of charge which suites you better) for their cell calculator (ie. excel) implementation. It's quite easy to have a sheet for separate years. Do some calculation of avarage hours, mark expected hours and from this to calculate if you are behind your plan or better etc. I don't use any special time marking program, I've tried to use that in the past but still just a wall clock and sheet on mobile phone looks the most convenient to me.

Good luck with your piano hobby!
Karel

You know how to measure progress when you know how to define progress. I personally pay no mind whatsoever to how much or how little time I physically sit in front of the piano. What's important is how much or how little I've accomplished in any given session. Here are a few resources you may enjoy:

• http://www.pianostreet.com/smf/index.php?topic=3039.msg28787#msg28787
• http://www.pianostreet.com/smf/index.php?topic=19043.msg207152#msg207152
• http://www.pianostreet.com/smf/index.php?topic=2599,msg22552#msg22552
• http://www.pianostreet.com/smf/index.php?topic=2526.msg21930#msg21930
• http://www.pianostreet.com/smf/index.php?topic=4710.msg44538#msg44538
• http://kantsmusictuition.blogspot.com/2007/09/secret-on-how-to-practice.html