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I have heard it said that playing Hanon excercises without a teacher to guide you can be a recipe for tendonitis. I have owned the book for 6 months, and am playing grade 1 pieces moving towards grade 2. My teacher has just sugested that we start with Hanon in my next class.
I do the Czerny excersise assigned by my teacher, but spend about 5 minutes or max 10 minutes on it.


Honestly I can't imagine how you came up with this schedule. Take care you don't damage your hands.

Apogius, I hope you won't just disappear as you said you would now that you've found your teacher. This thing of 4 or 5 hours/ day is totally wrong. Please learn about effective practice. Ask your new teacher how to practise. If you won't do that, at least learn about effective practising.

hi again

I will try to learn about effective practicing, do you have any suggestions on where to look ? I'll search this forum...

Now the 4 hours schedule is not being practiced continuously.I split this to 1 hour sessions.
I welcome any advice on how to improve my reading because I'm feeling this might be my biggest issue atm.
Method Rose is working okay for me ,last night I was able to play some exercises the way they should be played.

I talked with my teacher before and she assigned me to practise the C and G scales with both hands simultaneously and the starting exerisises from method rose.I am doing this for the moment ,and I think I need to build a strong basis studying the method rose from the start ,but I will try to do this as FAST as possible.She told me to set aside Anna Magdalena book for now .

After much thought ,it is NOW my understanding ,that I need to study the rose method in order learn basic technique.
So ,Bennevis ,I will start from the beginning ,properly ,BUT I will put my efforts to do this fast.And I will try Anna madgalena again,soon.

1 hour sessions are too long. For effective practicing you should split it up. I aim for a minimum of 2 hours a day and that is usually split up into 10 to 20 mins sessions although the first one of the day is often a bit longer.

Yes there is much advice on this forum regarding effective practicing, particularly of the value of SLOW practice - which is rather at odds with your desire to learn fast.

apoqius:

The theme I keep hearing …. over and over …. is that you seem to be making decisions about what you are going to do.

I wish I could through to you on this ….

Just go to your lessons and try to do what your teacher suggests.

Nothing else !

All that other stuff you are enthusiastically "adding" to your practice is not useful at this point.

Later, after you have had some level of success with this …. your teacher may add some of that …. but not yet.

Good Luck

Wow... this sounds like a recipe for, well, disaster. This amount of practice is not helpful. You will either hurt yourself or burn out. Seriously, you could physically injure yourself doing this.

If you were my student, I would insist that you cut back to 10 - 15 min of scale exercise every day, and then maybe 15 min of Czerny, and forget about the Schmitt and Hanon. If a student of mine insisted on such a practice regimen, I would probably show them the door.

I do about an hour of technical exercises every day (in preparation for an upcoming ABRSM Grade 8 exam), and even that is way too much. I will be cutting back to no more than 10 minutes of technical exercises a day after the exam.

4-5 hours a day is definitely not enough.

For a beginner teachers recommend at least 6 hour practice a day.

Best results are only achieved from 25 hours a day, split into 1 hour blocks.

!

Humour aside, your practice regime is madness.

Please ask your teacher how and what to practice !

I very rarely do more than 20 mins practice in one session. I think that's a sensible approach for a lower intermediate player. I average something like 1 hour per day although I'm quite sure 2 hours would progress me a bit quicker. As you become more proficient the sessions can become longer and the daily hours put in greater.
I've heard quite a few extremely well known classical musicians who have stated that it can all be done in 3 to 4 hours work per day and I think they are referring to advanced music not early stages. Quality over quantity, practice smart rather than aimlessly bashing away at it for endless hours trying to convince yourself that it's all about working ferociously hard. It most certainly is not.

Hi Apogius!

These exercises are very basic exercises, teaching you how to play one note with your left hand, and at the same time two notes with your right hand.
I think it is a good idea to show these exercises to your new teacher and show her how difficult this is for you, so she can help you.

If this is impossible for you to learn, I think it might be better to chose a musical instrument that just has one note at the time, such as flutes, or trumpets.

I doubt that would be impossible to learn for anyone with two working hands and even remotely normal brain...

I think most people on here by now have narrowed this problem down as wanting to do way too much, way too fast, way too soon…

Easy, slowly does it!

In the 2018 survey of Adult Beginners on the ABF forum, only 3.1% practiced 3 or more hours per day. The OP should ask themselves why this is so. More is not necessarily better!

I would also be willing to bet that 3.1% are either not complete beginners (they are already intermediate/advanced and have ramped up over time) or they are complete beginners that won't be staying with this hobby long because of burnout or injury. Besides potentially hobby-ending burnout being a highly probable outcome, there is also a high risk of hobby-ending piano injuries from tendonitis, repetitive strain injuries (RSIs), etc.

hi again

my latest news js that my teacher thinks I'm dumb (she whispered that at some point).

As you can easily understand ,I will have to be at least STUPID to continue lessons with her ,wouldn't I ?

I really ,Really feel very sad.

apogius, I felt awful reading about your teacher's behaviour in your last comment. If I were you, I’d never go to that person’s studio again (and if the accounts were already settled, wouldn’t even bother to drop a text). Piano lessons are important, but these shouldn't be endured at this cost.

Hope it all works out for you soon. Good luck!

You need to get yourself another teacher. Her behaviour is dreadful.

As I said before I don’t think it’ll work.

I also think the advise for a 6th teacher is very bad advice.

Changing has not worked the previous 5 times and is very unlikely to work.

Don't quit. Try learning by yourself if teacher doesn't work for you.
Try piano marvel or playground sessions.

Was she perhaps referring to your proposed practice schedule?

If I could just add my tuppenceworth here, although it’s already been said really. Many adult beginners, and certainly you OP 😊, seem to view practising the piano as some kind of endurance sport. It’s really heartbreaking to read because it so completely misses the point of what playing the piano, or any instrument, is all about.

Never ever sit down to practice without a clear idea of what you want to achieve in that session. You should always be looking to end the session better at doing the thing you set out to practice than you were before (although in reality the improvement might not always become apparent until the next day).

That objective could be any of a number of things:

first read through a new piece and general overview
getting down the notes and fingering for a new piece/section of piece
memorising a new section and securing the parts you memorised on previous days
technical exercises to help with a specific difficulty
a “run through” of a piece nearing completion followed by targeted slow practice for any stumbles

Etc.

The same principles apply at all levels. The length of practice does have to increase out of necessity as the length and number of pieces increases, which is why advanced pianists tend to have to practice for longer, but extra hours bring few extra rewards without efficiency and clear targets, and can actually be detrimental.

A teacher can help a beginner to target his/her practice and there are a number of books on the subject too. Madeleine Bruser gives a holistic view in ”The Art of Practising”.