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Hi, I am an adult 39 year old student, and have been taking piano classes for a year. Love my piano teacher and our lessons. I practice daily, but would like to learn more pieces faster. For those of you who are adult learners practicing with a teacher, how many times a week do you see your teacher and how long are your lessons?

Once, 45(ish) minutes. She definitely gives me enough homework to last the week.

2 x 60 mins/week for piano, 1 x 30 mins/week for musicianship.

What is a musicianship?

Once a week for 45 minutes; however, I miss a lot of lessons so will be changing to “occasional” lessons soon. I’ll still aim for 45 minutes once a week though.

Once a week for an hour. I started out every other week but found that I needed more guidance so I switched to every week.

For classical guitar, after nine years of weekly lessons, I switched to every other week and my teacher said that was sufficient because I am more experienced, and keep up with practice and can learn pieces on my own with less help.

I have been taking lessons for seven years, the first year was for thirty minutes but it has been an hour since then. Half an hour is not very long to do much, and in a full hour we can work on three or four pieces. It varies quite a bit depending how much is involved with the pieces of course.

If I may ask, how old were you when you started (both piano and guitar)?

inna_denver, I sent you a PM (private message). You can find it at the upper right corner of the webpage immediately to the left of your "inna_denver" forum handle. Click on the envelope-shaped icon.

Taking more lessons per week isn't necessarily going to help you learn more pieces faster. You need time not only to absorb what your teacher has had you work on in your lesson but also time to put it into your practice sessions until it really becomes natural. Unless your teacher is having you work on very few pieces over a long period of time, faster/more is not necessarily beter.

How long do you practice daily, what do you practice, how do you practice and how efficient is your practice time?

If your goal is to learn more pieces faster you may find that you are not learning them as well and understanding them as thoroughly than if you were to move at your current pace. Have you discussed this wish to learn more faster with you teacher? Surely, s/he is the one to advise you on what is the best course of action for you, given your particularly learning style and the amount of time you have to practice.

Remember, too, that there are no shortcuts to piano learning and thus it is the journey and not the goal that should give you the most satisfaction.

Regards,

My thought exactly. Why don't you start by asking your teacher to give you more homework, so you can increase your practice time? Then, in case you notice that you run out of time during your lesson, you can increase your lesson time.

Once a week for an hour. I could increase the lesson time a bit, because often it isn't enough but at the same time I have had a couple of lessons where the teacher and I have been scratching around for something to look into. So perhaps an hour is right, not always long enough but it doesn't seem to impede progress.

I am probably not far below the limit of the rate I can improve currently. I suppose my practise could be more disciplined and focussed, but I do think there is a limit on how quickly new information this old slowing brain can take in and I'm probably not far below that now.

+1

just after my first year I started the 40 piece challenge for all the advantages that gives. You get to do a ton of short, easy, throw away pieces that when staggered you find you are finishing approximately one per week. This can be done with or without a teacher and might be what you are looking for.

I did 30 mins once a week for a while, then 45 mins once a week, and currently 1 hour every other week.
An hour every other week works quite well for me, my only gripe is when school holidays, mid term breaks, etc extend this gap further.

A rule of thumb I heard before is that your average daily practice time between weekly lessons should be at least the same as your lesson time, so eg a 30 minutes lesson if you are practicing an average of 30 mins a day, at least an hour a day practicing if you have an hour long lesson (and adjust accordingly for different frequency)

I certainly find that I don't make enough progress between lessons if I am not practicing at least this amount.
So in regard to your specific question about increasing the frequency of lessons, this would probably only be valuable if you are able to do lots of practice between these more frequent lessons.

Even when I am practicing consistently for 45 mins - an hour a day, there can sometimes be lessons where there is not a huge amount to say about some of my pieces that I don't already know and am not already aiming towards in a reasonably competent way, it's just going to take a lot of practice time for it all to come together. There is still value in going through it again. Sometimes something will click that didn't before. often there are new layers to add now that one aspect has improved, etc etc. But sometimes all that is worth saying on that particular day can be said quite quickly!

[/quote] BruceD

You need time not only to absorb what your teacher has had you work on in your lesson but also time to put it into your practice sessions until it really becomes natural.

If your goal is to learn more pieces faster you may find that you are not learning them as well and understanding them as thoroughly than if you were to move at your current pace. Have you discussed this wish to learn more faster with you teacher?

Remember, too, that there are no shortcuts to piano learning and thus it is the journey, [/quote]

100% agree, and something I learnt over time. I even sloooowed down on how fast I progressed on a piece. As a result, my turnaround on new pieces are much faster now. Why? I took the time to learn the techniques the first time, and that I really need time with a piece to get it to ‘musical’ level.

I moved from 30 mins to 1 hour per week. And I need the week to work on techniques and progress on pieces [2 at the moment].

Once a week for an hour. I have done 1 1/2 hours in the past when we were also doing theory.

45 minutes every 2 weeks

I have an hour long lesson every second week. Sometimes we run out of time and take extra 15 minutes. I used to have weekly lessons (first 6 months after coming back to piano after long-long break), but it became too stressful instead of being helpful and serve as extra motivation. It didn't leave me with enough time to settle with piece and not enough time to work through everything that teacher directed me to work on. I'm working on 4-5 different pieces at any given time and have 2 new pieces every lesson (recently, it means 3-5 pages of new material in total). I normally practice 1.5 hour per day, sometimes more on the weekends and days I work from home (I take 10-15 minutes breaks 2-3 times on such days to refresh my head and I use it to focus on some technical minutia, sight reading or scales).

I agree with others that more lessons may not help you to learn more music. Maybe you are going through the frustration period in your studies now, I've been there - it's time when you feel like you are just spinning your wheels and not moving forward fast enough. Take a deep breath, your brain is working hard, give it time to digest and grow connections. Talk to teacher about your practice routine, maybe give yourself 15-30 minutes of extra practice time, but do something different, something that you are not normally doing. If you not doing scales normally, spend 5 extra minutes a day on that, or sight read through "easy" books, or pick up some pop song arrangement, play just left hand and sing. Mix it up, it will expand your abilities and help to work through frustration that is inevitable, but temporary state when learning something new and hard.

Once a week for 1 hour since January 2010.

Once a week for an hour.