Practice Time . . . or lack thereof

[musicaldaughterq]

I have a wonderful problem . . . I can't seem to be able to practice for longer than an hour on a daily basis. The problem is that in my attempts to prepare for my BFA recital, I know I need a lot more than just one hour a day. I have some challenging repetoire in front of me. I don't mean practice 3-4 hours at a time, but to be able to get in at least 2 hours of solid productive practice. My focus doesn't seem to want to last that long. How do you guys do your practice? It seems like I lose stuff from one day to the next and it's frustrating. I seem to have to go back and relearn everything I did the day before. How do you all seem to combat that?

MDQ 

[xvimbi]

If praciticing for an hour at a time is a problem, I would suggest to practice in small chunks of, say, 20 minutes or even less. Have lots of breaks. Organize your routine so, that you have tasks that can be accomplished within these smaller chunks.

[lostinidlewonder]

If you are forgetting things then you are extending yourself too far. Before memorising the music make sure you have seperated out all the sections in the music where the sound changes. Practice these groups alone.

Sure, sight read and try to play the whole thing at once, but only once you have achieved a higher level of musical thinking can you hope to absorb pieces by sight reading through them many times.

Most people repeat small passages, but make sure you don't give yourself too many small sections. There is a limit our brain can absorb we can only extend that by improving our musical thought process and visualisation of the music and physical action which of course comes with a good teacher or your own closer study of music patterns and strive for reading/memory perfection. Also the more pieces you actually memorise the better you become, things become more routine and chords, arpeggios, scales and progression of these within the music all stand out to guide your memory and sight reading.

[musicsdarkangel]

I have a wonderful problem . . . I can't seem to be able to practice for longer than an hour on a daily basis. The problem is that in my attempts to prepare for my BFA recital, I know I need a lot more than just one hour a day. I have some challenging repetoire in front of me. I don't mean practice 3-4 hours at a time, but to be able to get in at least 2 hours of solid productive practice. My focus doesn't seem to want to last that long. How do you guys do your practice? It seems like I lose stuff from one day to the next and it's frustrating. I seem to have to go back and relearn everything I did the day before. How do you all seem to combat that?

MDQ 

I focus on memorizing the piece first, and set goals as to when I want to have it finished (usually set ridiculous goals, that'll get you focused).

Some famous pianist said that he always pretended that the next day was the concert when he practiced.