What's your daily practice routine?

[janice]

Hey everybody!
What's your "typical" daily  routine that you have for practicing?  Assuming that you aren't preparing for a competition, recital or other performance, what is your daily practice session like?

[ted]

I don't have one as such. Most of my time's spent in improvisation and composition; I just play a small repertoire of difficult pieces to keep my technique supple - as a means to an end, although I can get the same benefit by making improvisation more physically difficult.

Put differently, I do nothing I don't enjoy these days.

[MzrtMusic]

Well, first of all, I must say that there really isn't ever a time when I'm not working towards a competition, recital, etc. So, I generally start with a few scales or something like that to get lossened up a little bit, and then I move to some Bach to finish the process. After that, I just start working on my pieces... There really isn't a routine other than that. I take short breaks about every 20 minutes, and a good break about every hours... That's it!

love,

Sarah

[martin_s]

Oh, that sounds very familiar, just exactly like my own practise routine in fact... Hmmm... you haven't nicked that idea from me without me knowing it, have you...
just kidding of course...

[Diabolos]

Well, I'm basically having the same process as Sarah and Marin, except the fact that I devide my practising time into works for solo repertoire, duo and orchestral pieces; I normally take the 'big break' after every block and let it settle down a few hours..I also like playing at night, like 1 or 2 am (which is actually not a good thing to do for a highschool student..)

You guys didn't read that book about Gieseking, did you? He suggests the 20 minute breaks there, 2.

Regards

[Mandy]

I try to limit my sessions to 2 hours at a time and have 3 sessions a day.  After that, unless I'm really on a roll, my concentration goes out the window.  In the first session, I usually start with a piece that I am working on, then roughly half an hour later I do half and hour of technique.  From then on, I just keep working on rep, sometimes sightreading something if I find myself getting bored.    

[Franz_Liszt]

I usually practice in bits of 30 minutes. 2 hour sessions give excruciating headaches, usually because of my concentration. I start with repertoire before scales, because I am usually loosened up because of intense conditioning. 90%- Repertoire 5%- Scales 5%- Sight-Reading

[amee]

I don't really have a practice routine either.  I used to do some scales, arpeggios and exercises before practicing my pieces, but I've stopped doing those now.  Usually I practice just the measures I'm having trouble technically with slowly; then at the end I'll allow myself a run through of the whole piece up to speed.

[BoliverAllmon]

Here is my piano teacher's routine.

work on 10 pieces for recital.

play each piece 3 times.

the first 2 times are played at half speed or slower, third time a bit faster.

a couple weeks before performance she will test her mental ability by playing all pieces at 3/4 speed or slower followed by all the pieces up to speed. all of this is non-stop.

I don't know what she does fortechnique.

boliver

[BoliverAllmon]

Here is my routine.

I play each piece three time through at a slow speed. (i.e. Bach's invention 30-quarter instead of 120)

I also play each piece mentally three times. this has helped me tremendously in my playing.

Boliver