How many hours...?

[ponken]

How many hours do you play the piano a day? I bet you don't count the hours but maybe you know approximately?

[pianisten1989]

on weekends I start playing like... 7 in the morning, and quit around 10 or 11.. with some breaks ofc.
On school days I'd say... 7 hours?

[samasap]

The more you can practise the better, so its what ever you have time for. I try to practise every day for at least an hour, and when i'm not working I might spend one evening playing through various different things.

But most importantly if you are  having a busy week and you don't have a great deal of time, even 15 minutes is better than nothing at all. It just keeps what you are currently learning fresh in your mind. 

[fenz]

But most importantly if you are  having a busy week and you don't have a great deal of time, even 15 minutes is better than nothing at all. It just keeps what you are currently learning fresh in your mind. 

agree with that 

[thalbergmad]

I do about 6 hours.






































A week

[nanabush]

I like to work on one piece in one sitting.  OR, I'll just play through all of my stuff once if I have it really well.

If I don't have my scores nearby and was able to steal one of the upstairs rooms with a grand piano (pretty rarely hehe), then I'll just play through my pieces once or twice until I get kicked out.

I'll usually try to sit down, though, and be like "ok, I'm going to work on memorizing the second page of my fugue", and I'll have a pencil and photocopy of the piece.  Or, if there's a tough passage (the most recent that bugged me was the recap of the theme of Collines d'Anacapri; if any of you are familiar, the left hand has descending octave B major scale with some added chords, and the right hand has the theme with some crazy-ass leaps), then I'll do lots of separate work, metronome, and some technique that pertains to it.

I find if someone spends an hour working on 4 or 5 pieces, then they're doing a little bit for each.  I like accomplishing more with one pieces.  After about 30 minutes, you just start getting into it, and it's a shame if you suddenly put that one away and grab the next one on your list.  That's great for quick fixing (in my opinion), but rushing through stuff, especially if you are still learning it, will probably cause some "quick fix" bad habbits, like bad fingering, bad phrasing, wrong notes, leaving out notes, etc, etc.

That being said: Probably 2-3 hours a day, in segments of 45 minutes to an hour.  I like getting around 15 hours a week, give or take, depending on how busy I am.

[avguste]

I usually practice about 3 hours minimum per day, except for Saturdays and Sundays.
So that is a minimum of 18 hours per week.

Right now I am finding myself a bit lazy, having a hard time to practice and working on my schedule for the next 2 seasons.
But I will have to restart ASAP my 3 hours per day cause I have two recordings coming up this summer

Avguste Antonov
https://avgusteantonov.com

[tsachi]

Less than I should 

I would like to play much more but I don't have time for more than an hour a day.

[liordavid]

2 hours on weekdays. three or four over the weekend.

[rachfan]

My practice time is very limited.  So what I've learned is that practice has to be planned, executed efficiently, and constantly aimed at quality.  It's not a matter of how many hours are expended, but rather how effectively the pianist can concentrate in intelligent practice to produce artistic results.

[ted]

I have lots of time to play these days but what rachfan says still applies. In particular, it's no good just sitting down and slogging away mindlessly in the belief that results are proportional to time whether we think musically or not. Up to a certain cut-off point they probably are but pushing beyond that holds no guarantee. Because one man can mow a lawn in half an hour it does not follow that a million men can mow it in a fraction of a second. The fashionable tendency to apply linear proportion to just about everything in life is a gross over-simplification. We are all very complicated creatures and some of us will inevitably require more time than others to understand a given aspect of music. In addition we all have different musical objectives, some of which may be inherently more complex than others.

In my case the answer to the original question is probably a very irregular average of two or three hours not counting my ten minute technique work at the practice clavier first thing in the morning and last thing at night. Some days I do not play at all; I do want to live as well as create music.

[wildman]

I'm extremely a beginner, and only have 4 months experience, and I'd say about...1-2 hours a day (in the summer), or around 45-60 minutes on schooldays...(another reason to hate school, I suppose.)

[ponken]

Interesting to read your replies! I don't practise the same amount of time every day. Some days I play a lot, other days I play almost nothing. Today I have been playing 90 minutes on an acoustic piano and even less on the digital piano I have at home. I can't have an acoustic piano in my apartment because the neighbours get mad then. I usually spend more time using the digital piano than the acoustic piano since I am home most of the time. Though I would like to use only an acoustic piano. A normal day I would guess I play about 4 hours totally. As a few others here mentioned, it is nice to have a life too and not only play but some days I just play all day. I do pauses sometimes though.

[biscuitroxy12]

It kind of depends. On weekends usually I wind up waking up at 6:00 AM and practicing until 10:00. THen I have breakfast and go back at 10:15. Usually I go then to 12:30 and then have lunch. Then I switch to violin and usually go from 1:00-3:00. I then have a quick 5 minute snack and then practice piano again from 3:05 ish to 5:00. I then go out for about an hour and go to a store in the mall to get a new piece of clothing. I come back around 5:45 and practice from 6:00-8:00 then have dinner. Then practice from 8:30-9:30 and then watch TV for an hour. ON weekdays where I have 2 1 hour lessons a week and usually a violin lesson a week plus all of my classes and my Competitive swimming team (i go to 4-5-6 days a week)

[mazeppa]

To start off, I'm the kind of person, when learning a new piece, that will practice it to no end until I start to memorize it and the get sick of it. During this period, I will tend to practice about 2 or 2.5 hours a day. I will be doing this for the next few months, since I will be starting to work on Mussorgsky's Pictures at and Exhibition for my senior recital, which is at the end of July.

For the last few months, I have only been practicing maybe 1.5 hours a day, if that. Most of my music was audition music, which I learned and memorized most of it (aside from those darn Bach fugues!) in late Summer and the Fall.

[slow_concert_pianist]

How long you practice does not matter. It is how productively you practice that counts. Simply put it is economies of scale. In other words if I master the final inner part trill of Beethoven's Hammerklavier 1st movement, it is far better than playing the entire sonata through 10 times in a day and mastering nothing. That is the economy of scale. Don't tell me how long, but how you practiced!

[mazeppa]

How long you practice does not matter. It is how productively you practice that counts. Simply put it is economies of scale. In other words if I master the final inner part trill of Beethoven's Hammerklavier 1st movement, it is far better than playing the entire sonata through 10 times in a day and mastering nothing. That is the economy of scale. Don't tell me how long, but how you practiced!

Definitely agree with that! (Hence why I practiced less as I got better at the pieces...I put that focus in beforehand!)

[kris_k]

I focus on my song on Sunday to Wednesday and I focus on my homework on Thursday to Saturday.It's normally 24 hours a week.

[meng92]

on weekends I start playing like... 7 in the morning, and quit around 10 or 11.. with some breaks ofc.
On school days I'd say... 7 hours?

wow,7 hours...i only play 4 or 5 hours a day.....seems i should be harder on study piano!

[miken49]

It varies. I guess about 3 or 4hours a day, although I have had 11hour days. But I rarely keep track. When I study I concentrate on what I want to accomplish how long it takes.

[jesc]

At least 1 hour a day. But occasionally I go 2-3 hours a day.

With regards to how I practice, I usually target a certain passage that I'm having difficulty with. However, mastering that passage independently outside the whole piece seems not enough. So, after "getting" it with practice I have to incorporate it in the piece slowly. I extend a few measures back and practice to get it right... then polish. Extend a bit further... then polish up. I do this to the point that I play from the beginning and arrive at the "practiced passage" and get it right as a whole piece.

It seems methodical but I have to point out that I'm not exactly trained in the standard sense. It just works for me.

[asianpianoer]

i practice less than 2 & I'm planning on doing Amus soon. is that too little?

[punkpianist360]

As I am homeschooled I have a very flexible schedule.  I get up at 6:00AM to eat breakfast and stretch.  6:30 I start school and finish at 10.  Then, I practice 10:15-1:00, and take a lunch break. Then, I practice 1:15 - 3:45, then go to swim practice at 4:00.  Swim practice usually ends at 6:00PM, then I hit the gym at 6:30-7:45.  Then, I head home and eat dinner, practice my vocals, and chill with my friends for late night festivities.  That is the typical life of Pandemonium . 

[jono1]

I thinks its important to practise the right way. Far more important than just hours!!.  You can spend hours at the piano in mindless repetition which can do far more harm than good.  For me I never practise in one stint for more than an hour.  Then I go off and do something else and come back again.  That way I can get 4/5 hours per day of productive work and that also goes for rehearsing for concerts.