10.000 hours to master.... (older students)

[lorcar]

you know the the "10,000-Hour Rule", claiming that the key to success in any field is, to a large extent, a matter of practicing a specific task for a total of around 10,000 hours?

the other day I saw Maria Pires playing Mozart, and read she is 70yo. I was thinking I am 38, and if I play for the next 30 years (let's say 300 days in a year considering trips, holidays, laziness, illness, etc)) for an average of an hour each day

300*30*1=  9 thousands hours...

would this imply that there is no reason i keep practicing as I will not be able to reach any decent goal not even when I am 70?

[dima_76557]

would this imply that there is no reason i keep practicing as I will not be able to reach any decent goal not even when I am 70?

The 10,000-hour rule (supposedly the time it requires to become an expert in any field) should be crammed into a period of 10-15 years to be effective, otherwise it doesn't work. This formula is merely an attempt to apply pseudo-science to the formula of success, so I wouldn't take it too seriously if I were you. Most importantly: you should always practise correctly and deliberately, otherwise you will have to add x hours to compensate. When results don't come, ask for qualified help along the way, because with wrong practice, even 30-40,000 hours will not be enough to get acceptable results. 1,5 hours of smart practice replaces a whole day of mindless fingerwork. And it also helps to simply accept that not just anyone who is sufficiently motivated can become an expert in just about anything. The mileage differs for each individual.

[timothy42b]

A significant amount of those 10,000 hours cited were done when the artists were children.

Although age does not prevent learning skills, children do learn at faster rates and probably in different manners. 

It is not guaranteed that putting in 10,000 hours will take you to a given level of mastery.  Still, that's only 3 hours a day for 9 years.  It is not unusual for amateur or hobby musicians to practice 3 hours a day. 

[lorcar]

always practise correctly and deliberately,

 1,5 hours of smart practice replaces a whole day of mindless fingerwork. 

Agree 100% with both of you guys.
I guess I am still trying to understand what is "smart practice" and best method to practice correctly and deliberately.
After summer break I have now  a new teacher, and she put be back on Anna Magdalena, and tomorrow we'll start with Heller Etudes and Schumann Jugendalbum.
So today I spent repeating 2 minuets and 1 polka from Anna Magdalena.
I can almost play them withouth score. What is smart practice? practice until there is no single mistake? i find repetition at this stage (I mean, once you have done 95% of work) very difficult because my attention focus is not as sharp as when I know the piece a bit worse or at the beginning. It's a sort of autopilot that distracts me.

How do you guys know when you have to stop practicing a piece? I usually try to play the same piece many times in a row without a single mistake/mishap. But the more I repeat the more likely is to have a mishap/mistake! Thus I end up in a sort of endless loop "I cant stop practicing because it's not perfect yet, let's play it 10 times in a row without a single mistake, otherwise start again from zero". 

[mhhudson15]

I can relate to your problem of "smart practice" very well. I am such a perfectionist, which can be harmful because nobody's perfect, so I end up in the endless loop of trying to continuously play a song perfectly. I think a smarter practice to do would be to go immediately to your weakest points instead of trying to play the whole song perfectly. It also helps to switch it up a little. for example, I've been teaching myself piano for a while because y family didn't have time to work me in with a teacher until recently. That was fine, but I never really learned the bass clef notes as well as I should have. So instead of playing the same  song for an hour, I do a little notecard work here and there. You've probably been playing piano longer than I have, but I hope this helps.

[theholygideons]

It's easy to get caught up into a mindless loop when your repetoire of pieces that you need to practise isn't so large. The point of practise is not to make something totally perfect, it's to reduce the likelihood of you having a catastrophe during performance.

Make sure you structure your practise. highlight the bars you need improvement on and spend a couple minutes on each. If you know what you need improving on and how much time you allocate for each of the sections, then you won't feel like you're mindlessly practising.

If you're not content after like 5 mins of practising the same thing over again, go practise another piece, and then maybe when you visit it the day after, you might feel better or have more ideas to help  you master that section.  

[dima_76557]

What is smart practice?

Smart practice is different for different people on different levels. You should talk to your teacher. If she's a good person, she will be grateful for your question and show you what you should be doing at your level. She may even be ready to practise a new piece with you in class.

For myself, I have found that it is very useful to locate the elements in a piece that make it simple. So, I simplify and practise up to 150% of what is required. Simplifying may mean hands separate, even if I know the piece with both hands already. Then I complicate (make it more difficult than required) and practise that variant up to 150%. By the time I can do that, I know the piece rather well.
After that, I set ever higher ARTISTIC goals (good touch, required tone quality, etc.) and work very slowly with as much awareness as I can muster. Something as primitive as "mistakes" is simply banned from practice because it is litterally wasted time and energy.

P.S.: Of course, repetition also makes sense, but I rarely use it just to memorize a piece; rather to develop endurance in awkward stuff. Cyprien Katsaris, one of the best virtuosos of our time, advises 45 minutes of UNINTERRUPTED scales and passages and another 30 minutes of UNINTERRUPTED octaves and chords. That was the regimen he went through himself when he entered the Paris conservatory at age 11. Of course, this is not merely mechanical; it should be done with maximum quality in all respects, which makes this quite a daunting task.

[lorcar]

Something as primitive as "mistakes" is simply banned from practice because it is litterally wasted time and energy.
 

what do you mean? i'd like to ban mistakes from my practice, but I dont do it on purpose!

[dima_76557]

what do you mean? i'd like to ban mistakes from my practice, but I dont do it on purpose!

What kind of mistakes do you make?

[timothy42b]

P.S.: Of course, repetition also makes sense, but I rarely use it just to memorize a piece; rather to develop endurance in awkward stuff. Cyprien Katsaris, one of the best virtuosos of our time, advises 45 minutes of UNINTERRUPTED scales and passages and another 30 minutes of UNINTERRUPTED octaves and chords.

I would suspect that for the majority of us such a regimen would result in cumulative trauma disorders (CTDs) likely ending our playing careers permanently. 

I also suspect that for most of us the point of diminishing returns is not 45 minutes, but 5.

[dima_76557]

I would suspect that for the majority of us such a regimen would result in cumulative trauma disorders (CTDs) likely ending our playing careers permanently. 

I also suspect that for most of us the point of diminishing returns is not 45 minutes, but 5.

It's not as bad as it sounds, really, but you have to be ready for it, of course. It is not done to acquire technique, but to simply apply the skills you already have. It also happens to coincide with the length of the average solo concert program before and after the break, so in that respect it is also very useful.

[minona]

I think the 10,000 hours rule was arrived at by asking students at prestigious music schools who had achieved mastery how long and often they practiced. The stupid article I read claimed being a Genius was 'merely' a matter of doing 20,000 hours.

[lorcar]

What kind of mistakes do you make?

wrong piano key, wrong finger, or finger slipping out of the key
what else?

[dima_76557]

wrong piano key, wrong finger, or finger slipping out of the key
what else?

What causes you to sound the wrong piano key? Is it the complexity of both hands or do you have an unclear picture of which key it should be?
What causes you to pick the wrong finger? Is it the complexity of both hands or do you have an unclear picture of which finger should be playing right now?
What do you mean by "finger slipping out of the key"? What happens just before? How do you correct that?

[ale_ius]

to OP, please go back and actually read the book. Author aimed to show there was a correlative relationship with those whose achievements were at the level of 'experts' in their field, or indicative of a high level of "mastery", had in common that they had on average, more often than nots, 10000 or more hours honing craft. I see nowhere a 'causitive' or 'cause-effect' argument where 10000 hours lead to mastery. That is following basic logic, if only two factors were 'studied' A (hours), B (master), it simply illustrate that B occurred more often with A than not, it is possible A caused B (but not studied), it is possible A is a coincidence and only occur with B by probability (not studied), or A in combination with other not studied unknown factor (C) could have caused B.

-Alee Marie.

[timothy42b]

to OP, please go back and actually read the book. Author aimed to show there was a correlative relationship with those whose achievements were at the level of 'experts' in their field, or indicative of a high level of "mastery", had in common that they had on average, more often than nots, 10000 or more hours honing craft.

Well............but there's a bit more to it than that.  It is worth reading the book Outliers, which originally popularized the 10k rule.  Among other things, he noted that sports stars always have birthdays in specific parts of the year, which differ by local custom.  That indicates that talent is not what separates the great from the also-ran.  It is early exposure to good coaching, elite competition, hard practice, and the eventual accumulation of 10,000 hours of training. 

Rather than preaching 10,000 hours as the single element, it was intended to discourage considering talent the crucial element, and he makes that case well. 

Really 10,000 hours should be considered a "necessary but not sufficient" condition. 

[dima_76557]

Rather than preaching 10,000 hours as the single element, it was intended to discourage considering talent the crucial element, and he makes that case well.  

Really 10,000 hours should be considered a "necessary but not sufficient" condition.  

A vocal coach will have a very hard time trying to make a nightingale out of someone who croaks like an a-tonal frog right now, even if all other conditions are right. All the 10,000 hours will bring to both coach and student is a VERY sore throat.
P.S.: Really good coaches will simply reject such students. Unfortunately, for piano playing, there are no tests to make a prediction, but you cannot make a genius out of just anyone, that's for sure and all good teachers know that.

[vansh]

Well there's a few things to keep in mind about it:

1. It's not as if you spend 10k hours on something and suddenly a switch turns on in your brain and you're a master. Instead, it's simply the principle that as you spend more time with something, you become more familiar with it, and after a long time you will have a good understanding of it. How long will vary by person. 10k is just an easier number to remember for people to latch on to, sort of like how they say you should walk 1000 steps a day (which doesn't mean if you only took 950 steps today you're suddenly a fat slob).

2. It's not just about the time spent, but how you spend that time. For example, for engineering, just because you put in 8 hours a day at your job 5 times a week doesn't mean that you'll master the job's field in 5 years -- because so much of an engineering position is actually about attending meetings, write-ups (documentation), etc., and not actually about applying your engineering skills. The time spent doing "other stuff" doesn't count toward the 10k hours to become a master of engineering (I guess it does help you toward becoming a master of meetings, deflecting responsibility to other departments, how to request a bigger budget and get more time for a task, etc. though). For practicing, if you spend your time goofing off rather than focusing on your problem spots and thinking about how you can improve your phrasing, etc., then you're not really putting much time toward becoming a master. (Although it's not like there's no benefit. Spending more time with a piano means you become more aware of the instrument physically -- the feel of the keys, how the way you press keys affect the sound, etc., and of course messing around is fun and keeps you interested, so it's not really "wasted" time.)

3. I assume you've already started playing piano, so the time you're already spent can be subtracted from the 10k hours thing -- there's less time to go than you might think.

4. Ultimately, unless your goal is to become a professional pianist, a lot of "why" you play piano is for your own personal enjoyment, which can happen regardless of your level of mastery. (If you're a professional pianist, then you need the mastery for your livelihood.) You don't need to be a master of something to enjoy it, and there's plenty of music that don't require a high level of skill and yet sounds good and can be fulfilling (I would throw in most of pop music but people think classical pianists are elitist enough already  ). Becoming the master of a craft is not the only "decent goal". It can be whatever it is that is fulfilling for you. For me, it's the challenge (and reward) of learning a new piece that's just slightly harder than what I think I'm capable of, so that I develop new skills and improve on my abilities, regardless of whether or not I'm good at playing piano compared with "the masters" or professional pianists (I'm not).

5. Similarly, it's not as if you need to be a master to impress people or for people to think you're good. At my university, because the piano practice rooms are so often full, I'll usually end up playing on the public piano in a large lounge at the student center. (Out of deference to the people around, I try not to repeat the same section over and over as if I were practicing, but play the pieces once through and try to think of how it can be more musically expressed, etc. rather than working on the more technical aspects.) Even though the pieces that I play are by no means considered master level -- pieces like Grieg's Wedding Day at Troldhaugen, Sibelius's Romance and Chopin's Fantaisie Impromptu -- and I by no means play them like a master, they'll often garner applause from whoever happened to be there. (As another aside, I feel like people are more appreciative of my FI now that I've slowed it down a lot and tried to work on better phrasing and clarity, rather than my previous way of running through it sloppily at breakneck speed.)

6. And finally, as for how to practice, you should not try to keep repeating a piece until you don't have a mistake before moving on. The human brain has limited attention span. After about 20-30 minutes or so (depending on the person), you're not really concentrating on playing it right anymore, and you're basically just waiting to make a mistake and getting frustrated over it. Just note where you messed up, move on and save it for the next practice. When practicing, you should focus specifically on the sections where you have trouble, and go over those, rather than playing each piece from beginning to end. Do it in small bite-size chunks, perhaps even just one or two measures at a time, depending on the person. Bernhard on the forums had some great advice for practicing, which you can find here: https://www.pianostreet.com/smf/index.php?topic=12590.0

[timothy42b]

P.S.: Really good coaches will simply reject such students. Unfortunately, for piano playing, there are no tests to make a prediction, but you cannot make a genius out of just anyone, that's for sure and all good teachers know that.

I'd agree with you if you said anyone at any age. 

It may be that if you start young enough and the person has no inherent limitations (like subtle brain dysfunctions, etc.) that you can. 

Of course that assumes three things:  young enough, basically normal, AND world class teaching.

Well, two out of three aint bad. 

[dima_76557]

I'd agree with you if you said anyone at any age.  

It may be that if you start young enough and the person has no inherent limitations (like subtle brain dysfunctions, etc.) that you can.  

Of course that assumes three things:  young enough, basically normal, AND world class teaching.

Well, two out of three aint bad.  

For singing from a very young age, I'd say the following is true: Everyone who can speak can learn to use a singing voice in basic songs, but that is not the same as singing that pleases an audience. Some have that without training, others don't. Besides, there are certain qualities in the voice that just cannot be changed, just like you can't change the form of one's nose without plastic surgery, etc. Not all types of voice will lend themselves for a solo career. Besides, a singer with only the right voice is far from being a professional singer. There are just too many elements that need to be just right to list here.

For piano playing, everything is not so unambigious, but still, there are certain qualities that can be diagnosed rather early and that can signal "potential": unusual ability to immitate sounds (including rhythm), unusual temperament while performing even stuff that has not been mastered completely, unusual sensitivity to differences in tone quality, unusual determination from within as compared to those who simply follow instructions passively under parent pressure, unusual ability to do things with the body without the brain interfering, etc. Some of those elements, especially passiveness from within, are VERY hard to correct, and it is unlikely that such children will ever grow into exciting soloists (I am not even hinting at a successful career).

[lorcar]

What causes you to sound the wrong piano key? Is it the complexity of both hands or do you have an unclear picture of which key it should be?
What causes you to pick the wrong finger? Is it the complexity of both hands or do you have an unclear picture of which finger should be playing right now?
What do you mean by "finger slipping out of the key"? What happens just before? How do you correct that?

i can play perfectly with hands separated. When I put HT, the new level of complexity seems to add some lack of clarity in my hands...especially on Bach repertoire, where each hand moves towards different directions. This requires me attention super sharp. While my mind seems to go on its way from time to time. So mind, hands, and eyes do not work together. So it happens that when I am with my second finger (right hand) on D and next key is G, I have to spread a bit more the hand in order to reach the G with the little finger. I get this correct 98% of times, but 2% I press F or both F and G at the same time. Which drives me nuts obviously.
other mistake: I press the # instead of the white key....I still cant understand why I do this mistake....

About wrong finger: I write my fingering down the first time I study a piece, but when I put both HT and add speed, from time to time I do not respect what I wrote down, so I carry on with mistakes on the next bars

[dima_76557]

@ lorcar

I see. We have discussed this problem before with you right? I think this board cannot give you more than general advice, which doesn't seem to work as I understand. Talk to your teacher about these problems. She knows you and will have the answer that is exactly right for your particular case. It requires actually seeing you practising. I hope you understand that.
P.S.: Ask her permisson to record the lessons, and don't ever miss the opportunity to do that!

[j_menz]

I think the 10,000 hours rule was arrived at by asking students at prestigious music schools who had achieved mastery how long and often they practiced. The stupid article I read claimed being a Genius was 'merely' a matter of doing 20,000 hours.

I'd have thought the criteria for being a genius was to have been able to do it in 1,000.

[dima_76557]

I'd have thought the criteria for being a genius was to have been able to do it in 1,000.

The word itself has lost its meaning through overusage in the wrong context.

A genius is able to analyze his/her own intuition, sees all complicated things simply, and creates new things, new ideas, new concepts, and the fruits of his/her toil (usually unprecedented insights in certain matters) have significant impact upon society or part of it. I wonder who teaches that and where or how you can learn that. I'd surely put in a 20,000 hours or more to be able to do that, but I'm afraid it's all just marketing of hot air. "Give me your money and I'll teach you, and if you can't do it, it's always you who is to blame, not me." Getting certain grades from university probably requires the same amount of hours and is doable, but I don't see too many Nobel prize winners among those who have such grades.

[j_menz]

I wonder who teaches that and where or how you can learn that.

The point of genius is that it can't be taught. Of it's essence, it is the conceiving of and/or the doing of things that haven't been done before. The genius will take what others struggle with, find the simplicity in it, and move on to the new.  That so many do so at a young age suggests that increased input of time and effort is not the key, rather they see a way of putting in less time and effort, and then spend that freed up resource on expanding the world.

[beebert]

Very often though, people who are not genius(if we consider how people often define genius) are the people who try to define genius. Therefore I actually doubt there is a defined thing such as genius. If anything, a genius is one who does not try to define everything not needed to be defined. One who believes in his own mind and thinks the way he wants to think and is the one he wants to be. Therefore I am tempted to ask most people: Are you a genius? Have you ever been a genius? Then how do you know so much about being a genius?

Now, I am not a genius I guess, so if my definiton of it is correct, you might as well take it as nothing

[dima_76557]

Very often though, people who are not genius(if we consider how people often define genius) are the people who try to define genius. Therefore I actually doubt there is a defined thing such as genius. If anything, a genius is one who does not try to define everything not needed to be defined. One who believes in his own mind and thinks the way he wants to think and is the one he wants to be. Therefore I am tempted to ask most people: Are you a genius? Have you ever been a genius? Then how do you know so much about being a genius?

Now, I am not a genius I guess, so if my definiton of it is correct, you might as well take it as nothing

I think I understand what you are trying to say. I think it's the same with concepts like "talent" - everybody recognizes it when they see its results happen, but nobody can really define it. Many people take it for granted that some have more of it than others, but there are two categories of people who confuse the matter for everybody else:
1) the ones who like to label everything, can't define it, and therefore deny its existence, especially since it seems unfair that only a select few would have more of it than others;
2) the ones who have it, but don't realize they have it, or don't see it as anything special.

I think the same goes for things like "money", especially the different amount everybody has, deserved or undeserved. "Talent" was after all a coin in Old Times.

Ask one who was born rich what money means.
Then ask one who was born poor.
Then ask someone who was born poor and suddenly got wealthy.
Then ask someone who quickly rose to financial success, only to lose everything just as abruptly.

Instead of counting their blessings, they will all have different definitions of its value, different formulas for getting more of it, and different explanations of why some have more of it than others.

[minona]

The classical guitarist John Williams (though not my favourite) said that his father made him do only 10 minutes of practice a day and that he rarely ever did more than that.

However, he also said the practice lessons (from the start) were extremely high quality.

So perhaps if the lessons are excellently graduated, efficient, completely devoid of common mistakes, poor posture, bad fingering, and so on... maybe 10,000 hours doesn't really apply.

But who has that luxury? For most of us, many hours are likely to go into unlearning bad technique as well as learning good.

I doubt W.A Mozart did 10,000 hours on keyboard and violin before performing for the first time (and I suppose they weren't the most difficult pieces). But with a pedant like Leopold Mozart scrutinizing ever finger movement and practice drill, all the bad habits simply do not become part of your technique.

[awesom_o]

The above post is absolutely correct!

minona I like your style. Bream is certainly the superior guitarist....

[dima_76557]

So perhaps if the lessons are excellently graduated, efficient, completely devoid of common mistakes, poor posture, bad fingering, and so on... maybe 10,000 hours doesn't really apply.

I think the most important element is to create an environment in which you help the child grow, because you will need its cooperation from within, and not simply parent pressure from the outside. A forced method along those lines won't work, even if the technical approach is 100% correct.

No guarantees, however. If the child doesn't like the instrument, or it experiences inconvenience, coordination trouble, etc., chances are that you will never create a second Mozart.

P.S.: Remember Artur Rubinstein. He fell in love with the piano, but since his sister already played the piano, his parents wanted to force the violin upon him. Artur rejected the instrument and the parent's efforts in that direction were vain.