practice

[flash]

How many hours do you practice per day?

[bravuraoctaves]

How many hours do you practice per day?

That is irrelevant.

[abe]

lol, why not just answer the simple question, it's not that hard to answer, is it?

Ideally I would have 2 hours to practice every day at least, but during the normal school week i am quite busy and rarely get in more than an hour of practicing. It sucks.

[donjuan]

I practice for how ever number of hours I am motivated to work for, no more. 

[bernhard]

lol, why not just answer the simple question, it's not that hard to answer, is it?

Ideally I would have 2 hours to practice every day at least, but during the normal school week i am quite busy and rarely get in more than an hour of practicing. It sucks.

The question is not that simple. It hinges on what is meant by “practice”.

1.   Sitting at the piano repeating a scale or Hanon mindlessly for one or two hours. Is that what he mean?
2.   Sitting at the piano and playing over and over again a particular piece because I cannot get enough of it.
3.   Sitting at the piano and spending a couple of hours over three or four bars trying to figure out the best possible fingering.
4.   Sitting at the piano and sight-reading through an album I just bought to see which pieces I might be interested in learning.
5.   Sitting at the piano and playing a piece I have just started learning from beginning to end flubs and all for four hours in the hope of somehow learning it.
6.   Sitting at the piano and playing through the sonata movement that always falls apart on bars 40-45, and every time it falls apart I go back to bar 1 and start over again in the hope that this time I will somehow get it right.
7.   Sitting at the piano and spending the next two or three hours trying to get by ear the last pop hit of Alicia Keys (or whoever).
8.   Sitting at the piano and working systematically over some difficult bars using all sorts of different approaches until I can do it right.
9.   Sit at the piano and improvise on a particular scale/mode, with a view to better understand that scale/mode.
10.   Sit at the piano and improvise aimlessly.
11.   Sitting at the desk analysing a score.
12.   Sitting at the computer and rewriting the score so that all voices are in separate staves.
13.   Sitting at the desk and memorising the piece from the score.
14.   Sitting at the desk and trying to imagine what the piece will sound like form the score.
15.   Go for a walk and try to hear the piece in real time with all details in my mind.
16.   Watch a DVD of a superlative pianist playing the piece I am interested in learning.
17.   Surf the net for four hours looking for details about a piece I am about to learn.
18.   Sit at a desk and do a full Schenkerian/harmonic/motif analysis of the piece I am about to learn .
19.   Sit at a desk and organise a timetable for learning a piece I am interested in within the next three weeks.
20.   Rehearse a consort piece with the other players.

And so on and so forth.

Depending on how wide is your definition, the answer may well be: All waking hours – and if you include PPI, may be 24 hours / day.

Or if you restrict only to times at the piano actually depressing keys, the answer may drop to as little as 10 minutes, and somedays nothing at all.

Then in case you have not noticed, some of the items above are terrible ways of practising. So bad in fact that I would not even call them “practice”, and yet it is exactly these useless activities that a lot of people have in mind when they talk about practice and the time you spend doing it.

So, the question is far from simple.

How long is a piece of string?

Best wishes,
Bernhard.

[Spatula]

240 cm long.  I just measured how much left I had in my kit.

Spending 2 hours to listen to piano music is practice.  Is it? Is it not?

To listen or not to listen, that is NOT the question.

To learn from listening, or not to learn from listening, that is the question. 

[bernhard]

240 cm long.  I just measured how much left I had in my kit.

Spending 2 hours to listen to piano music is practice.  Is it? Is it not?

To listen or not to listen, that is NOT the question.

To learn from listening, or not to learn from listening, that is the question. 

2.40 eh? Does size matter?
 

Yes, but is learning practising?

[johnnypiano]

Bernhard’s is the kind of thinking that is so useful in these discussions.  He has analysed the topic thoroughly, and I am willing to bet that his own practising is equally stimulating and productive.

His sixth example sounds amusing but it is what pianists do time after time, unfortunately: 

“6. Sitting at the piano and playing through the sonata movement that always falls apart on bars 40-45, and every time it falls apart I go back to bar 1 and start over again in the hope that this time I will somehow get it right.”  This mindless ‘practice’ NEVER works.

My own parallels: (1.)  I leave my house and, while walking along the road, a dog barks at me, so I go back home and start my walk again, hoping that this time it won’t bark.

(2.)  As I arrive at college I drop a book, so I go back home and see if I can get back to the college without dropping my book again.

What can I do about these grizzly situations?  Well, if I really object to being barked at, I can pass on the other side of he road, go a different way, shoot or poison the dog.  In other words I have realized I have a brain and can work out things and carry out certain actions.   What about the book?  Well, perhaps I was distracted by the gorgeous girl I saw as I went into college.  What to do?  Give up my studies completely, get her to carry my books,  get her to expound on Euclid and carry her books, tell her I’m torn between her and Chopin, and would she like to join me in a little fantasy.

By the way: ‘Depressing keys’ sounds too depressing, even for ten minutes.

Best wishes, John

[Alde]

I would love to practice all day long (8-10 hours).  I used to do this during my undergraduate studies.  However, now that I teach and have kids, most of my practising averages 1-2 hours everyday.  But you know, I find that my practising now is much more concentrated and focused - I get a lot of work accomplished in a short amount of time.  I also find that my sight reading has improved, which in turn speeds up the learning process.