10,000 hours of practice: Yes, again, but how to organize that time?

[bernadette60614]

I've been thinking about the next 10 years of my life and my piano goals for those 10 years.  While I know the 10,000 hour to mastery rule is not accepted by everyone, I'm going to go with that as a goal.

The question becomes:

How do I distribute those hours?  How much time on exercises? Learning new pieces?  Theory study? 

I am by no means an expert, so I'd appreciate any thoughts.

[9spaceking]

Hmmm.... I'm not precisely too sure. I think learning music theory could boost and help a lot. Practicing basic scales and appegios along with runs up and down the piano in the beginning could develop a solid base. I believe that a quick pace with one to two hours consistently every other day (or maybe even every two days) would be plausible and viable. I personally consider myself to be a "bit better than beginner" pianist, and I think it is because my first piano teacher was very unstrict, and later on I mostly practiced and set standards on myself, thus, after about ~8 years of on-and-off practice, I'm only at intermediate at best. However, if you do the opposite of what I did--find a good teacher who will help you make good progress and knows the music beyond just piano--I believe you'd surpass me easily in half the time it took me to reach my level. (Just for comparison, the hardest song I can play correctly and tempo is Turkish March. I can't find any song between the level of it and Fantasie-Impromptu which I like. (I can just barely play Fantasie at 20-30 BPM short of tempo)

[dcstudio]

you know I don't have a clue... I passed 10k hours decades ago...

I always thought you just came to that realization one day... not that you set a goal to practice 10k hours.   I am not very organized...but I am pretty obsessive which is how I did it.  there was no rhyme or reason or plan... really -- guess that's bad?


maybe I shouldn't even be posting about this type of thing... lol.

am I a master?  depends on who you ask...

[indianajo]

In my disorganized way, I think I am at about 3000 hours practice.  I got up to about grade 8 as a child, an hour a day 7 years of lessons, about 2000 hours.  I doubt I've put even half that much time in since.  
Yet I am playing pieces I hear at recitals over at the University.   They are not as hard as the pieces I heard on the television program about the 2014 Van Cliburn competition, but I didn't like those pieces anyway. Patroushka, yes, the rest not.  
I always did about a fifth of practice time of exercises, then four fifths of more fun pieces.  Exercises included progressively, Schmitt, Edna Mae Berman, Czerny.  Somewhere in there I learned all the scales with the arm tricks necessary for the turn unders.  I'm beginning to think arpeggio practice was a big hole in my education I should fill in now.  
My teacher did not give me entirely pieces I enjoyed.  I had to slog through some baroque material that are important to the history of the keyboard/piano,  even though most of it bores me.  That is the point of having a teacher, to widen the scope of what you learn. I also performed at recital a couple of non-tonal pieces that I'm still trying to forget.  I'm no fan of Schoenberg.  If I want to hear a car crash I'll watch something like Road Warrior, I don't have to reproduce that on a musical instrument.    
I don't learn as fast as the students at university programs, but I don't practice 8 hours a day either.  Ninety minutes some days.  
I have a list of pieces I'd like to perform personally some day before the end.  I'll probably actually do some of them.  Others will just be dreams.  We are all capable of imagining more than we can accomplish. 
Have fun with your quest.  

[visitor]

correlation vs. causation. 
the relationship between the observations is critical here and often misapplied.
it's not so much that the 10K hours caused mastery. it's that often times, those w/ mastery of said craft/skill have also at a higher rate that one would observe randomly acrrued said estimated hours.
it's a function of natural talent, instruction, and application of those over a long period of time.
basically,
it's not that X causes Z (x=10k hours, z = mastery), it's much more likely that some other factor or factors, W (talent/aptitude ) and Y (instruction/disciplined practice and application) work with X to cause Z.
it's also almost certainly non linear in relationship. likely you'd see a scatter plot w/ a line of best fit showing exponential decay, the more and more advance towards master you get, the less and less you improve w/ the same amount of extra hours.
still averaged out it's likely about 3 hours a day over a decade would yield favorable results, so long as the practice/application is guided and appropriate, and that you have the talent and natural skill to allow that level of achievement. Nature cannot fire a gun that isn't loaded.
still  most will see big gains if they just keep at it over 8-10 years, consistently, hours in and hours out.

[dcstudio]

correlation vs. causation.  
the relationship between the observations is critical here and often misapplied.
it's not so much that the 10K hours caused mastery. it's that often times, those w/ mastery of said craft/skill have also at a higher rate that one would observe randomly acrrued said estimated hours.
it's a function of natural talent, instruction, and application of those over a long period of time.
basically,
it's not that X causes Z (x=10k hours, z = mastery), it's much more likely that some other factor or factors, W (talent/aptitude ) and Y (instruction/disciplined practice and application) work with X to cause Z.
it's also almost certainly non linear in relationship. likely you'd see a scatter plot w/ a line of best fit showing exponential decay, the more and more advance towards master you get, the less and less you improve w/ the same amount of extra hours.
still averaged out it's likely about 3 hours a day over a decade would yield favorable results, so long as the practice/application is guided and appropriate, and that you have the talent and natural skill to allow that level of achievement. Nature cannot fire a gun that isn't loaded.
still  most will see big gains if they just keep at it over 8-10 years, consistently, hours in and hours out.

wow... well said.   OMG the more you practice the less you improve with the same amount of time --- that is soooooo frustrating.  I have always thought of it being like how time slows down the closer you get to the speed of light... but you also make these exponential leaps forward, too.  I am obsessive and it's a basic need for me to sit at the piano and play.  I started at 4 and I am 51... it is so irretrievably woven into who I am that it's just what I do.  So I guess that means that in spite of the fact that I am at more like 100k hours if you add it all up-- it's ok that I am not a world famous concert pianist? lol.

[kawai_cs]

-- it's ok that I am not a world famous concert pianist? lol.

With your number of YT clicks you are well known here and there on the globe

[chopinlover01]

So I guess that means that in spite of the fact that I am at more like 100k hours if you add it all up-- it's ok that I am not a world famous concert pianist? lol.

Don't you have a hobby?
In all seriousness though, that's ~11 and a half years at the piano.

[themeandvariation]

As i am sure it has been said ad infinitum, it is all about How one practices..  Therein lies the equation -as it relates to time spent.  This is one of the main subjects a piano teacher must go over many different ways - for the student to have 'exciting'  results… There is much to be aware of - (which should also include analysis, and pattern recognition, and supplemental reading and listening as well..)

[danielo]

I must have accrued over 10,000 hours of practice, and I am nowhere near mastery.
However, much of that practice has been ill-disciplined, lazy, taking shortcuts, wanting to play my dream pieces without putting in the groundwork i.e. scales, arpeggios, finger exercises etc etc. More fool me, but I have been in the habit of telling myself that
a) I am a very good piano player and
b) that I don;t have the 'natural talent' to go any further.......
Both of this assumptions are wrong.

I recently read James Rhodes's brilliant and heartbreaking autobiography, 'Instrumental'....if you haven't heard of him or haven't read his book I would absolutely recommend it to anyone. He is a successful concert pianist who had a horrific childhood and who rediscovered his love of music and then piano playing in his twenties, after a nervous breakdown.

Anyway, in one part of the book, he tells how when he started lessons again, he realised that he'd been practicing wrong all his life. No-on had told him about the benefits of slow, hyper-slow, practice........and once he started doing that, suddenly pieces that he thought would always be beyond him, were suddenly within reach.

Now I am no James Rhodes, but reading that book did get me inspired to try harder, practice more, practice BETTER. Slow slow slow until things are as close to secure as they can be. It takes a LOT of patience and I don't always win the battles.......but I have noticed a definite and clear improvement in my playing, something that I have for years thought was never going to happen. My point is, I wish I had spent those 10,000 hours practising PROPERLY, and I think I would be a hell of a lot closer to mastery than I am now.
However, I think I probably have another 10,000 left in me......so we'll see how that goes, and where I can get to, by the end.

[jason_sioco]

The key to become a better pianist aside from scales, arpeggios, etc is to learn repertoire. If you spend 3 hours on 3 different pieces, you'll find that it is difficult at first. As you learn more repertoire the easier the learning becomes and you will start playing as if you spent 10,000 hours. Spend about half an hour on scales, arpeggios too.

[dcstudio]

the key to becoming a better pianist is also to put yourself in a situation where you have to be a better pianist.   there are all kinds of volunteer piano accompanying kinds of things... church gigs, weddings, these can also be paid... sometimes very well.

I wasn't ready when I started out... nobody is ever ready for this business.  You go out there and you suck it up and look bad for a little while... and you eventually "get it."

take on Solo and Ensemble accompanying--or just go to the high school and help with the choir.   Get out there and play..  you will learn to practice hyper-efficiently.   You generally will get paid a flat rate for classical gigs... so every minute you spend practicing the music is less per hour that you earn... WOW... does this make a difference in how you approach daily practice sessions..  big difference..

[where_july]

While I know the 10,000 hour to mastery rule is not accepted by everyone, I'm going to go with that as a goal.

How do I distribute those hours?  How much time on exercises? Learning new pieces?  Theory study?  

1. You would definitely want to understand where 10,000 hours of practice came from. And the main point here - it is 10,000 hours of DELIBERATE PRACTICE (this is a specifically defined notion under that "10,000 hours" concept - the content of practice there is much wider than only at your main instrument). So you would have to read and absorb the basic paper that brought the concept into life. Here it is. https://projects.ict.usc.edu/itw/gel/EricssonDeliberatePracticePR93.pdf

It would give you the outline how some contemporary world top performers have practiced (i.e. have lived) to get to the top.

2. Mr. Chang "Piano practice" book - study and use till you get to intermediate level + master-classes on technique from carefully selected teachers from time to time to correct accumulated issue.

3. In parallel study along the classical framework of professional music subjects: solfeggio, harmony, composition, arranging, music history, listening lots of various music, playing in ensembles, participate in recitals.

4. I supppose the distribution among various directions (subjects) would be dictated by your short term goals and long term strivings. As short term goals are gradually achieved, you would have to rebuild/revise/refine the coming plans with regard to long term strivings. Obviously you have to define goals yourselves.

Here your 1) intelligence (present and that you have to aquire yourself in the future) and 2) passion to particular achievements would lead you the correct way.

That would be quite a rough plan but you have to elaborate the details yourself. Or aternatively go to the music university and just follow the route.

Hope that helps.
V.