Not gaining anything from practising?

[verkem]

Hello,

I'm currently a 1st year undergrad at a conservatory studying piano performance.
The thing is that whenever i finish my daily practice, i don't feel like i accomplished anything, i feel as though i leave with what i arrived with, so to say.
So i am wondering if i am practising efficiently, or if i am just wasting time.
I recently met Stephen Hough and he said that he would rather practice 2 hours of fully concentrated rather than 8 hours, or something along those lines.
How do we practice with full concentration? If i recall correctly, Barenboim said something along the same lines.

Thanks.

[chopinlover01]

Yes, 2 hours of efficient practice is far more important.
Before you sit down to practice, designate exactly what you need to do, and how you're going to do it. If you're learning new repertoire, lay out exactly what you're going to learn (preferably one new piece per practice session), and your planned method of mental practice as well as physical.
If you're working on refining some pieces, lay out exactly what you need to bring up to snuff, and lay out what practice technique you plan to use to deal with it.
When you can say exactly what you're going to do, ie "I'm going to work on the thirds in bars X-X by doing ___", your practice sessions become infinitely more productive.

[brogers70]

You are probably more advanced than I am, so take this with a grain of salt. I like to make small goals for each practice session, break things down into very small bits, so that when I am done for the day I know that I've made detectable progress on those small bits. If you make the bit small enough, it's almost impossible not to make noticeable progress on that bit. That progress gives you a mental boost, and you can keep stringing more and more little bits together.

[adodd81802]

Both good answers, and one thing I find, is concentration starts to slip whenever we do the same things because your brain disengages, it wonders, it's like a child in a sweet shop that's tasted all the sweets lol.

Always try and do something different, don't practice in the same way, I don't think that practicing a piece over and over exactly the way you wish to perform it is the right idea, but to practice it in many different ways so you have complete control over a piece and then can perform it anyway you want.

if those 8 bars say legato, try staccato, practice different rhythms, if it says P, try FFF! Try different tempos. You could almost even set up a lottery style idea where you just assign a set up numbers to different ways to practice, pick a number and do that style for the session.

These ways don't work for everybody and I don't think you will get one answer that you go - yes exactly that. But they should give you ideas, things that you brain has to go - oh.. we've not done this before.

[pianocat3]

You are surely more advanced than me, but here is my two cents. I sit down and practice in half hour chunks and pay very close attention to what I am doing. My max is 45 minutes. At that point, I am mentally exhausted and my attention is gone, and i take a 15 to 30 minute break. Two hours a day has been my limit. I guess I have not usually been so specific in my goals as others here. Sometimes, l will say to myself, I am going to learn this line of music, or fix my timing here, or learn this particukar scale or practice 3 against 2, etc. But mostly it is more casual, whatever I am doing, I arrive to the piano fresh, and take breaks. I do get frustrated about daily progress too, but when I look at where I was a year ago, my, I have learned a lot! Maybe you need to look back once in awhile and give yourself some congratulations.

[rachmaninoff_forever]

Alright this is what you gotta do...

When you practice figure out what you wanna accomplish.  Set a goal for that practice session(s).  Sometimes things can't be attained in just a practice session like for example technique, memory, touch, etc. depending on how much better you wanna get and how hard it is.  Of course you're not talking about just learning repertoire.  Cranking out new music probably ain't a problem for you.   I'm assuming you're just talking about practicing the abstract stuff.  But anyways this will help with learning new music AND the abstract stuff

So set a goal, practice an hour or half an hour, then take an hour nap.  Practice another hour and take a nap.  Then another hour, and take a nap.  you can also take small breaks in between your sessions.  Like 15 minutes, eat a potato, 10 minutes, check the mail, etc.  breaks help you stay focused and sleeping helps you internalize whatever you were learning.  Sleep is very important.  So is eating healthy.

Back in highschool I used to crank out 6 hour practice sessions in one sitting.  But then I quickly reached the age of reason and I divide my sessions through out the day.  I do no more than an hour at a time and no more than four hours total in a day. 

Also think about what your teacher would probably tell you if he was watching you play right now.

[verkem]

thanks everyone for their suggestions, i will try to implement them in future practice sessions

[louispodesta]

Hello,

I'm currently a 1st year undergrad at a conservatory studying piano performance.
The thing is that whenever i finish my daily practice, i don't feel like i accomplished anything, i feel as though i leave with what i arrived with, so to say.
So i am wondering if i am practising efficiently, or if i am just wasting time.
I recently met Stephen Hough and he said that he would rather practice 2 hours of fully concentrated rather than 8 hours, or something along those lines.
How do we practice with full concentration? If i recall correctly, Barenboim said something along the same lines.

Thanks.

My coach is Dr. Thomas Mark, who is the author of "What Every Pianist Need To Know About The Body." (www.pianomap.com)

Per your question, he teaches privately that after two days if a particular passage does not improve, then other actions should be taken.  Playing it over and over again only builds negative neural pathways.

Please contact me by PM, if you desire further clarification.

[leemond2008]

one thing that I found out when learning to play the banjo was that it can be a massive help to record yourself, if you are putting in a lot of practise time then you more than likely won't hear the improvements that you are making, record yourself playing the bit that you are currently learning and stick with it for a week or so and then re-record yourself, when you compare the two you will more than likely be shocked out how much you have improved in that short space.