This is a question that keeps being recycled.
Yes, as jlh said, ultimately it depends.
Let us make an analogy.
How much time should we spend cleaning?
Well, first we must establish: Cleaning what?
1. Cleaning your teeth: about 2 – 3 minutes on waking up, before going to bed and after every meal.
2. Cleaning the dishes: 5 minutes – one hour everyday, after every meal, depending on the number and state of the dishes.
3. Cleaning the bathroom: 30 minutes – 2 hours once or twice a week, again depending on the number of persons in the house and how civilised they are.
4. Cleaning oneself: the variation here can be enormous. Culturally some people will only bath once a week in a bathtub (very inefficient and not good results), so 2 hours weekly at the bathtub. Other cultures prefer showering everyday, sometimes more than once a day (climate may play a big role here too).
You get the idea.
Then you have the questions of standards. How clean do you want a dish to be? And what is your definition of dirt anyway? You can easily spend a whole day scrubbing one single dish. We say of people who behave like that that they have obssessive compulsive behaviour.
Sometimes, with a very dirty dish from the oven it is best not to clean it at all, but to leave it soaking in detergent overnight. So what would take hours of scrubbing can take a few minutes if you leave it alone and let the soaking do the work for you.
In certain cultures, the family eats regularly in the kitchen, reserving the dining room for especial occasions and for visitors – most of the time it is kept closed. This reduces the need to clean and tidy it – which can be done once a week or once a month.
So how much time should one spend cleaning? Well, are you a professional cleaner? Then you are going to be going from house to house and you will be cleaning 8 – 10 hours a day. But if you are not, you will not need to do it for that long. In both cases you want to be as efficient about it as you can possibly be, so that you achieve your standards of cleanliness with the least effort and in the least amount of time. There are many time saving devices in the cleaning world. For instance, If you are going to clean the kitchen big way, start the night before by switching off the refrigerator and freezer (make sure they are empty). Next day, start by removing all dishes to a large bowl and soak them (assuming no dish washer). Leave them soaking, and while this is going on apply cleaning foam to sink and surfaces, to the refrigerator and freezer. Leave it to work on its own, and do the same to the cooker/oven. Now you are back to the dishes, which should be a breeze to sponge, rinse and leave to dry (don’t bother drying them – just put them on the rack, and by the time you finish the kitchen they will be dry and ready for storage) – the ones that are not, soak them for longer. Meanwhile, start rinsing and cleaning the counters and sink – which should again be easier to do after the cleaning foam did its job. Do not waste time fighting with recalcitrant spots: leave them with another application of cleaning foam. Keep doing that. By the time you get to the cooker it will be a breeze to clean it. If you do this right it should take you 20 –30 minutes to clean the whole kitchen, instead of a whole day.
So what does this have to do with piano practice? Exactly the same principles apply. In fact, efficiency in piano practice will improve if you decide to be efficient in
every single area of your life. You will find shortcuts that you can turn into piano practice tricks in the most unlikely areas.
So, how long should one practise? First question: Practise what?
1. Scales and arpeggios: 2 or 3 minutes everyday on waking up, before going to bed and after every meal.
2. Pieces: If you are learning a piece, start by letting it soak for a while by listening to CDs and working on the score. Once you actually start at the piano divide the job (dishes – sink – refrigerator) and do no more than 15 – 20 minutes on each chore
once a day and no more. But, just like cleaning dishes, you must do it everyday: it is a never ending job.
3. Pieces: if already mastered, just like the locked dining room, you will not need to dust it more than once a week - you may get away with once a month. But you must open it from time to time to let some air in. And of course when visitors come (yes, that is
performance time) you will need to a thorough clean-up again: Your performance will most likely be unsatisfactory for you – even if the audience love it – so, on the days and couple of weeks just after the performance is the best time to concentrate your practice and work again on that already mastered piece and remaster it according to your observations at the performance.
4. Technical exercises. Don’t waste anytime with that. Before tackling the dishes in the sink do you spend one hour of sponge training? Of course not. You just clean the dishes and all the sponge skill will come from that. Of course you must not clean the dishes in any way you want , but use the opportunity to hone your sponge skills. Likewise, getting technique from pieces is not simply playing them, but using the piece to hone and develop your technical skills.
You get the idea. How can you make all this even more efficient? Teach! You can do all your scale practice during your lessons by simply demonstrating it to student after student. Organise the scale rota of the student to benefit your practice.
And as I said, what is your situation? If you are professional performer you will necessarily be spending far more time at the piano than someone who is not, just like a profession cleaner will be doing several more times cleaning per day than someone who just wants to clean his/her own house. But while the homeowner will just derive the satisfaction of clean house for his/her efforts, the professional cleaner will be paid for it as well. However if you hate cleaning and the life style changes it demands, you should perhaps not consider a career in cleaning. Which is not to say that you should not use the professional tricks of the trade in your own house cleaning. Likewise, if you cannot stomach being on stage, constant travelling (and jet-lag); hotels and hotel food; dressing in tails; etc. then you should re-evaluate your desire to be a professional performer. Which is not to say that you should not use the professional approach and tricks of the trade on your own personal playing.
I am sure you can take this analogy to a farther distance than I did here.
Also have a look at this thread, where there are several links that deal with this issue.
https://pianoforum.net/smf/index.php/topic,5767.msg56133.html#msg56133Best wishes,
Bernhard.
Topic: how long do you practise?