Is it fine to take a day off from practicing?

[wankimx3]

Is it okay to take just a day off from practicing?? I have practiced about 5 consecutive days before today and yesterday I had realized I am practicing the scales in the wrong way. Today, I took a day off to do my other stuff that I wanted and downloaded some songs to listen. I got told off by my parents that I should not take a day off just because I want to do other stuff today. Is it really that bad to take a day off from practicing?? To be honest I just wanna recharge today and continue practicing tomorrow. Anyway it's the holidays, I can take it slow when practicing.

[brogers70]

If you practice so consistently and obsessively that getting burned out is a potential problem, then, it's absolutely OK to take a day off. On the other hand if practicing for five consecutive days is such an unusual thing that you want to highlight it to explain why you want to take a day off, then maybe you're not really in danger of burnout.

Really, though, it's hard to advise you without knowing what you are practicing for, and why, and maybe your age. I would say that, if you are tight for time because there are other things you want to do, that even 20-30 minutes of focused practice today is better than adding 20-30 minutes to your practice tomorrow to make up for missing today. And what matters is long term consistency, not whether you miss a day or two every month.

[anacrusis]

If you don't let yourself recharge, playing can start feeling like a chore, you might even burn yourself out on playing. So it's more efficient to take some occasional days off than to force yourself to practice when you need to recharge.

[leigh anne]

Is it okay to take just a day off from practicing?? I have practiced about 5 consecutive days before today and yesterday I had realized I am practicing the scales in the wrong way. Today, I took a day off to do my other stuff that I wanted and downloaded some songs to listen. I got told off by my parents that I should not take a day off just because I want to do other stuff today. Is it really that bad to take a day off from practicing?? To be honest I just wanna recharge today and continue practicing tomorrow. Anyway it's the holidays, I can take it slow when practicing.

Yes it is okay to take a day off from practising. In fact it is good. If you feel burned out or tired simply take a day off and the next day you will be perfectly energized and be able to practise well. Sometimes if you don't take a day off you may make billions of mistakes and won't be able to practise right at all. By taking a day off, you relax yourself and prepare for the next day. Tell your parents that you need to recharge and they will understand. Hope this helps. 😀

[jamienc]

Absolutely! I find that taking a day off from practicing can sometimes help what I practiced the prior day settled in my mind and body, and returning to the piece after a day off will produce some satisfying results. Of course, if you practice well on the day before then the day off will serve us as a productive “digestive“ period that will allow the piece to become more internalized.

[ranjit]

From your post history, it appears that you're studying at music university.

At that level, unless your parents are musicians themselves, their advice tends to be near worthless. This is not to slight your parents, but to say that you will need to figure things out on your own and ask professionals. For example, the advice a professor could give in this kind of situation (if they are honest) could be valuable.

From my experience, when I was attempting to practice 4-6 hours a day, I absolutely needed a break about once a week or so. However time is not the only factor -- it also depends a lot on the intensity of your mental concentration while you're practicing/ the difficulty of the practice itself. Trying to memorize a Bach fugue, for me, is near the top difficulty and I will get tired in short order. Working on scales can be easy or difficult depending on the attention paid to movement and precision.

There comes a point where your mind almost feels so saturated with information that you need to rest for a bit. I think this is the case with many people (though there might be exceptions) and while being disciplined is good, practice while unfocused or fatigued is usually a waste of time. You mention developing technique, and it is likely one of those things which needs time to process subconsciously. You need a decent amount of focus to work on retraining movement, and you will probably need a break after a few days.

[brahms51]

  Breaks, and even days off, from practicing are neurologically  valuable. Remember the “mouse in a maze” demos where the untrained mouse is placed in the entrance of the maze, and when it finally finds its way out and exits, it’s given a reward? After so many trials, the mouse eventually learns (remembers) to negotiate the maze with no mistakes. However, experimental psychologists later found that by delaying the rewards for a few seconds after each time the mice exited, successful learning of the maze occurred significantly faster.
  Simply put, the mice had the benefit of a little down time for their brains to sort and absorb (encode) the maze experience, a process essential to memory formation - including what is commonly referred to as “muscle memory”. So when we practice music properly, as well as numerous other activities such as sports, we are neurologically hard at work building memories of everything involved. The muscle memory is necessary, but of no less importance are the cognitive and emotional content. Our brains are endlessly replaying, sorting, discarding, selecting all of the events attending the practice. Every time they get a little
down time, the memories (habits) are strengthened and consolidated and become more reliable. We just have to make certain they’re the right ones.