How long do you normally practice a day?

[alhimia]

physicaly, I don't practise more than 3 hours, which means that the rest of the time I work mentally, I think this is very important.
 before I start playing a piece, I try to make a sound image in my head, then it is easier to play for me, but that takes me a lot of time and energy

[frederic]

I don't usually practice as much as three hours daily.

I do practice two hours, however.

Currently studying:
Liszt- Transcendental Etude no. 4 "Mazeppa"
Liszt- La Campanella
Liszt- Hungarian Rhapsody no. 2
Tchaikovsky- Concerto no. 1- first movement
Chopin- Sonata no. 4 in B minor: Presto ma non tanto
Chopin- Etudes op. 25, nos, 6 and 11.

Those are the main repertoire pieces I am currently studying.

I hope you meant Chopin's Sonata No.3 in B minor



Ok heres my repertoire at the moment

Bach - Prelude & Fugue G minor Bk 1
Haydn - Sonata E flat major
Chopin - Scherzo No.2
Chopin Etude Fminor Op. 10
Liszt - Chapel Of William Tell AND Bells of Geneva from Suisse
Prokofiev - Dance of The Girls With Lilies AND Mercutio from Romeo and Juliet
Mompou - Charmes
Gershwin - Rhapsody in Blue
Tchaikovsky - Concerto No.1 (starting)
Beethoven - Concerto No. 2 (coming back from last year)

How many hours do u think i should be practicing?

[BoliverAllmon]

as much as you need. are you making good progress? if not practice more

[026497]

Generally, I practice 1-2 hours a day. If I am imterested in the pieces, I can play continously in a day.

[jbmajor]

This is already an over-discussed topic; yet, I will still answer - 6 hours (from sunset to midnight) - and a "short" dinner is my only break (at 10 PM).  I may exceed that 6-hour period but will definitely not recede.  You practice only 2 hours?  I devote almost 1 1/2 hour just for warm-up...

Why would anyone need to warm up for 1.5 hours?  It shouldn't take that long to get limber enough, both mentally and physically, to practice.  At that point I would say one would be practicing normally but instead out of some habit is still calling it "warming up." 

[steinwayguy]

Why would anyone need to warm up for 1.5 hours? It shouldn't take that long to get limber enough, both mentally and physically, to practice. At that point I would say one would be practicing normally but instead out of some habit is still calling it "warming up."

Yeah, I mean, you really need to get to the point where you don't have to warm up....

[jhon]

Why would anyone need to warm up for 1.5 hours?  It shouldn't take that long to get limber enough, both mentally and physically, to practice.  At that point I would say one would be practicing normally but instead out of some habit is still calling it "warming up." 

My warm-up doesn't merely consist of Hanon or Pischna but as well as Etudes (Studies) by Czerny, Cramer, Burgmuller, Chopin, and Liszt - which actually can be already consiered regular pieces.   

[steinwayguy]

My warm-up doesn't merely consist of Hanon or Pischna but as well as Etudes (Studies) by Czerny, Cramer, Burgmuller, Chopin, and Liszt - which actually can be already consiered regular pieces.

Czerny, Cramer, Burgmuller...regular pieces?

 

[happyface94]

I practice 1 hour a day. These are the pieces I'm playing

Rach 1
Brahms Rhapsody B minor
Bach prelude and fugue bwv 853
Granados Goyescas 4
Liszt Sospiro
Schubert Sonata no13

My teacher always scolds me because of my lack of practice. But I seem to always pull a big 3-5 hours a day the week before my exams and pass. That is because the week before my exam, my teacher believes im no where close to ready.

[Skeptopotamus]

im pretty erratic.  i practice as much as i need to to make steady progress.  anywhere from 2-8 hours; usually somewhere in the middle.

[andyd]

Interesting thinking about this.
When I was learning and doing exams in my teenager years, I used to practice less than an half an hour a week.  How I ever got distinctions in grades 5 & 6, goodness knows, I was so lazy and thought up every excuse to give up.

In my late twenties and playing what I liked, I  went through a period of practising 2-3 hours daily - until repetitive strain injury (Art Tatum transcriptions and Bergmuller Studies) stopped me.

Now in my maturing early forties with a family, I find I play (rather than seriously practice)for about an hour a day if my family commitments allow.  Teaching my two girls cuts into evenings.  But I enjoy the instrument more and more.

Andy

[pianowelsh]

Its really interesting to see peoples approaches to practice. I notice several people ask how can you practice so long? this made me think.  Firtsly I think it has a lot to do with what various people will call practice - ie some people will count playing through/finishing off a piece as practice, some will include asightreading and a host of other keyboard based activities as part of their daily practice etc as well as taking a piece apart and practising it. Many may also cite away from the keyboard practice!
Secondly there is the obvious point that different people are working on different amounts of repertory and are in different situations. eg Noone expects a school student studying 11 plus other subjects to be doing 8-9 hours per day prcatice too (the people that can say they do that are indeed a minority) but you also on this forum come across college students for whom most of their day will be centered around the daily practice. There are professionals and semi-professionals too for whom a substancial part of their livelyhood depends on maintaining and building a professional quality repertory etc etc
Thirdly there are more than likely differences in the standards of practice and performance - which will quite possibly (but not necessarily) correlate to the level of importance piano study has to the career of the individual.  Someone studying one to one with a teacher 'for fun' or teaching themselves will not necessarily be under the same pressure as a college student or a semi/pro pianist to reach recording quality with every piece they play. The level of preparation and practice amy correlate?!
Essentially it boils down to peoples priorities and schedules so huge variation will be the norm! But so long as people enjoy the time they spend practising and feel that the level of their practice is moving them on personally and forfilling their musical aspirations i dont think the number of hours really matters! Its often said Quality not quantity and i have to confess that as a college student sometimes when i was handing in a major essay and cutting back on the hours of practice i did there wasnt always a noticeable difference in the quality of my playing.   My belief is that we go through cycles with pieces with the necessity for waves of intensive practice ie a the the beginning then in preparation for the first lesson then may be a masterclass then before a first performance with troughs inbetween when there is consolidation and mental assimilation. But thats just my theory.

[musicsdarkangel]

Unfortunately, I have a girlfriend.

So, I will practice a lot, get distracted the next day, drive away and sleep over.


Or a friend will call, want to go out, etc.


On average, I would put it at 3 hours.

I am currently working on:
Rachmaninoff - Rhapsody on a theme by Pagannini
Mozart - Sonata K 284
Chopin - Polonaise op 44
Bach - Prelude and fugue no 3 in c sharp major

[happyface94]

Well I would be lying if I said that 1 hour per day was the max I could give. I do attend 2 colleges (including the music Conservatory) and im studying in health science. But I do plenty of time to practice but I just don't. After 1 hour, I feel like I've done enough. Kinda ridiculous since my piece program is 50 minutes (which means I cant even play all my pieces and practice each of them). I can't say I practice WELL either, I generally just go through 1-2 piece per hour, and stop at places where I find hard and perfection that part. Usually I will only work on 1-2 pieces per week, and play the others just to keep my hands flowing. The reason I do that is because I need to show my teacher 1-2 pieces per week so to not look bad I work on those I want to show.

[march05]

nice post, pianowelsh!

:thumbs_up:

[da jake]

Generally, I practice 1-2 hours a day. If I am imterested in the pieces, I can play continously in a day.

Same here, and my progress has been very good. 

[BoliverAllmon]

I use to practice this much. I am trying to train myself to practice 3-4 hours a day. When I transfer to HBU they have a program where they expect you to practice that much and have ways of tracking your practice time. Not sure how they do it, but I was told they do.

boliver

[thorn]

I practise for 2-3 hours a day in the week, and 2-5 hours on a weekend.

I'm working on:

pieces from the ABRSM grade 8 list: A1, A3, A5, B1, B2, B3, C4, C9, C10.
Ravel: Ondine and Scarbo from Gaspard de la Nuit
Liszt: Les jeux d'eaux a la villa d'este (Italie)
Liszt: Chasse Neige (Transcendental No 12)

[aya_heller]

I practice for about 2 hours a day... or at least I think I do?  My whole family insists that I practice for more, but I lose track of time sometimes.  I wish I had more time though, but I work a lot =P   On my days off if my mom isn't dragging me somewhere or I don't have an appointment with friends I will sit the entire day at the piano.  This is always fun, but I don't always make a whole lot of progress, sometimes I make more in my two hour sessions.  I think it's more about quality than quantity =P

[Bouter Boogie]

*YaY* I'm having summer holidays now so I'm able to practice more than 3 hours a day

[super5james]

I go for a Hard 12 hours

[musicsdarkangel]

What I do is take my practice in incriments of an hour and a half.  This is the time that a human mind is said to be able to focus for.


I will use an hour and a half on Rach, an hour and a half on Mozart, an hour and a half on Chopin, an hour and a half on Liszt technical excersizes.......

and later on I will add Bach into this.


With these incriments, even with just 15 minutes break, it is so much easier to practice.

I have a timer that I baught from walgreens, and whenever I screw around, I will pause it.

Many people say quality, not quantity, and I agree, but when you can combine the two, that's when you get really good, and that's what I'm attempting to do.

Of course, I'm still lazy and averaging 3.

[raffyplayspiano]

i try to practice 5-6 hours a day, but not straight.

i always make a list of what it is i am trying to achieve each day and stick to it, and try not to let my mind wander and just play through the pieces...but actually practice. 

practicing isnt always fun for me, actually most of the time it isnt, and ihave to drag myself to the practice room, but after i start, i get really excited about the work im doing and it becomes mor enjoyable. 

raffy

[superstar]

For those who answered that they practise 3-6 hours, what level of piano are you working on? Just curious

F.Liszt - Concerto Es
F.Chopin - Etudes op.10 nr.1,2,8   op.12.nr 5,6,7
F.Chopin - Grand Polonaise op.22
M.Mussorgsky - Pictures at an exhibition
C.Debussy - Images I
F.Liszt - La Campanella
D.Scarlatti - four sonatas
R.Schumann - Toccata C
J.S.Bach - Preludes and Fugues
and some other stuff

[etudes]

well, if u play
3rd Rachmaninoff
all the transcendental etudes
Chopin 1st Concerto
Liszt 1st Concerto
and about 10 Chopin Works....

u need to practise about 8 h

my friend play all transcendental,Chopin 1st,Liszt 1st,Tchai 1st,Schumann and some stuff of Chopin and liszt
she does normally 5 hours

[Motrax]

I'm practicing less during summer, but during the schoolyear I do a minimum of 4 hours every day. I tend to focus on two or three pieces - if I work on more, I feel like I give them inadequate attention. Usually I spend an hour on technique (Dohnanyi, scales, etc), two or three hours on what I'm focusing on, and the rest of the time is spent keeping up old rep, sightreading, or improvising. If I'm feeling especially industrious, though, I'll spend 5 or 6 hours on a single piece (or even a single page or phrase, if I'm feeling particularly obsessive  ).

Right now I'm working on
Ravel - Jeux D'eaux
Rachmaninoff - Etude Op. 33 No. 4 (d minor)
Bach - Prelude/Fugue in D minor from book 1 of the WTC
Moszkowski - Etude Op. 72 No. 9 (d minor, octaves)

I also pull out Beethoven's Tempest, Chopin's Winter Wind etude (op 25 No 11), and a few Scarlatti sonatas when I feel like it, though I'm not working particularly diligently on any of that.

[infamousbr]

I can't imagine going over 3 hrs a day, my repertoire isn't exactly easy but still I don't have pressure to learn everything all at once, I just have to get my pieces into perfect quality etc. by early next year

[pianonut]

it is when you have a large program (and/or about to graduate).  if you have a full recital (45 min. to 1 hour) you have a lot to memorize.  plus, some on the forum are performing artists and probably have a whole bunch of repertoire they can pull out of the hat, so to speak, and refresh.  it's just that you can get really physically run down if you only practice piano and don't get other exercise.  and, because it's athletic (mind and body) you have to feed your body and brain.

i don't always do this, but lots of really dark greens are super good. and bananas as someone else said.  and protein. and vit. a (carrots) for your eyes.  without this, your muscles can't handle the stress, your mind goes crazy, and your eyes are strained.  i've found when i practice long hours (usually not 7-8 hours - but sometimes 5-6 when motivated) i like to practice in a darker room and not try to read all the notes the whole time.  it relaxes my eyes and brain - and i can hear the notes better.