Piano World Home Page Forums Our Most Popular Forums Adult Beginners Forum how common is regular practice?

Been in weekly lessons for several weeks now, and although I took a day off every week or two in the early days, I practice *at least some* every day at this point. (If nothing else, it's a good way to start the day before the morning commute.)

My piano teacher always asks if I've had any time to practice in the previous week, and today pointed out that I'm about her only student who actually practices daily. Even her adult students who are paying for their own lessons allegedly don't really practice between lessons.

I was stunned to hear this, because I know exactly how much these lessons are costing me.

"I'm gonna get my money's worth out of this," I told her. She wished more of her students felt the same way. (No, I didn't tell her about MOYD. She already thinks I'm a little odd. )

So I got to wondering.... Of the people who actually *choose* to learn piano (like me), how zealous is your approach to the process?

Well, I did chose to start learning piano, and I do practice every day, (partly because of the MOYD challenge!) but mostly because I just LOVE the instrument and need to practice enough to progress and get better.

After years of procrastination I started about a year ago and have missed very few days since.

It's something I want to do, that makes it easy.

I practice every day except Saturday basically. I'm majoring in Piano though, so it's pretty much required for me to practice a lot, but if you want to progress at a faster rate then practicing more often is a really good idea. But that's just me.

My impression has been that, if the teacher has expectations for students to practice, and the teacher can tell the student has not been practicing, most teachers drop the student.

In our area, the wait lists are too long, and the teachers have so much pride in their work, that they'll take the serious student over the slacker. Especially when there are recitals-these showcase the teachers ability to motivate students. If there are students who can't perform, it reflects on the teacher. So in our area, most teachers drop 'em. Like I said, there are more people wanting lessons than there are slots.

I practice every day, including the morning before I had surgery and the day after. My family may hate me for it but I do.

i practice piano everyday, and some time at night, i'd keep playing and forgot time and then noticed it's passed 2:00am... especially, since i got the teacher, i feel more obligated to practice because i want to please my teacher when i go to his lesson next time, besides i really want to get better with this.

I just started my journey with the piano last February (almost a year!!) and the only days I did not play was a week that I was out of town.

To use the label that ShiroKuro came up with...I am definitely "PO" (piano obsessed)

I am desperate to regain what I lost from not playing for a long time. I am working very hard at it, and I've found a teacher who may be the right one, not sure yet though.

On weekdays, I start at 6:30 AM with a blues exercise, Then into Hanon for an hour and then off to work.

At work during lunch I do rhtythmic training for 30 minutes, and then 15 minutes of stick drills (I'm learning drums too, but that's a long-term project).

At night my practice shedule is currently 30 minutes of scales, 30 minutes of chord drills, and then at least an hour on repertoire. So I usually average between 4 and 5 hours a day on weekdays. On weekends, I try to get in as much as I can - typically between 7 and 10 hours on at least on one day, but no less then four hours a day on weekends.

And like Frycek, I had two teeth extracted today, but I still logged 7 hours of practice.

My goal is to get my chops back and start playing out within a year. I figure even if I don't hit my goal, I'll be a lot better then I was when I started 2 weeks ago, and probably not far from hitting it from that point. I'm already making good progress, and things are starting to come back.

MinorKeys

I practice daily, but *solely* because of MOYD. It's easy me to blow off a day. Or two. Or three.

Playing is fun.

Practice is work. Work worth doing, but work nonetheless.

I practice pretty much every day. I tend to average about 90 minutes a day. Of course, that's because I'm PO.

But I think maybe there are more PO people here than in the population at large, so Father Bob, your teacher's adult students who don't practice may actually be more representative of the general public.

One of the docs I work for has been taking piano lessons for six years and is in a third grade book. He admits he practices about 30 minutes A WEEK. I find it amazing he hasn't either dropped piano altogether or stepped up his effort. To me it sounds like he's just treading water. He's about sixty. Maybe he's hoping to do better when he retires.

I know this is probably a dumb question - even for ABF, but what is PO?

PO = piano-obsessed

I sit at my piano every day, except when out of town. However, often I just play a piece I more or less know instead of really studying some new.

I'm still without a teacher, so I just play for fun and not because I have to for the next lesson.

Except for traveling when there's no piano available , I don't think I've missed a day in the last 3+ years (since I've had a teacher). I usually get 2.5 or more hours in alltogether each day. My teacher once asked me how much I practiced each day and was surprised/pleased when I told him "usually a couple of hours." Of course that got me wondering if he thought "all that practice and this is all she can do"!! Overall I think/hope I'm progressing ok.....if nothing else I continue to try hard, have fun and lots of enthusiasm!! another PO here...

I doubt that any student who doesn't practice often between lessons would frequent an online piano forum. We're all PO here!

It's not too surprising that the people first to chime in here would indicate that we're a more fanatical lot, since obviously we have enough sustained interest to actually congregate and chatter around the subject.

I guess I'm Abby Normal (anybody remember that movie?), because I practice daily on purpose and hammer away at it on weekends as much as possible.

Saturday I practiced in many shorter sessions 10-20 minutes each over the course of the day, alternating between keyboard time and typical Saturday stuff. I've seen some suggest that a whole lot of practice crammed into one day can be a bad idea, but I've had no problems with it so far.

Maybe it's because I carve it into digestible chunks & then come back to it after doing something else.

I'm a junkie.

PO..... that's it

Since my first lesson in May 2004 I think I didn't miss a day of practising exept when I was not at home (visiting friends, holidays...) or we had guests. During the week normally between 19:00 and 20:00 it's "my" hour and my spouse tolerates my obsession

I desperately want to be able to play but I didn't start with 3 but with 39. So without practising I know I have no chance. And my teacher is happy to have at least one student who practises. So I guess it's really not so common outside of this forum....

Chrissi

I get up every morning at 4:15 AM, practice until 7:00 AM on my Kawai CP175 digital piano, so I don't wake anyone. This is a highly advanced digital with graded hammer touch and thousands of beautifully sampled sounds, so I play with them as well, to keep practice fun. Then, when I come home in the evening after being in the clinic all day, I play another 1.5 to 2 hours on my Mason and Hamlin 9 foot Concert Grand. Could you call me PO?.....ABSOLUTELY!!!! I began taking lessons years ago when a patient came to me in a wheel chair. She had had bilateral hip surgery and was experiencing complications that kept her wheelchair bound. As I read her Medical History on her initial visit to my office, I noted that under "occupation" she had written "Concert Pianist". Turns out she was Julliard trained and had played in venues all over the world, including Carnegie Hall and Lincoln Center. I told her that I had always dreamed of playing Classical Piano, at which point she said the following: "I'll tell you what....you get me to walk again and I will teach you to play free of charge!". Ten years later she is walking like a champ and I am piano obsessed!!! I don't know who made out better on that deal, but I'm sure glad I met her. See you guys later....gotta go practice.

Oh, I forgot to mention, I am SO piano obsessed that I was never happy with the tuning, voicing and regulation that was being done on my own piano, so a number of years ago I paid a Master Technician, who was close to retiring, to let me apprentice with him on weekends and evenings to learn tuning, voicing and regulation. So now I do all three on my own piano as well as friends and relatives who ask me to. If you think you are piano obsessed with just the PLAYING of the instrument, learning to appreciate the complexity of its inner workings opens up a whole new world of obsession!!!! It is truly the most amazing machine ever devised!!

Now that is officially the coolest story I've heard all week. (I have to limit it to this week, because I went drinking with my boss & his wife Friday night, and their stories are difficult to match. )

My former boss (because my current boss bought us out from the company of which we were previously a division) came by my office yesterday and asked about my weekend, to which I replied that I spent it mostly at the keyboard.

He seemed astonished that I'm "really getting into it" and asked why I didn't just take up guitar.

....

I didn't see the connection at all, but probably managed to avoid rolling my eyes. Aside from portability, I don't see any astonishing advantages of guitar over piano.

At the end of the day, when I listen to music and find myself wanting to play the instrumentation, it's usually the piano/keyboard parts I find myself wanting to play.

I guess that's where my PO originates.

Once the seed is planted it grows exponentially. I cannot walk past a piano without sitting down to try it out. My idea of a really terrific day is going down to Steinway Hall, or the Selection Room at the Steinway factory in Long Island City, or any other dealer of high end pianos, and just move from one to another, relishing the differences in their sounds and feels.

I practice daily about two to three hours. I envy you people who get up early as I currently don't. I may try it though. On weekends I practice much much more up to five hour sessions. At lunch break I often will read through scores. There are some people who spend all their free time on the piano here but I could not imagine they are just playing scales and Hanon. I play all major minor harmonic scales and appreggios every day. That takes about half an hour then I work on repertoire. Finally I work on my own arrangements without scores. I used to think I was alone but I see there are many nuts like me here.

Maybe we are nuts, but when you consider some of the other inane things that people get wrapped up in that are totally unproductive and, oftentimes, self destructive, I am pretty content with having this be my obsession.

Word.

I practice every day for as long as I can (a couple of hours a day, probably), plus try to attend as many concerts as I can, plus listen to the music or read music-related literature on my way to and from work and at work. LOVE IT, LOVE IT, LOVE IT!

I'm another who practices every day. Before putting my name on MOYD I'd occasionally miss a day, but now I find it a great motivation to make sure I get on the piano every single day. Other than that, I want my piano teacher to know I have made an effort that week at my next lesson.

I also have a strange desire to try and learn pieces that I believe are too difficult for me just for the challenge! I wonder if anyone else has found this sometimes.

But yes, definitely PO here!

Same here. I've finally realized my motto ought to be, "If you don't have to work at it, why bother?" I just don't get much satisfaction from playing easy pieces.

I try and play a little everyday. I'm used to having to be dedicated as I have been doing daily practice on the cornet for years.

A good band conductor once said something like "there is no shelf, you have to keep working or you will deteriorate". Whilst I don't think this is strictly true I do make myself believe this in order to keep on practicing.

Count me among the ones who has a teacher who is grateful to have a student that takes the time to practice! Even if I haven't made a lot of progress that week, she says she can tell that I've worked at it. It took me a very long time to decide to actually get out there and start taking lessons (I'm almost 51), but now that I have, I want to make the most of it. I try to practice at least a couple hours every day, and I will often just sit down at the piano and run through one piece as I am passing through the room with laundry or some such. And then, if I've been good, I will reward myself with some "play time" on the Casio....

Since I took delivery on my piano in August, I haven't missed a day when I didn't spend some time at the keyboard - unless I was away and had no piano to use. I'm totally obsessed as most of you are - even when I'm not at the piano, I find that I'm sitting and "playing" pieces in my lap....Is this weird or do many of you do this as well? I've really been doing this for as long as I can remember - long before taking any lessons or having a piano. My lessons just began a couple of weeks ago and I can't get enough of it.

Until this year I was not practicing regularly. I made a resolution to play at least 30 minutes a day every day and so far--I've kept my New Year's resolution.

30 minutes a day really is not very much. But I have noticed a difference in my progress even with that small amount of regular, steady practice. And I often get a whole hour in.

I think the true key is setting up a schedule for yourself with a realistic practice goal. It feels good when you meet that goal. And as you see progress it only makes you want to sit at the piano longer.

I had my weekly lesson yesterday, and once again my teacher pointed out that my daily practice is revealing itself in the lessons. She actually puts it in different words each time.

This time she played the piece I'll start working on next week and mentioned that most students in the program don't make it to that piece within their first thirteen lessons. (I've been through 8 or 9 weekly sessions at this point.)

The most obvious difference between my progress and theirs seems to be that I practice daily. Daily practice, then, seems to keep one moving forward at a much accelerated pace.

So if you want to learn to play as quickly as possible, sit down and do it *at least a little every day* to make best progress.

I commend you all for being PO! My old teacher complains every time we talk about so many students now that don't even touch the piano between lessons. She feels her efforts are for naught, and has cut down her number to about 6 students. (She's now about 87 now so I wonder if that matters.)

Anyway, I practice at least and hour every day, or a little more if I can on the weekends. I start off with all the major and minor scales, a bit of Hanon or something else like it, and then my repertoire. This has helped me a lot to gain my agility back again since I went nearly a year without touching the piano at all. During that time, I became totally depressed, and actually paced back and forth like a caged animal because I didn't know what to do with myself. Prior to then, the most I went was a month because I was out of the country on business.

John

Wow! I'm very impressed! Most of you guys practice quite a lot!

I have to definitely get better at practicing since I DO pay for my own lessons. This past weekend I felt so embarrassed at my lesson because I hadn't practiced NEARLY as much as I was supposed to.

I have to really get in the habit of trying to practice everyday. Or, at least everyother day. If I could just do an hour even every other day consistently, I think I would improve greatly.

BTW, this may be a dumb question, but what exactly does MYOD stand for? How do you get it? I need all of the motivation I can get!

About a month ago an elderly lady I know died and her brother gave me her piano. I"m learning to play it and can play three songs. "In your Easter Bonnet" "It's a sin to tell a lie "(as a foxtrot instead of waltz) and "If you really love me" Trouble is that once I sit down to practice the whole day can pass by and I"m still practicing. LOL I had an uncle who used to play for silent movies when he was 15yrs old. He died many yrs ago but my greatest pleasure was to go to his house on sunday afternoons and ask him to play. He only had three lessons but quit when he realized the teacher wasn't teaching him to play as he played. He taught himself the rest.I believe the style he played is called "Stride" Sorry for rambling on but I"m quite excited to be able to play a few tunes and practice is sheer enjoyment for me.........Mr. Peeps

I recently bought a 60 minute wind up timer. I set it for the amount of time I want to work on a particular piece or scales or some other technique.

It gives me a sense of accomplishment to track my practice time this way. Also, I know exactly how long I've worked on a particular piece.

Then I write down in my practice log the total time I practiced for the day and underneath that I break it down by pieces and technical work.

I don't do it because I'm organized. I do it because I need that extra discipline. So far it's working.

MOYD = master of your domain (?), a practice log initiative by Cindy and the practice log itself was created by markjps, and many people have joined in to get themselves some extra displine/motivation.

btw, i didn't join it myself, since i have enough displine and motivation to practice piano everyday anyway.

I practice almost daily - about an hour on weekdays and more on weekends. Over the past few weeks though, I didn't practice that much due to illness. It'll be the same in the next two weeks or so as I recover from surgery.

When I can't physically sit at the piano, I work on music theory workbooks, read about composers, and read PW forums to learn more good stuff.

Wow, I guess I'm not as strange as I thought!

1 to 3 hours a day, depending on how busy I am.