I'm just starting to learn Piano, I ordered a FP7 today so I can't wait to get it. Realistically if I was to get 1-2 lessons per week and practice for 15-30mins per day, how long should I expect to be fairly compentent in playing? I know everyone is different and progressess at a different pace, I'm just looking for a ball park time? I have zero experience. Would 3-6 months be to ambitious?

First of all, what to you is the definition of "fairly competent"? Do you have any pieces that you want to play? Piano pieces come in a variety levels/difficulties, which is why even very good and competent pianists continue studying their whole life! Then there's this thing about bringing 'musicality' to a piece which is just more than pressing the keys to play the right notes.

Of course, it depends largely on the person how fast they'll progress. Lots of factors come into play... innate talent, experience with another instrument, and the most important (I think), amount of effort. I'm sure there are lots more. I'm very much a beginner myself (see my sig below LOL)but I do think that 3 months is too ambitious. After 6 months, you could be playing tunes at the beginner level that aren't nursery rhymes or excessively watered-down versions of popular songs. BUT it requires a lot of effort. I haven't gotten to that point yet, honestly, but it's what I predicted by looking ahead in my method book and calculating the time I'll reach a certain piece based on my current pace. Mind you, my teacher says I'm going quite fast (too overzealous, LOL) so YMMV.

A lot of people recommend breaking practice times down, like 20 minutes in the morning and another 20 in the evening. I think it's good advice, though I admit I practice much longer than the recommendation, which can't be a bad thing, can it?

Have you ever played a note before? Pianists make it look so easy, but it's really quite difficult in reality. You may be a lucky one blessed with good mind-hand coordination, but unfortunately I'm not one of those. After you've tried playing hands together for the first time, you might be able to reconsider your expectations

Lastly, I think learning piano is 90% practice and 10% actual lessons, so you really have to put those hours in!

Hi brendanc,

My best suggestion is to focus on enjoying the journey rather than trying to count how long it will take to get there.

It really takes years of practice, and it is generally expected that your practice time each day will increase as you work on harder pieces.

This has come up a few times on the forums.

Here's a reference to another thread with almost the exact same title as yours:

Realistic Expectations for Adult Beginner

Rich

Thanks, you've given me some good points to think about, when I say fairly competent I am thinking about something along the lines of Bella's Lullaby from Twilight eg. "Bella's Lullaby" Carter Burwell . In saying that I have no idea how difficult you would rate it. I have no musical experience what so ever, I don't know the first thing about anything I am an absolute beginner

Hi Brendanc and welcome,

I don't want to deflate your balloon, but I don't think the words "fairly competent" are ever applied to anyone after 3-6 months of 15-30 minutes per day, especially anyone with no prior musical background. As Rich suggested, piano is a lifelong journey, and something of a roller coaster ride. You may feel you're doing great one day, only to find the next day you can't play 3 notes without a flub. What's important is a long term commitment to steady improvement that will only be evident over years.

That said, there are many enjoyable beginner pieces you will learn along the way, and with practice, they can be very fun and impressive. I don't think the piece you linked is realistic for your first 6 months -- maybe a year or so. But more importantly, I think it's a mistake to start out spending too much time on a single "goal" piece. Better to learn a lot of simple things and develop your skills. After a few months you can start devoting a few minutes a day to long term pieces, but even then it should be secondary to skill development.

There are people out there -- especially self-taught -- who can play 1 or 2 hard pieces well after several months, but they are almost always lacking in other skills, like reading, theory, hand positions, etc. In the end, those who take their time and learn the basics gain the ability to learn pieces faster, tackle a more challenging repertoire, and play with more confidence and professionalism.

Good luck to you!

You would probably be able to play Bella's Lullaby if you practised it every day for three months. But that's all you'd be able to play!

I imagine a decent intermediate player (not me!) would be able to learn it in perhaps 3 days?

As suggested above - a beginner can pick up a reasonably difficult piece just by playing it over and over. But you won't pick up the skills essential to learning other difficult pieces quickly.

In 6 months of playing an hour a day, I don't suspect many people could be "fairly competent" I'm afraid...

Welcome to the forum, brendanc. The others have given you good feedback: Piano is a journey, and we are always striving for improvement.

That being said, my guess is that you can start playing pieces that sound pretty darned good at about the 6 months mark. But that's really a SWAG, as your progress will depend entirely on the quantity and quality of your practicing. Having a good teacher will help you make progress faster, if that's important to you. Just make sure to interview prospective teachers carefully and make sure they are a good fit for your goals for piano.

As others have said, it is really hard to predict what kind of progress any individual will make. But here's a few random opinions on your OP:

1. You need to be clear what kind of music you want to play and find a teacher who can help you with your goals. Classical training can seem rigid or boring to folks who really want to play something else. And learning to play by ear or to improvise your own arrangements from a lead sheet are special skills that may not be covered in traditional classical lessons.

2. Six months is a fairly short period of time for classical training, particularly if you work through some introductory method books before looking at real repertoire. On the other hand, folks who are learning to play by ear with simple chord harmonies might feel pretty pleased with their progress in a similar period of time.

3. I would be most concerned with practice time. 15-30 minutes per day is not very much, particularly if you are also taking a weekly lesson. You need time to prepare material from one lesson to the next. I would not recommend lessons more frequently than once per week until you are sure what you can do. You don't learn to play piano at your lessons; you learn to play piano during your practice time. Lessons are there to give you ideas and goals for your practice.

brendanc,

Welcome to the forums! Your question is rather intriguing. One's progress on the piano, as with anything that requires practice, is proportional to the effort you put in. When I was first starting on the piano I spent an hour a day practicing. Today at the late-intermediate, early-advanced level I put in about 2 hours a day of practice.

Your plan to practice 15-30 minutes per day strikes me as exceptionally low and, consequently, limiting in terms of progress. Clearly you will make progress, even with such limited time, but I doubt that you will find yourself playing "fairly competently" in the three to six month time frame.

Generally, to play even relatively simple classical music takes a couple of years because there is so much technique to learn. You should be able to play simple pieces relatively well in the time you mention, but you will find you need to practice more than the time you've allotted.

Ed

Having a goal to play a particular piano piece in a specific amount of time is common to adult beginners it seems. I think you will be amazed at just how much goes into learning a specific piece of music. Expect to be challenged, expect to work hard, make it a priority to practice every day, attend every lesson and work through assignments carefully, listen, talk with other pianists - and then prepare to be amazed at what an incredible journey learning to play the piano is.

For more thoughts, please visit my blog at http://www.playpianosongstoday.com/play-piano-songs-today--the-blog.html

Dr. J - The More You Play the Better Your Day

If you are learning a piece that is a little too difficult for a learner, as suggested by RobinL, will that not aid in your learning as in sight reading, coordination etc. I understand the need to also learn technique but i am asking the question as a beginner myself as something i think maybe needs some clarification.

This topic (learning pieces above your level) has been frequently discussed on this forum and it depends, of course, on how much above your level you talking about. You might search the archives to find some earlier threads.

My own goal is that I want pieces that are challenging but not well above my level. I don't want to spend months working exclusively on some "dream piece" when I can spend the same amount of time working on a variety of pieces that challenge me to improve step by step.

In general I'm interested in a disciplined process of methodical improvement in all areas of technique and interpretation, and I depend on my teacher's guidance to help chart the best path through the literature. I might add that I'm only interested in classical repertoire.

Thanks for that reply, makes sense. How long is reasonable to be working on a piece that would be challenging? A few weeks as opposed to months? A week? I understand there's variables, but at 30 minutes to 60 minutes practice per day, what would be an appropriate length of time? I'll be sure to search other threads.

I'm hoping my questions are adding to the original question and are relevant.

These days I am going through 30-50 pieces per year with my teacher. Most of these are what might be called "early advanced" repertoire and are typically 3-6 pages each.

For instance, right now I'm working on some Brahms Intermezzos and some Mozart Sonata movements. For each of these I usually spend a week reading through the piece and deciding an approach for any difficult fingering or technical issues, another week putting the various sections together, and then maybe one to two additional weeks working on the details and dealing with subtle issues in interpretation, pedaling, dynamics, tempo, etc.

I usually have three or four different pieces in various stages of this pipeline at any given time. If I leave a piece at the end of this sequence it is still not securely memorized or really perfected to performance standards, but my teacher is usually satisfied that we have wrung out most of the things we need to work together and that I could finish the piece on my own or come back to it later without him.

Just to put a frame of reference around this, I have been studying piano (with a teacher) for about 5 years and usually practice a couple of hours everyday. I consider myself an average student with no extraordinary talent for the piano.

(PS: This is what works for me. You will find completely different opinions on this topic from other forum contributors.)

Packa, if I may divert the discussion just briefly, how long have you been playing, and what did you do to reach where you are?

I have been playing about 5 years. I have studied with a couple of different teachers, but I have always taken lessons. My teachers have all been "conservatory-trained" classical pianists and I picked them deliberately because I wanted to study classical music using a fairly traditional approach.

Because my children are grown, I have more free time now than other periods of my life and piano is a major hobby so it gets a lot of time. The only thing that has worked for me is: spending a lot of time practicing; and figuring out ways to spend my practice time efficiently. My teachers have helped a lot with the latter. I have said before in these forums that one of the important things you should learn from your early teachers is how to actually practice (and it isn't just sitting down and playing a piece over and over until it gets good).

Thanks everyone for contributing to the post, I've learnt that I am best off to concentrate on quality practice and technique rather than rushing and spending lots of time learning one piece, I also like DragonPianoPlayer's advice on "enjoying the journey" after all thats what's most important to me.

Hi ..........
another question for packa you said "I have said before in these forums that one of the important things you should learn from your early teachers is how to actually practice (and it isn't just sitting down and playing a piece over and over until it gets good)."
how about sharing the fruits of your experience with the forum ? I for one have struggled to find a good teacher and this is one of the areas i desperately need help with....

Peter

I've felt a little guilty that my posts have led this thread a bit off-topic. But since responses to the original thread have mostly stopped I will post once more about my practice habits.

I think there are at least two levels to this discussion. Each pianist needs to develop an overall high-level approach to learning new music that is compatible with both their learning style and the type of music they are learning. Then you need to develop an ever-expanding toolkit of specific techniques and exercises you can bring to bear on specific problems.

In my case (classical music), for a completely new piece I usually start by trying to play it through a couple of times as best I can. I am pretty weak in sight-reading, so this is often just trying the melodic lines or simplifying the LH as I go. Sometimes my teacher will play through a new piece for me. Sometimes I listen to a few recordings if I have them. At this point I am really just trying to get an overall impression of the piece.

The first serious thing I do with the score is go through it measure by measure looking at the detailed structure of the piece. I identify sections, phrases, repeated motives or rhythms, and major changes of key or tempo. I look at the way harmony and polytonality are being used. Many pieces reuse common phrases, sections, or other structural elements over and over, sometimes with minor variations. I try to see these so I can get a mental map of the piece and can begin grouping common elements for practice.

I rarely learn a new piece straight through from first to last but I do usually work on the very beginning first because I am trying to get a solid mental image early on for how I will begin the piece when I play it. I next start practicing section by section, phrase by phrase, or sometimes measure by measure usually starting with the hardest things first. Finally I begin putting things together into larger blocks until I've gotten through the whole piece.

At this point I do play the piece completely through from time to time, but I still usually have a pretty clear idea without that of areas that need the most work and I continue to practice those areas in isolation, returning every so often to the whole piece to check my overall progress.

Practice is really problem solving and you can't practice effectively if you can't identify the specific problem you're trying to solve. Sometimes I keep a written list of things that need attention but usually it's easy to keep the list in my head. In any case, when I sit down to practice a piece I always say to myself: what specifically needs work? what specifically needs to be done? how can I work it to make it better? So I really focus on very specific problems one at a time until the whole piece gets better.

In this problem-solving kind of practice I use a lot of different techniques depending on what I'm trying to do: hands separate, very slow tempos, varying the rhythm or articulation of a section, practicing with the metronome, simplifying or changing a section so that I can exercise different things before returning to the score as written, etc. Many of the discussions about practicing on these forums tend to focus on these kinds of specific tools. In my opinion, almost all of them are valuable sometimes but none of them are best for every situation all the time.

As I get closer to having the whole piece under control I start recording myself every so often. It's amazing how different I sound on my Zoom than I think I sound in my head. Recording really helps me improve my ability to listen to myself and try to match what I hear from my ears with the ideal performance I can hear in my head.

If I think I want to really perfect a piece for public performance, I work on memorization and other performance issues last although I don't do this last stage for many things I learn.

Finally, there are lots of resources to help with practice techniques. Online, there is Chang's oft-discussed Fundamentals of Piano Practice (not one of my favorites although many of the suggested techniques are good additions to your toolkit); I copied this link from a professor at Missouri Western State College some time ago and thought it had some good suggestions.

In the print world I really like Westney's The Perfect Wrong Note which has a lot of good things to say about practice as well as performance. Some other books have sometimes been mentioned by others in the forum but I don't have cites handy for them.

I got an FP7 too and I love it...I started playing last fall and.....as soon as I can play the Maple Leaf Rag i'll be happy.

until then...I have a lot of sheet music in the alfreds,bastien and snell level 1 books to learn first.

Scott Joplin didnt sit down and begin writing the Ragtime Dance.......so I know it will take a while. How long I dont know just as long as I keep getting amazed when I learn new songs and fulfill my instructors goals.