I'm having difficulty planning my practice time and would like some thoughts. I'm a 'mature' adult beginner and have been taking lessons for 8 years. On a good day I am able to practice about 2.5 hours - broken into 1 one-hour and 2 forty five-minute practice sessions

I'm working on three grade 8 pieces. They are challenging but attainable. In addition I have been working on a few easier grade 6ish pieces. I have not been writing exams and have thought about it but have not scheduled anything yet. And also, I'm beginning to find that maintaining a repertoire is almost impossible. The more advanced we become, the more practice required.....I'm totally addicted but it doesn't get any easier!!

I have a wonderful teacher and will be asking advice but may not have a lesson for a couple of weeks.

Do you advise students to work on their entire piece? or just a few measures or lines each week. How much of daily practice would you recommend focusing on sightreading, scales, arpeggios...etc.... Also, when a piece is in the polishing stage, do you think slow practice is still best? I'm finding that I practice slowly during the week and when asked to play at tempo, I am obviously not ready because will inevitably stumble..... It's confusing for me. Slow practice doesn't seem to be leading to accurate fast playing... I'm wondering if playing faster than required might enable me to play at the correct slower speed more accurately.

And lastly, do you have any advice for the often stated problem of not being able to play as well when at lessons. Thinking....I do have one small issue with my teacher. I rarely get through a few measures of a piece before I'm stopped to correct a problem (timing, articulation, fingering, dynamic....). Maybe this is why I'm stumbling ..... I'm waiting for the interuption... hmmmm..... I think I'll talk about this next lesson.

2.5 hours of practice
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30 minutes (to be divided into 10 minute blocks at each practice session) on technique: arpeggios, scales, etc

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30 minutes of sight-reading, possibly around Grade 5.

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1 hour and 30 minutes on your repertoire.

1 hour to be focused on your main pieces, 20 minutes each, in manageable sections (4 measures at a time, HS, then HT, etc etc etc).

30 minutes to be spent on two easier pieces, 15 minutes each, same procedure as above.

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This doesn't account for keyboard skills or theory or 'doodle time (the time we spend not doing something during our practice time' - but you should see a rough picture of how to segment your work.

I somewhat broke down a procedure here:
http://www.pianoworld.com/forum/ubbthreads.php/topics/1592430/1/60%20minutes%20to%20practice:%20what%20t.html

It may be helpful for you to read that thread.

Good luck!

As for your stumbling problems, I would definitely talk with your teacher. If they're stopping you every so often, that's fine, but if it's through a few measures so they can correct something, all they're doing is allowing you that pause and interruption that ruins your playing. I don't understand why they would do that.

I'm amazed you've been learning for 8 years, practicing as hard as you do (!), and that you haven't discussed these kinds of questions with your teacher (or your teacher with you) years ago!!! WOW!!!

I don't agree with the breakdown given by II above, but that doesn't mean it won't work for you. You really need to discuss this with your teacher who knows your situation and your skills and your weaknesses. The way to structure your practice also differs enormously if you are planning on sitting a Grade 8 exam in the near future. So that's another thing to discuss with your teacher.

But many of these questions in your OP are ones you need to canvass as soon as possible in your lesson irrespective of exam plans!!

Elissa,

Could you possibly write out what you'd suggested in a very generic sense here (I did mention the OP should discuss with their teacher the details, ... whoops, didn't... *meant to*).

I'd love to see how they'd differ.

Thanks!

Thank you for the suggestions. We have discussed many practice methods during lessons and time to spend on certain things (scales, slow practice, rotation, etc.) but not how to break down my 2.5 hours. I guess I feel that I should know this by now. Each term I create a practice schedule and actually follow it for a month but I guess it's like 'dieting'? It hasn't been something that I can live with. I think I try to do too much some times and not enough focused practice. Once (if) I decide on a date to write an exam, I'm sure lessons will be more structured. Right now I want to organize my time for the best possible result and am just looking for some different suggestions.

I'm also sure that my teacher will be happy to discuss a breakdown.......I just haven't asked!

I could never scientifically break down my practice time into such particulars! I know from session to session where I need to focus my practice.

Yesterday I was practicing Chopin's Ab Ballade. I've been avoiding one section of it, just kind of muddling through it. So I decided to tackle it, once and for all. I spent 30+ minutes using various practice methods and, by then end of my time, I had mastered it slightly under tempo. Today, I will go back and review it. Knowing my brain and fingers, I will probably need about 15 minutes, give or take a bit.

Goals change from section to section, piece to piece. Somtimes they are technical, sometimes they are musical. I can't fit things into a box. Never works for me.

Take your excellent list of questions to your teacher. You'll be very glad you asked, either because you'll learn a lot or because you'll start thinking about changing teachers. Either way, by asking these questions of your current teacher, you win.

In addition to (or instead of) the kind of practice schedule you're talking about, consider creating a goals schedule: this piece memorized by two weeks from now, this list of exercises up to speed, this other piece completed five hundred repetitions of the one difficult measure in it, etc.

II, my practice suggestions would differ according to a number of variables: age, available time, goals, stage of pianist development, and so forth, and on top of that: practice needs to retain flexibility so that time is not wasted going through the motions.

Your 2.5 hour breakdown might be an excellent suggestion for a specific student working on specific repertoire, but I would never have a student practicing 'sightreading' for 30 minutes a day. My students learn a wide range of repertoire which means that 'sightreading' as an exam skill only needs to be prepared specifically for the format of the test: my students can sight read just fine in real life circumstances. So that would be gone, for starters.

Beyond that, your prescription for working on repertoire 4 bars at a time, hands separately prior to hands together, and so forth, is not at all the way I would recommend anyone learn their repertoire. Some repertoire does need separate hands practice at times, to be sure, but it is rare that a work would benefit from separate hands practice from beginning to end, and often this separate hands practice is only useful once a student already hears how the parts work together: there's no one-size-fits-all aspect to this. But even more fundamental: 4 bars at a time?! Maybe a piece needs to be practiced one bar at a time! Maybe a piece needs to be practiced in 6 bar units, or 9 bar phrases: the best way to work on a piece is to respond to the way that it is composed, and that might mean 1 bar+1 bar+3 bars+4 bars+1 bar+3 bars, and so forth. Beyond responding to the structure of the work itself in one's practice is the notion of responding to one's own physical barriers: maybe a 2 bar unit needs practice for the fingering pattern to fully unfold - this 2 bar unit might make no compositional or analytical sense outside of this fingering-difficulty aspect.

These are some ways (I suppose quite specific) in which my recommendations for practice would differ from the breakdown you gave. The basic principle is, as already stated by other teachers, to shape practice towards the goals the student is trying to achieve, both broadly and in terms of the goals being worked towards in each piece. This will preclude each day's practice being anything like the day's before, except that one is always building a deep knowledge of the work with some kind of performance goal in mind.

Each day's practice being responsive to the repertoire and the student's unique challenges also prevents boredom and minimises burnout. The student is creatively engaged in the business of mastering the performance challenges in a work, of grappling with the meanings the performance can communicate, of exploring the possibilities and nuances the music allows in the context of contemporary musical experience as well as in the context of the composer's oeuvre and culture.

I hope this is a helpful start?

Thank you Elissa, I think your response could have been written by my teacher! It may be why I'm hesitant to ask. How I practice should vary depending on my repertoire and specific goals for the week. My teacher would never suggest working HS other than to work out a specific problem for a single measure or maybe two.

This is all very helpful. I'm realizing that I need to create specific goals for each practice session. Whether I'm working on too many pieces right now, and the issue of playing through at least a page before I'm stopped (Elissa I'm interested to hear your thoughts on this) I'll discuss next week.

You may be able to record yourself at home. Bring in what you think is the best example and play it for your teacher. Ask if your teacher wouldn't mind listening all the way through once first before making suggestions.

Elissa,

Thanks for the response!

Of course, you're right - variables are an important thing to consider. The 'schedule' I suggested wasn't so much a schedule as it was a plan - set aside time for so and so and make sure to work on in, just not kind of drift around and then finally do something.

And what I suggested in the parenthesis wasn't meant to be what should be done, just mere suggestions of different ways it could be done, hence the 'etc etc etc.' It as just to reinforce that pieces should be learned in sections, not just by reading through it a bunch of times.

I could see how 30 minutes sight-reading daily would be a lot, you're right.

I think all I was trying to suggest was, again, that idea of 'making sure to devote time smartly to everything instead of just tackling things randomly - plan ahead and segment so you use the time wisely.' It wasn't to say that you attack each piece in a certain way.

But thank you for clarifying with detail!

II