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Joined: Dec 2010
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10 minutes daily: This is a good place to start if you want to play Jingle Bells for the rest of your life.
30 minutes daily: Getting warmer...
One hour daily: Here's a reasonable amount of time that will get you to a very proficient level in a number of years.
Two or more hours daily: Hey...you're serious about this music stuff! You'll be playing music on a stage somewhere soon.
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In a documentary, Richter himself said that he never practised anymore than 3 hours a day (except on very rare occasions where he had a unreasonable deadline to learn a piece). This makes a lot of sense when you consider that at 3 hours a day, it will take approximately 9 years to reach 10 000 hours of practice. Which is what psychologists tell us is the magic number for developing full blown expertise in any field (especially cigar rolling believe it or not). So assuming most of this three hours is focused practising and you start at age 5, by the time you are 14 years of age you would be a virtuoso (assuming good instruction and no learning disabilities). All that while only loosing a meagre three hours of your day. Most people spend as much or more watching television. But, 3 (back-to-back) hours of focused practice is not realistic generally (barring the use of some kind of stimulant) at early stages of learning. So lets assume that of the 3 hours only two of them are actually focused. This still means that if you start playing at age 5, by the time you are 18 you would, in all probability, be a virtuoso. Now imagine you practice 8 hours a day, and are able to maintain a high degree of focus because you separate those 8 hours into periods of a more reasonable duration. By doing this it is conceivable that you could become a virtuoso in approximately 3.5 years. Just as a side note: This kind of takes the wind out the innate talent theory and says a lot about the power of the human brain. Also, if anyone is interested, I would be willing to put this theory to the test by practising 8 hours a day, assuming of course you pay for 3 years worth of room and board.
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During the summer 3 to 5 hours a day. During the school year, (I teach) 1-2 hours. I guess I'm serious.
Best regards,
Deborah
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10 minutes daily: This is a good place to start if you want to play Jingle Bells for the rest of your life.
30 minutes daily: Getting warmer...
One hour daily: Here's a reasonable amount of time that will get you to a very proficient level in a number of years.
Two or more hours daily: Hey...you're serious about this music stuff! You'll be playing music on a stage somewhere soon. I'm curious as to where you got these figures. A study, perhaps? Or pulling out of thin air? Anyway, I think they're reasonable (except the last one - playing on stage somewhere soon is a bit of a reach! :D) I've found the magic number for me to be anywhere from 1.5 - 3.0 hours. Some nights I can only get 30 minutes in and I feel like I'm running in place (but still improving, but slowly). Other nights I can get in an hour, so I practice for 30 minutes and noodle / play for the other 30, so still running in place. When I can get those marathon practices in (with breaks, of course), I find I make the most progress. (and it does sort of make sense, right?) And it's hard for most adults to get that kind of time in on the piano. For me, I sacrifice sleepy time for practicing. Gotta have priorities!
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music to me is kind of like putting together pieces of a puzzle i call it the paino because its where i put all my pain
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I think the expression goes . . . "Says you." or "Who says?"
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I'm currently playing - and I make the point playing/practicing at the same time - for about an hour each week night and between 3 and 5 hours each on Sat and Sun, broken up between before my family gets out bed and after I've done my 'jobs around the house' stuff and gone to the supermarket or whatever.
I've been watching next to no TV these last three months or so (I'm finding the less you watch the less you feel like watching) and that frees up big blocks of time.
As I've posted elsewhere my immediate goal is to be able to play on piano, by Christmas, at about the same level I was on guitar at about 2 - 3 years when I first joined a band (ie. competent enough to to play accompaniment to vocals without feeling completely embarassed but certainly not flawless or without lots more to learn).
Guitar since 1966. Piano (Kawai DP80) since 2011.
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Two or more hours daily: Hey...you're serious about this music stuff! You'll be playing music on a stage somewhere soon. Well, I usually play 4 or 5 days a week, and is certainly more than two hours without stopping.
Last edited by CarlosCC; 08/09/11 07:08 AM.
SoundCloud | Youtube Self-taught since Dec2009 "Don't play what's there, play what's not there."
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I don't know about full-blown expertise! 10,000 hours to mastery? How good is good enough? Playing by ear or concert pianist? Somewhere in between? All I know is: I'm enjoying the journey! I can only approach this as a hobby. And like my gardening, it puts me in an alternate state of mind that feeds my soul. This opens up another discussion of attaining subconscious competence. ____________________________________________________________ 1. Subconscious Incompetent (don't know they don't know how to accomplish the skill, task or perform the activity 2. Consciously Incompetent (know they don't know how to accomplish the skill, task or perform the activity) 3. Consciously Competent (know how but need to concentrate to perform the skill, task or activity) 4. Subconscious Competent (know how to accomplish the skill, task or activity without thinking about it) ____________________________________________________________ Consciously IncompetentThis level is a completely natural one on the way to Mastery. Most of the time when we set ourselves the goal of learning something new, we are well aware of the situation and only need to be convinced that it is a temporary level that we will ultimately move through. Of course, the time, energy, and commitment necessary to move through this level to the next depends on the difficulty of the task or activity; learning to ride a bicycle will most often prove to be much easier than learning to figure skate like an Olympic champion. Consciously CompetentThis level is much more critical than is normally understood. When one goes through this level properly, they come out the other end with good knowledge and understanding of the process and what's needed for the activity or task to be accomplished successfully. In a sense Pierce was right; this level is essential to a clear understanding of the task. Furthermore a clear understanding of the task and why it is necessary, is critical before one can pass this information onto others; before one can gain Mastery. Subconsciously CompetentThe original authors chose this as the final level of understanding within the learning process. I agree that this is the level that must be reached before an individual can really be considered to have become truly competent in the performance of a specific task or activity. However, achieving subconscious competence doesn't necessarily mean that the individual has achieved Mastery of the skill, task, or activity.
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Ajcomputerdoc, citation for that?
Regarding the 10,000 hours, PPP didn't just make that up, there was a study and nook that talked about mastery in a variety of skills, and that was pretty much the number, across a range of activities, for "full-blown mastery." PPP what was the original book? I am not remembering author (it wasn't Gladwell was it??) Anyway, that has been talked about on PW a lot, so if you haven't seen mention of it prior to this thread, you're sure to see it in the future.
Started piano June 1999. Proud owner of a Yamaha C2
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With those set time frames in mind, where would a guy like me fit in? In my opinion that's quite a rigid way of thinking about progress. Though I'm not saying it doesn't make sense. If I have a whole day to myself I find myself sitting at the piano in the morning for about an hour just focusing on technique exercises. Then through out the day scattered practice sessions of anywhere between 15-30 minutes and after dinner the same again into the night trying to slowly progress through a selected piece. On a working day, it depends on the time of day I start, I could end up with half before I leave at night when I get back home or just one or the other in the same time frames. Doing this clearly builds up the hours. I'd find it very daunting to sit in place for hours on end to simply focus on a single task, As fun as it may be. I like to keep my interests fresh each time I sit down to the task
Last edited by Sounds_Like; 08/09/11 09:10 AM.
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Joined: Aug 2011
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I think my average is somewhere around these 10 minutes... Can be fun anyway and I haven't played Jingle Bells for at least 10 years!:D
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Joined: Jul 2011
Posts: 22
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Do you seperate practive time from leisure playing time? To me, I don't consider they are different. I usually play at night with headphone after kid goes to bed, I play 30 mins to an hour. I play some pices I download from internet for fun, I like MakingMusicFun.net they have different section so you know what you able to play. For those interested can check here Fur Elise is short and not hard to play. It feels good to play something you like. Moonlight Sonata is a little hard and need to spend time on it. I think Im off topic now , haha. Back to the topic, I think 30 mins is minimum. If you have time , play as much as you like as long as you enjoy what you play.
Yamaha YDP-160 Alfred Premier Piano Course 4 •Minuet in C Major, KV 6 (W.A. Mozart)
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It was in Gladwell but that wasn't the original source.
[ . Wise as in learner Buff as in Colorado Buffalo
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WiseBuff, thanks! That explains why I kept thinking "Gladwell? Not Gladwell..."
KLL, you would be wise to separate focused practicing from playing. The two are different activities and while both are beneficial, only one facilitates real advancement.
Started piano June 1999. Proud owner of a Yamaha C2
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As the saying goes: It aint what you do, its the way how you do it. Bad basic technique and ineffective practice routines can be worse than nothing. So I do Russian school basic technique at least 30 minutes a day. That brings us to Richter and his three hours a day. That must have been after he reached virtuoso level. It would be interesting to know how much he practiced at the Odessa conservatory. When he came to Moscow he was already so good that Heinrich Neuhaus did not have much to teach him. Back to the original question. One hour or more should get you somewhere, if you have a reasonably good practice. And the more you practice, the more you will learn about how to practice, hopefully.
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Joined: Oct 2010
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Full Member
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10 minutes daily: This is a good place to start if you want to play Jingle Bells for the rest of your life.
30 minutes daily: Getting warmer...
One hour daily: Here's a reasonable amount of time that will get you to a very proficient level in a number of years.
Two or more hours daily: Hey...you're serious about this music stuff! You'll be playing music on a stage somewhere soon. I'm curious as to where you got these figures. A study, perhaps? Or pulling out of thin air? Anyway, I think they're reasonable (except the last one - playing on stage somewhere soon is a bit of a reach! :D) I've found the magic number for me to be anywhere from 1.5 - 3.0 hours. Some nights I can only get 30 minutes in and I feel like I'm running in place (but still improving, but slowly). Other nights I can get in an hour, so I practice for 30 minutes and noodle / play for the other 30, so still running in place. When I can get those marathon practices in (with breaks, of course), I find I make the most progress. (and it does sort of make sense, right?) And it's hard for most adults to get that kind of time in on the piano. For me, I sacrifice sleepy time for practicing. Gotta have priorities! Those figures belong to David Sprunger from playpianotoday.com.
Last edited by Ovidiu M; 08/09/11 12:25 PM.
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It was in Gladwell but that wasn't the original source. Ericsson is the scholar most associated with the 10,000 hours to expertise claim. Ericsson, K. A., Krampe, R. T., & Tesch-Römer, J. C. (1993). The role of deliberate practice in the acquisition of expert performance. Psychological Review, 100, 363-406.
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I think how you practice plays a larger part. Spending 10 minutes of intensely focused practice helps more than doodling around for 2 hours.
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Absolutely, and that's something Ericsson stresses in his work. "Deliberate practice" means working on skills, technique, and continually striving to improve your performance. 10,000 hours fooling around on the bench won't get anybody anywhere.
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Piano
by Gino2 - 04/17/24 02:34 PM
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Piano
by Gino2 - 04/17/24 02:23 PM
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