Piano World Home Page Forums Our Most Popular Forums Adult Beginners Forum Beginners practice, when work becomes fun

I'm roughly three months into playing now. According to my daily practice log, I average 1.02 hours per day. Only four of those days had zero playing time.

Was it fun? Honestly, it was more work than fun. Sometimes I had to force myself to play. Now don't get me wrong, I love piano and am driven to succeed. Otherwise I don't think I would have been able to average that time spent per day.

More recently I am starting to desire my practice time during the day. I'm looking forward to it. I'm having fun. I think this transition from feeling its work to feeling its fun started about the time I figured out how to play Blow The Man Down, in time, at speed, musically.

My attitude towards playing seems be changing as I develop a bit of skill. I'm certainly a rank beginner, but I'm getting better.

So I'm wondering if this transformation from work to having fun is common? Did this happen with you? Was it more fun than work from the beginning or the other way around? My guess is that people that give up never get to the point where its more fun than work.

I'd love to hear your experience with regard to these feelings.

I agree, there was definitely a significant bootstrapping period at the beginning, an uphill slog powered by willpower alone, until I finally developed enough skill to rock out (on Telemann ) and enjoy the music I was playing.

Oh, yeah! The beginning is a definite slog, and there's very little to nothing enjoyable about it. Scales, exercises, learning to read elementary music, playing "When the Saints Go Marching In" over and over and over--these things get old real fast.
Now, an hour a day is a laudable amount of practice, but maybe part of your problem is that you're practicing TOO MUCH in these early stages.
For instance, the first day we sit down to practice, we might learn the C major scale and perhaps the G major. So we practice it for a while until we really get it. But we quickly find out that there's a "law of diminishing returns." That is, when you are only practicing a very small thing or have a very small repertoire, a lot of practice often doesn't return any measurably better results than a little.
As we get better, of course, we can benefit from greater and greater amounts of practice. For instance, when I practice scales, I usually set my timer for 20 minutes. But I get through about 15 major and minor scales in that time, playing each about 10 or more times. That didn't happen when I knew only 2.
Anyway, to get back to your original question: YES IT GETS FUN! Soon you'll have enough pieces that you're fairly comfortable with that you can return to them often and just play for the sheer enjoyment. At that point you should always be pushing ahead into new territory every day, but going back to the stuff you're good at at least once a week. That's the fun part.
BTW, if an hour session is a drag that you have to force upon yourself, why not try 4 sessions of 15 minutes. It adds up to the same thing and is not nearly as painful.

Man, I would spend 5 minutes and memorize the basic GCD chords and then download a version of Here’s a Quarter, Call Someone who Cares by Travis Tritt and then just play the chords along with the song (with a single root note bass line). It will immediately give you pleasure and a sense of accomplishment to be playing along with something and you will be a part of the music. Every time you play it, you can add different chord inversions, more intricate bass line, try adding different notes to the chords etc.

So many piano players are too intimidated to play along with music: my sister is an excellent player however she has never improvised or simply played to songs off a cd. I encourage you to step outside your comfort zone and try it….it really isn’t that hard to hack your way through a simple song that you like. It is good for the ear, good for your confidence and it is certainly fun…all good fuel to keep your practice level up.


edit: There is no hidden insulting message in the song title I chose...it is simply an easy song to play and you can have some fun with it.