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Why?

I know places like Juilliard are full of them. There are even a couple at my school. A viola player who would practice sometimes up to 15 hours a day. She is now mental, quite literally... at a young age.

Those that don't turn insane, often just lack a social life. friends disappear, girlfriend/boyfriend as well(if you had one to begin with)

Yeah, I know that people who practice that intensely, have a very good chance at greatness. But is it worth to became asocial as a result?

I think not!

I remember Hamelin once answered question that was something like "Do you have plans of doing more recordings of Sorabji's music?" to which he replied: "No. Sorabji's music consumes your whole life - there's so much more out there!" And there's so much more out there away from the piano as well!

Am I the only one who shares the idea that devoting all of your time to piano is going way too far?

To answer a question such as this, one has to be able to put oneself in the shoes of the person who is so committed to perfecting their art that all other pursuits take a back seat. You're viewing the question from your own perspective on life and that may not be the perspective of the devoted artist(s) you speak of. To them, a social life might not be a high priority and the lack of one doesn't necessarily lead to an emotionally unbalanced personality.

Striking a happy balance is what is considered desirable, but perhaps we should be grateful for those whose drive for perfection has given us some of the artists that we have seen and will continue to see.

Regards,

Practicing ten hours is counterproductive and wasteful.

yes, speaking of lang lang -- i watched his interview on al jazeera america a second time because i was so impressed with it (it's not available online, unfortunately). he had a 'tiger dad' who ruthlessly pushed him; he was away from his mom for months at a time, he practiced 8 hours a day... but to be really great at something sacrifices & priorities must be made. i think he said now he only practices a few hours a day, and he's as well-adjusted and down-to-earth a person as anyone can imagine. and he's making up for lost time with his mum.

if the mountaintop is your goal, do what it takes to get there. then you can relax a bit.

Those who practice ten hours a day have already lost part of their sanity. They have fallen prey to this simple fallacy: "The more hours a day I practice, the better I'll get". This is what the Germans (who can create a word for anything) call a "Milchmädchenrechnung" which translates as "calculating like a milkmaid" (sorry if there are any milkmaids here who find this insulting).

The reality is this: nobody can keep up the intense concentration required to practice efficiently, deliberately for 10 hours a day. During several of those ten hours, the pianist falls inevitably into mindless repetitions. And, as we must always remind ourselves, practice doesn't make perfect: practice makes permanent.

Noa Kageyama has written a very good article on this subject

Well, speaking as someone who spent about five hours today practicing, I can say that I made a heck of a lot more progress today than the days when I can only put in an hour.

Now, was that five times as much progress?

Probably not, but there never came a time when I was getting nothing out of it even though I wasn't able to maintain full effective concentration for all of that time.

Because part of it was also simply the need for repetition, too, which is another part of learning for me. I just needed to get a lot of slow repetition in on a bunch of ALREADY WORKED OUT passages, even when I was checked out mentally. There seems to be a minimum amount of repetition I just need to do once I know how to do something that reinforces the work I did, so that I can take the next step, be it shaping the dynamics or bringing up the tempo. That simply takes time, and I can't cheat that part. Now, these were individual passages. Stitching everything together and fixing issues DOES require concentration--that requires high-octane problem-solving concentration mode, and I certainly didn't have five hours of that kind of efficiency. So I'd oscillate between the two and I think the five hours was well spent.

After all was said and done, I plowed through quite a lot that I just needed to start exposing my fingers to, reinforced things that have already been worked out to prepare for bringing up the tempo, and started stitching together and polishing parts that are well-learned but need to be strung together so I can start building the cohesive whole I need to have by May 21.

Frankly, it's going to requrire a lot of five hour days. Tomorrow will not be one of them, but Saturday and Sunday EACH need to be long practice days, and each weekday will need to be at least 1-2 hours of practice so that Friday, when I leave for six days and will not have access to a piano at all, I won't be too far behind. Because after I get back I only have a week until I have to start rehearsing, then three more days of that until a recital.

Oh good lord, now I'm starting to panic!

Thank you, Svenno, I absolutely agree.
If one is aiming to become a pianist he needs to become an artist and a creator as well. You can not say much through playing if your own world is very small and you have nothing to share with your audience.
So, from my perspective, a Healthy practicing and a Healthy life is the key to success.

Having been one who has done 7-9h a day at one of those famous music colleges, the reason why I practiced so much is because:
1. I gained a security over the piece which allows you to play a very hard demanding programme in any condition. Which I found to be useful because under the stress of competitions, it helped me play far less wrong notes.
2. It makes you far more confident. Seriously, I slept so much better at night, knowing I had worked hard for very long hours. It somehow made me feel better and more comfortable.
3. My technique got so much better, in a way which practising half the amount would't have improved. Very hard, awkward passages became so much easier.


I never have had a problem with tendinitis, RSI or nothing like that.


I never practised more than 90mins in a row without having a 10-30min break.
I always paid attention to how my hands felt. I felt exhausted by the end, but I never felt tense or painful.
I always took great care of my posture.


I profoundly disagree when people say it's not healthy or it's not good.

It's not healthy, if you aren't used to it, if you don't have the technique or the stamina/endurance.

Better 10 hours a day at age 19 than at 50, I suppose.

I don't understand this idea of sacrifice. Why do people think that those who spend 10h practicing are mentally ill/unhappy?? If someone doesn't want to do something, and doesn't get pleasure out of it, unless it's a little kid being forced to do it, this person will stop.
I don't practice 10h a day, but I always get at least 6h. And frankly, if I had more time, I would practice more. Whenever I'm doing something not related to music, the only thing I can think about is how much longer will it take for me to start practicing again. This whole thing feeds on itself, the more you delve into it, the more you want to study... There's really no space, or need, for anything else. At least at this point in life.

There are people who really do not need so much social life. I am one of them. I can enjoy it to some point and get along with people fine, but do not really need it. Never have, not even as a child, I preferred books. I have spent 2 weeks on a cottage by myself and not spoken to a soul during that time and it was a wonderful. If I have something meaningful to do, I can keep doing it for hours. I'm a bit envious to those who CAN spend 10 hours a day on the piano
Of course it's not always productive and may not suite everyone's physique, but it doesn't necessarily need to be harmful either.

I agree. If they like it they like it.
There might be some tiger mums who force their young children to practice, and this might be a different scenario, but advanced students who CHOOSE to practice all day are a different story.
Social life is not everybody's cup of tea.

I had a few years in my life when I was practicing more than 8 hours a day. My personal record is 13 hours of practice (I don't count breaks). I practiced so much because I started in competitions and I loved to play. I don't think it was smart, I could practice less and get the same effect. But these hours gave me confidence with my performances at competitions. I don't need a social life so much, I easily get bored with people. I don't regret that I practiced so much.

I can't even get my pupils to practise 10 minutes a week.....

I imagine that these people who practice 6-8 hours a day also do not read interesting things, do not write interesting things, and do not lead very interesting lives.

Being a good musician requires going beyond music. It requires appreciating and relating to other forms of art, to intellectual pursuits, to nature, to social activities.

Those who narrowly confine their lives to the instrument itself will never experience the world, will never experience joy and suffering, and will never attain true artistry. At best, they will play the right notes, at more or less the right time.

This is not true of everyone who practises for 8 to 12 hours a day, but it is true for a majority and answers the question 'why is it that although I practise 8 hours a day, I don't get any better'.....

What often happens is that people practise exactly the same thing over and over again, in exactly the same way, without ever stopping to analyse exactly what is going wrong or how it can be improved. It's like someone chipping away randomly at a piece of marble and hoping that a beautiful sculpture will appear - it rarely does.

Practice should include mental work - analysing the score, taking in all the details, working out fingerings without playing them. Of course you have to drill things, and do your technical study, but really, 10 hours a day is excessive. I practised an average of 7 hours day when I was studying in conservatoire and mostly all I got was frustrated. Oh yes, I learned a lot of repertoire, and my fingers worked, but so what. So did everyone else. It was really following the crowd.

Bjorn makes a point that you have to experience life as well - this is probably why we often prefer hearing late recordings of Cortot and Horowitz rather than the latest competition winners - and hopefully these competition winners will develop into the kind of musicians that we prefer to listen to in a couple of decades time!

There are many, many people who work 12 hours a day, six to seven days a week which leaves over five hours a day to do other things - like getting drunk, like so many other people.......

Or they might spend those five hours reading Goethe, going to art galleries, or rock-climbing.

So, don't dismiss those people who have a passion for something, and spend a lot of time on it. For professional concert pianists, it's their day job, and also their passion (hopefully). Many of the great concert pianists are in this category - when they are not actually practicing, they are listening to operatic recordings, studying new scores, giving masterclasses or individual lessons. And travelling to their next concert venue.

If you practice 10 hours a day and sleep seven hours, that leaves another seven hours free. If you don't spend it in a bar/pub drinking, you can read the entire oeuvre of Shakespeare in one month. Or in the outdoors, trail-running, hiking and climbing (which is my preference - not that I have anything against Shakespeare ).

One aspect about practicing is that you can take a break for coffee or muffins (or chocolate brownies ) whenever you feel like it. Which isn't something you can easily do if you're at work......

Just came back from school after practicing for 5 hours (with a couple breaks, of course.) Actually, I think this is the most progress I've ever made with a piece in such a short amount of time. I learned to fluently play Bach's 11th prelude and the first page of the fugue from WTC I from scracth, with half the prelude already memorized. I kind of panic-learned it, cause I have been leaving it behind due to a Liszt Rhapsody I had to learn... but my teacher thought I wouldn't get the Bach ready for next month's exam! bah!

Of course I had very little time to work on other, more difficult stuff... like the Bach-Busoni chaconne i'm learning.

So this left me to think... If a pianist has many pieces to learn at one time, he just can't manage below 10-or-so hours a day, with 1-1,5 hours per piece! I mean, including the Bach P&F I almost finished today, I have the B/B chaconne, A 5 minute Debussy piece, Rach's etude op. 39 no. 6, then two piano duo pieces - Ligeti's "five pieces", and a postmodernist piece by John Pitts. Plus a weighty, 20 page piece, a final exam work by a composition student who asked me to perform it... and I don't want to let her down, obviously.

And they're all, except for the Bach/Busoni, due to performance in june. A few of them I will perform at an international competition in Italy... I would already have to work 8 hours a day, at least!

So perhaps the busier pianists really have no other choice but to practice 12 hours a day, because they simply have to go through several pieces per day... and not just small solo compositions - but whole sonatas, concertos...

I feel exactly the same way about the seasons in which I can practice 7-9hrs a day. Very different from the 2-4hr seasons.

I suppose I don't have time to spend many hours a week hanging around with friends. But to be honest I would rather make music with people, work with people, be at dance class with people, and hang around with my family than go to parties or spend hours sitting around at a friend's house doing nothing. So my life allows for the kind of socializing I find valuable.

Bjorn, would you say the same thing about people who go to a job for 6-8 hours a day?