5 hours per day?
I admire your dedication. I could never get myself to practice 5 hours per day.
If you practice productively, you could expect to see massive changes in your playing ability, especially sight-reading. Albeit, learning an instrument is a slow process, and 5 hours/day won't guarantee fast improvement. However, if you're that determined, you'll learn incredibly quickly.
There is no precise answer nor certainty that it will yield the results that you're hoping for. However, I would say, more likely than not, that you'll develop a passion for piano and not re
For a two hour practice regimen per day, I recommend the following:
Warm up: Fifteen minutes. Hanon is a good place to start, as has been mentioned before. But easy tunes you have mastered - which do not tax your technique - is also a way to go. And it also acts as a kind of review. You spent the time learning the songs, why not keep playing them? So use easy songs to warm up.
Part One: During this 20 minutes you want to review songs you’ve been playing a while and doing “house keeping”, which is to say solving niggling problems you always seem to stumble over. Get them solved.
How you do this: play the measure(s) in question, where the problem lies. But do so very slowly, walking through mechanically what your fingers are being asked to do. Make sure the fingering is correct for you - which means the “suggested” fingering may not suit your hands (if you have very long fingers, altering the fingering is just necessary - but all alterations must be justified as the most common sense and logical for your fingers; otherwise they should remain as suggested).
For a multiple measure issue, play one measure only. Again, walk through mechanically very slowly to ensure you are playing the bits correctly (for your hands). Get it right, repeatable, and accurate.
Do this for each measure. Then join two measures together and keep it slow. You want correct fingering - encouraging correcting muscle memory errors. Do not speed up.
Once the problems are figured and solutions are found and implemented, play one or two measure before the passage you have just fixed and play into and through the trouble spots and into one measure past the measures at issue. Do it slowly! Do not play fast.
Only increase tempo when you have everything smoothed out and playing properly.
Spend about 10 minutes per song. This is not a one day problem solving approach. Problems take more than one day. Don’t worry about it. Play the long game here. It may take a week or more to bring a part up to speed. Increase tempo only as much as you can preserve correct technique and smooth correct playing of the part. Play the whole song at the slower tempo - which is dictated by the trouble section(s) as to the speed of the whole song. Small incremental increases in tempo will ensure the whole piece plays smooth and properly with correct technique all the way from beginning to end.
So you may only get to two or three songs in this section of your practice. It’s okay. Remember - the long game is the key, not quick and “easy”, though some solutions will be just that.
As you get better at problem solving, it will begin to flow a little quicker beginning to end and getting the tune back up to “performance” tempo. But never try to “short cut” solutions. It usually doesn’t work. Be patient! You’ll get it done.
Part Two: In this section, now that you are fully warmed up, you want to spend 30 minutes or so working on technique. Maybe your trills are wobbly and not smooth and flowing; maybe your dynamics are not as well developed as they should be. Whatever it is, this section is where you work on them.
Pick three or four to work on, ten minutes each. Slow down. Choose the material you will use to improve each technnique, whether a measure where there is a trill, or a song with differing dynamics, or whatever it is you need to work on.
Slow everything down to work out the mechanics of what you’re doing.
For example, dynamics (how loud or soft)…
Most of your dynamics is in your fingers. Your wrists should be still and it is from your fingers you can accomplish volume changes from pianissimo to forte, and everything in between. Movement in your wrists destroys your touch dynamics, how much control you have over how loud or soft you play.
You can use scales to work on stablizing your wrists. They should not move, only your fingers should be moving and playing here.
Once you have this adjustment made, you can begin to work on dynamics with more effective touch in your playing. Your pianissimo will be more quiet, your mezzoforte will be more consistent, etc…
For trills or other elements of technique, just follow a common sense approach in tackling the problem and finding real solutions. You’ll get it.
Part Three: In this section you begin working on songs that are still in some stage of learning. You are fully warmed up now.
Choose four songs, 15 minutes each. Applying much of what I have mentioned here above, start working through the song in four measure segments.
Play the first four measures of the song. Slow down. Play it again. Repeat four times… until it begins to sound reasonably smooth.
Play the second four measures of the song. Slow down. Play it again. Repeat four times…. until it begins to sound reasonably smooth.
Attach the second four measures to the first four. Play all eight measures. Repeat four times.
Play the next four measures over again until it is good, then attach to the first eight measures and play these 12 measures until they sound reasonably good as a whole.
Repeat this process of additive progress until you are to the end. You won’t do it in one day.
Move to the next song and do this exact process. And on the next, until you have worked in some part on all four tunes.
Part Four: This is the final portion, and it is sight reading exercises.
The best sight reading exercise I have found is to play songs you’ve never set eyes upon. You want songs that are within your core playing ability. But you also want songs that are at the edge of your ability, too.
Too many people let their sight reading skills fall by the wayside, they don’t keep their reading abilities up. So they struggle when learning new pieces… and it goes very slow, and causes frustration.
Bonus round: This is kind of “post practice”… where you just play for fun without any concern about what you play. All you have to do is be sure your technique is brought into this time. You can be “sloppy” in WHAT you play, but should not be sloppy in HOW you play it. Play whatever you want and have fun.
The fun part is also something people tend to not pursue. Pursue it! It is in part why you learned to play in the first part, to enjoy yourself. So do not deny yourself the joy of playing just to play!
(IF you cite any of this elsewhere, please include your source - me. I offer this for free to you. Please honour my authorship. Thank you.)
Be careful! If you are just starting out I would caution you against practicing for long periods. It is very important to build up gradually in order to let your body get used to it. Also I don't think practicing more than four hours a day is valuable because your mind needs time to consolidate what you have practiced and that consolidation time needs to happen away from the piano. In an ideal world if you want to practice more, you would practice more times a day. Sometimes being at the instrument for a long time can become very unproductive because your attention span is gone.
You are far bet
Best to leave unmentioned the awfully questionable things I would do in exchange for a regularly occuring 8-hour period in which to practice. The days in which I can wake up and worry about nothing but playing are few and far between — what you’re calling work is what I call a day spa!
That being said, I wouldn’t practice for literally an eight-hour stretch with no punctuation. I don’t know many musicians who would, except in some kind of stressful emergency rehearsal situation. Rather, I’d play for an hour or so, go do something else for a few minutes, come back, et cetera. Our poor neurons ca
I taught myself Moonlight Sonata. The first movement.
I wanted to teach myself the third movement…
…but after about a week, decided to try something easier.
To teach myself the first movement, I practiced for about 3 to 4 hours per day, 5 to 6 days a week (I was also doing my last year of university full-time and working a part-time job, so I couldn’t find time to practice every day unfortunately). It took two or three months before I had it down to this:
And even here, I still made mistakes.
Now sure, I was a little rusty. I hadn’t tak
If you are indeed a complete beginner, we can safely assume that you do not play the piano well, at least for now. With adequate training and practice, you will certainly be able play the piano well. Make sure you have an expert teacher, the best you can afford or find. Sixteen hours a day of unsupervised heavy practice is likely to wreck your joints and make a cripple out of you. Musicians are p rone to develop carpal tunnel, bursitis, tendon inflammation, arthritis. All these medical disasters can be easily avoided if you get a good teacher who has performed extensively. But if you really wan
5 hours per day?
I admire your dedication. I could never get myself to practice 5 hours per day.
If you practice productively, you could expect to see massive changes in your playing ability, especially sight-reading. Albeit, learning an instrument is a slow process, and 5 hours/day won't guarantee fast improvement. However, if you're that determined, you'll learn incredibly quickly.
There is no precise answer nor certainty that it will yield the results that you're hoping for. However, I would say, more likely than not, that you'll develop a passion for piano and not regret the hours i
Yes, it’s fine - IF…
You yourself are initiating this two hours, not making a child do it. I made a good business as a piano teacher helping restore - what shall we call them - victims, refugees? of a torture system of piano, trying to make music - the wonder of the world - into a common Olympic sport, or worse yet, a career.
Practice with purpose - to make some improvement, either in result or in your approach or feeling or attitude, each session. Find some way to end the session satisfied, even if by playing some unrelated piece that restores the mental bruises of arduous practice.
Don’t just w
It kinds of depends on whether you practice good or practice bad. It's not true that practice makes perfection. Only good practice makes perfection. If there is a particular bar or two that I am finding trickier than the rest I have a tendancy to pull it out and drill it for some time then mould it all back together. I don't really think about the time I spend on it. I have the occasionally day when I play for a few hours and see a marked improvement, however on other days when I don't play much except pieces I have known for a long time, it keeps my fingers supple and helps me relax.
0, zero, none. Not a minute, not a second. NEVER force a child to do anything creative like playing an instrument, singing, acting, dancing whataver. It can cause severe psychological trauma if kids are forced to do things they do not like.
Luckily I can’t speak from experience, but sadly there are enough people who can. Things that often occur are; perfectionism, problems with self image, problems with authority, obsessiveness and many other psychological problems or flaws that can break or hold back a person in life.
So if you love your daughter talk to her. Let her figure out what she’d like
It really depends on how you practice. If you're mindlessly just pressing keys for 5 hours, that won't get you anywhere on your playing abilities. You need to know everything you're doing wrong, which is really hard to do especially at a beginners level, and be able to correct those mistakes and improve. Very hard to do without some sort of teacher.
Hi Joy,
This is subjective and varies person to person and how well they learn. It even varies day to day! There are days where you will have more productive practice sessions than others, no different than exercising. When I workout there are days where I say to myself “Wow! I got a lot out of that workout session!” and there are also days where I felt like though I got through the workout I was kind of “going through the motions that day.” The same goes with practice.
You can sit at a piano for 3 hours a day and get very little done, then there are ways where you can get more accomplished in 1
You’re missing the first part, which is an explanation of the level you’re at currently. But, since you said “to learn piano in a year,” I’m going to infer that you mean starting from scratch.
Piano is a very physical instrument, and that demands consistent exercise. You wouldn’t, for example, expect to compete in a figure model competition exercising only 30 minutes a day for a year.
That said, there are several different methods of approach. Most classically-trained musicians are going to suggest that you might be able to finish a level one within a year at just 30 minutes per day. I’m going t
First, if something hurts, it is because you are doing something wrong. Taking a break from playing won’t fix the problem, only proper movement will fix the problem for proper movement promotes healing. If you have a nail in your shoe, taking a break from walking will not solve your problem. Taking the nail out will.
You have several slight movements that I don’t like. Normally, they would be okay but since you have pain, they are clearly a problem.
- You cross your thumb slightly under the palm. Most pianists are taught this way but it is dangerous for two reasons; the forefinger and thumb tendon
