One of the most frequent questions I hear from piano students is “How much should I practice the piano every day?” Unfortunately, the answer is not clear-cut. The amount of time you should practice every day depends on a variety of factors.
This article will help you get a more clear-cut idea of the amount of daily practice you need, based on your specific goals and current level.
The quick answer
Although there is no one-size-fits-all answer to this question, it can be useful to have a general rule of thumb as a starting point. That said, and knowing that this is a HUGELY variable issue and your own amount of practice may fall outside these ranges, here are a few general guidelines to consider. Please note that these guidelines apply to students who play the piano at the advanced intermediate level or higher.
- Middle School and High School: 1-2 hours per day. Serious high school pianists who are planning to audition for music schools will likely practice more.
- Undergraduate Piano Major: 2-4 hours per day. Serious undergraduate piano majors who are planning to audition for graduate school will probably need to practice at the upper range of this.
- Undergraduate Piano Secondary: 30 min-1 hour per day. Some undergraduate secondary students (students who are not majoring in music but want to stay active on the piano and are taking lessons on the side) who are quite serious and already advanced pianists may find themselves practicing a bit more than that.
- Masters/DMA Piano Major: 3-6 hours per day.
- Adult Amateur: 1-2 hours per day. Many adult amateurs are busy people who have difficulty even finding 15 minutes a day to practice! But ideally, an adult amateur student will be able to commit at least an hour a day to practicing, in order to advance at a satisfying pace and get the most out of their piano study.
Quantity vs. Quality
It is extremely important to focus on QUALITY of practice: doing so will actually decrease the time you spend in the practice room, because you will accomplish more in less time. But you will also need to devote sufficient time and practice consistently enough to reach your performance goals.
I like to compare the process of practicing with the act of boiling an egg. If you want to boil an egg, the water has to be, well, boiling. In order to boil water you need to provide a lot of heat under the pan. The heat brings the water to a rolling boil. Then you put your egg in and it cooks in just a few minutes. If the flame under the pot is weak or if you turn it off before the water gets hot, the egg will just sit in the pan without doing anything.
If you follow this method of cooking eggs, you will be waiting a long time for your breakfast!
Practicing is the same: you need to provide good, consistent effort (the flame), which produces boiling water (motivation and progress), which cooks the egg (a finished performance).
Today I’m going to consider four factors that help determine how much practice you need: Consistency, Amount of Repertoire, Energy, and Goals. Let’s go through these one by one.
Consistency
The brain can only hold a few pieces of information in its working memory. When we first learn a piece, we need to repeat small phrases more frequently, and as we grow more and more familiar with a piece, we can repeat longer phrases less frequently. This is called “chunking.”
You can see this if you learn a language, for example. At first, you’ll learn isolated words, such as each individual number (one, two, three, etc.), and you will need to repeat them frequently over the course of many days in order to retain them. Once they work their way into your long-term memory, your brain will chunk them together and store them all together as one concept (“Numbers”), thereby leaving space in your working memory to learn additional pieces of information.
This is why you need to practice a sufficient AMOUNT on a daily basis. This daily repetition is necessary in order for the learning process to start “cooking.”
Repertoire
How much repertoire are you learning? The more pieces you are currently working on, the more time it takes to get around to all of them every day. If you have a lot of difficult pieces, you will need to practice more every day than if you just have a few.
Here are some guidelines on how to organize your repertoire; the amount of time it takes to do all of these will help show you how much time you need to practice every day.
Play everything every day.
If you have several pieces that you are learning, it is easy to get bogged down on one of them and neglect the other ones that are on your plate. Simply make sure that you play every note of every piece that you are currently working on every day.
You will find that you will naturally feel the need to take more time on some pieces than others. That’s fine! If you have spent most of your day working on one piece, just be sure that you go back to the pieces you didn’t work on, before you conclude your practice day. Either read through them slowly, or do a practice performance, or simply practice through them carefully one time.
Making sure you practice every note of every piece every day serves two functions. First, you will learn pieces much more quickly. Secondly, it clarifies when your practice day is actually finished. Without that certainty, you will either waste a bunch of time practicing something that you have already worked on enough for that day, or not leave enough time in the day to get to everything.
Have different pieces in different stages of completion.
It takes completely different practice skills to learn a brand new piece than it does to work on polishing a piece you have played for a long time. When you are first learning a piece, you are in the stage of getting familiar with it, learning the notes, and choosing your fingering. This is typically (and most effectively) done in small sections.
If you are in the middle stage of learning a piece, you will be working on larger sections, making interpretative decisions, working out technically challenging parts, and bringing the piece up to tempo.
If you are in the later stage of learning a piece, you will be preparing it for a performance, by doing run-throughs, refining memory, working on interpretation, and thinking deeply about refinements in sound and touch.
Ideally, at any given time, you will be working on pieces at different stages in the learning process. If your teacher has assigned you several new pieces, don’t start them all at once! Choose a “front-burner” piece that you will focus on first, and after you get somewhat familiar with that, add a new piece to the mix as you keep practicing the first one.
Play pieces that are at the correct level for you.
We all have what I call “heart’s desire” pieces: pieces that we aspire to play someday. However, you should always play music that is at your appropriate level, which sometimes means holding off on that one piece you are still dying to play.
While having an appropriate challenge is a good thing, when you practice you want to cultivate an attitude of EASE. You don’t want to play music that is so difficult that you can’t actually practice all of it within a reasonable amount of time. If you sit at the piano and struggle to play a piece line by line, and after a solid practice session you have only gotten through a small amount of it, that piece is likely still a level or two beyond where you are right now.
And that’s okay!
To create a more solid foundation and give yourself the experience of learning more pieces, work on music that is at your level and doesn’t feel effortful. Over time, your skills will grow and you WILL be ready for that “heart’s desire” piece!
Energy
How much energy do you have? If you are exhausted from doing 10,000 other things, you won’t be able to get much done at the piano and you will waste time, which can lead to feelings of overwhelm and discouragement.
Here are some strategies for maximizing your energy at the piano.
Get enough sleep.
While it used to be fashionable to boast about how sleep-deprived you were, we are now learning that sleep is essential for our ability to use our time well and accomplish our goals. Scientists have found that being sleep-deprived is similar to being intoxicated from alcohol and results in impaired judgment, reduced motor coordination, and a loss of efficiency.
If you want to accomplish more during your practice time, get sufficient sleep.
Practice at peak focus times.
Different people have different chronotypes. (Your “chronotype” is basically another word for your biological clock.) Some people are naturally awake and alert first thing in the morning (so-called “larks”), while others don’t really come into their own until the evening hours (“owls”). There are several different chronotypes. You can take this quiz to find out what chronotype you are. When are you most alert? That would a be a good time to try to practice consistently.
As a “lion” chronotype, I prefer to get the bulk of my practicing done in the morning because that is when I concentrate the best.
Eat healthy food and get enough exercise.
Playing the piano is a physical activity. Think like an athlete and nourish yourself accordingly. To maximize your brain power, fuel up with healthy, wholesome foods and avoid processed foods full of chemicals.
Also, it’s important to take good care of your body and exercise on a regular basis. The CDC recommends at least 150 minutes of aerobic exercise and two strength-training sessions per week. Playing the piano pairs well with sports that don’t risk damaging the hands, like running, walking, swimming, biking, kickboxing, etc.
Goals
What are your performance goals? Are you preparing for a big audition or competition, or are you playing recreationally? The bigger the goal, the more intensively you need to practice to prepare. Take some time to map out upcoming goals you have, both in terms of pieces you are working on and also in terms of larger life goals with relation to the piano.
In conclusion…
There is no set amount of time you should be practicing, nor is there a guarantee that if you practice a certain number of hours per day you will definitely reach your goals. However, the strategies above, in combination with the rough hourly estimates at the beginning of this article, can help you set your own guidelines for the amount of time you need to practice every day.
Further Reading:
6 Tips to Help You Practice More Effectively
Lots of good ideas here, a number of which I already employ, but always room for improvement¡
There is always the need to balance quantity with quality – practicing less, but more effectively, will take you farther than practicing more, but ineffectively.