2 hours? 4 hours? 8 hours? 12 hours?
How much is enough?
Is there such a thing as practicing too much?
Is there an optimal number of hours that one should practice?
What Do Performers Say?
Some of the great artists of the 20th century have shared their thoughts on these questions. I once read an interview with Rubinstein (or it may have been Horowitz – I can’t remember exactly whom), in which he stated that nobody should have to practice more than four hours a day, explaining that if you needed to practice more than four hours a day, you probably weren’t doing it right.
Other great artists have expressed similar sentiments. Violinist Nathan Milstein is said to have once asked his teacher Leopold Auer how many hours a day he should be practicing. “If you practice with your fingers, no amount is enough,” was Auer’s response. “If you practice with your head, two hours is plenty.”
Heifetz also indicated that he never believed in practicing too much, and that excessive practice is “just as bad as practicing too little!” He claimed that he practiced no more than three hours per day on average, and that he didn’t practice at all on Sundays. You know, this is not a bad idea – one of my own teachers, Donald Weilerstein, once suggested that I establish a 24-hour period of time every week where I was not allowed to pick up my instrument.
What Do Psychologists Say?
When it comes to understanding expertise and expert performance, psychologist Dr. K. Anders Ericsson is perhaps the world’s leading authority. His research is the basis for the “ten-year rule” and “10,000-hour rule” which suggest that it requires at least ten years and/or 10,000 hours of deliberate practice to achieve an expert level of performance in any given domain – and in the case of musicians, often closer to 25 years in order to attain an elite international level. Note that the real key here is not the amount of practice required but the type of practice required to attain an expert level of performance. In other words, just practicing any old way doesn’t cut it.
Mindless Practice
Have you ever listened to someone practice? Have you ever listened to yourself practice, for that matter? Tape yourself practicing for an hour, take a walk through the practice room area at school and eavesdrop on your fellow students, or ask your students to pretend they are at home and watch them practice during a lesson. What do you notice?
You’ll notice that the majority of folks practice rather mindlessly, either engaging in mere repetition (“practice this passage 10 times” or “practice this piece for 30 minutes”) or practicing on autopilot (that’s when we play through the piece until we hear something we don’t like, stop, repeat the passage again until it sounds better, and resume playing through the piece until we hear the next thing we aren’t satisfied with, at which point we begin this whole process over again).
There are three major problems with the mindless method of practicing.
1. It is a waste of time
Why? For one, very little productive learning takes place when we practice this way. This is how we can practice a piece for hours, days, or weeks, and still not feel that we’ve improved all that much. Even worse, you are actually digging yourself a hole by practicing this way, because what this model of practicing does do is strengthen undesirable habits and errors, literally making it more likely that you will screw up more consistently in the future. This makes it more difficult to correct these habits in the future – so you are actually adding to the amount of future practice time you will need in order to eliminate these bad habits and tendencies. I once worked with a saxophone professor who was fond of reminding his students that “Practice doesn’t make perfect, practice makes permanent.”
2. It makes you less confident
In addition, practicing this way actually hurts your confidence, as there is a part of you that realizes you don’t really know how to consistently produce the results you are looking for. Even if you establish a fairly high success rate in the most difficult passages via mindless practice, and find that you can nail it 3 or 4 out of every 5 attempts, your confidence won’t grow much from this. Real on-stage confidence comes from (a) being able to nail it 10 out of 10 tries, (b) knowing that this isn’t a coincidence but that you can do it the correct way on demand, because most importantly (c) you know precisely why you nail it or miss it – i.e. you know exactly what you need to do from a technique standpoint in order to play the passage perfectly every time.
You may not be able to play it perfectly every time at first, but this is what repetition is for – to reinforce the correct habits until they are stronger than the bad habits. It’s a little like trying to grow a nice looking lawn. Instead of fighting a never-ending battle against the weeds, your time is better spent trying to cultivate the grass so that over time the grass crowds out the weeds.
And here’s the biggie. We tend to practice unconsciously, and then end up trying to perform consciously – not a great formula for success. Recall from this article that you have a tendency to shift over into hyper-analytical left brain mode when you walk out on stage. Well, if you have done most of your practicing unconsciously, you really don’t know how to play your piece perfectly on demand. When your brain suddenly goes into full-conscious mode, you end up freaking out, because you don’t know what instructions to give your brain.
3. It is tedious and boring
Practicing mindlessly is a chore. Music may be one of the only skill-based activities where practice goals are measured in units of time. We’ve all had teachers who tell us to go home and practice a certain passage x number of times, or to practice x number of hours, right? What we really need are more specific outcome goals – such as, practice this passage until it sounds like _____, or practice this passage until you can figure out how to make it sound like _____.
After all, it doesn’t really matter how much time we spend practicing something – only that we know how to produce the results we want, and can do so consistently, on demand.
Deliberate Practice
So what is deliberate, or mindful practice? Deliberate practice is a systematic and highly structured activity, which is, for lack of a better word, scientific. Instead of mindless trial and error, it is an active and thoughtful process of experimentation with clear goals and hypotheses. Violinist Paul Kantor once said that the practice room should be like a laboratory, where one can freely tinker with different ideas, both musical and technical, to see what combination of ingredients produces the result you are looking for.
Deliberate practice is often slow, and involves repetition of small and very specific sections of your repertoire instead of just playing through (e.g. working on just the opening note of your solo to make sure that it “speaks” exactly the way you want, instead of playing the entire opening phrase).
Deliberate practice involves monitoring one’s performance (in real-time, but also via recordings), continually looking for new ways to improve. This means really listening to what happens, so that you can tell yourself exactly what went wrong. For instance, was the first note note sharp? Flat? Too loud? Too soft? Too harsh? Too short? Too long?
Let’s say that the note was too sharp and too long with not enough of an attack to begin the note. Well, how sharp was it? A little? A lot? How much longer was the note than you wanted it to be? How much more of an attack did you want?
Ok, the note was a little sharp, just a hair too long, and required a much clearer attack in order to be consistent with the marked articulation and dynamics. So, why was the note sharp? What did you do? What do you need to do to make sure the note is perfectly in tune every time? How do you ensure that the length is just as you want it to be, and how do you get a consistently clean and clear attack to begin the note so it begins in the right character?
Now, let’s imagine you recorded all of this and could listen to how this last attempt sounded. Does that combination of ingredients give you the desired result? In other words, does that combination of ingredients convey the mood or character you want to communicate to the listener as effectively as you thought it would?
Few musicians take the time to stop, analyze what went wrong, why it happened, and how they can correct the error permanently.
How Many Hours a Day Should I Practice?
You will find that deliberate practice is very draining, given the tremendous amount of energy required to keep one’s full attentional resources on the task at hand. Practicing more than one hour at a time is likely to be unproductive and in all honesty, probably not even mentally or emotionally possible. Even the most dedicated individuals will find it difficult to practice more than four hours a day.
Studies have varied the length of daily practice from 1 hour to 8 hours, and the results suggest that there is often little benefit from practicing more than 4 hours per day, and that gains actually begin to decline after the 2-hour mark. The key is to keep tabs on the level of concentration you are able to sustain.
5 Keys For More Effective Practice
1. Duration
Keep practice sessions limited to a duration that allows you to stay focused. This may be as short as 10-20 minutes for younger students, and as long as 45-60 minutes for older individuals.
2. Timing
Keep track of times during the day when you tend to have the most energy. This may be first thing in the morning, or right before lunch, etc. Try to do your practicing during these naturally productive periods as these are the times at which you will be able to focus and think most clearly.
3. Goals
Try using a practice notebook. Keep track of your practice goals and what you discover during your practice sessions. The key to getting into the “zone” when practicing is to be constantly striving to have clarity of intention. In other words, to have a clear idea of the sound you want to produce, or particular phrasing you’d like to try, or specific articulation, intonation, etc. that you’d like to be able to execute consistently.
When you figure something out, write it down. As I practiced more mindfully, I began learning so much during practice sessions that if I didn’t write everything down, I’d forget.
4. Smarter, not harder
Sometimes if a particular passage is not coming out the way we want it to, it just means we need to practice more. There are also times, however, when we don’t need to practice harder, but need an altogether different strategy or technique.
I remember struggling with the left-hand pizzicato variation in Paganini’s 24th Caprice. I was getting frustrated and kept trying harder and harder to make the notes speak, but all I got was sore fingers, a couple of which actually started to bleed. I realized that there had to be a smarter, more effective way to accomplish my goal.
Instead of stubbornly keeping at a strategy or technique that wasn’t working for me, I forced myself to stop practicing this section altogether. I tried to brainstorm different solutions to the problem for a day or so, and wrote down ideas to try as they occurred to me. When I felt that I came up with some promising solutions, I just started experimenting. I eventually came up with a solution that I worked on over the next week or so, and when I played the caprice for my teacher, he actually asked me how I made the notes speak so clearly!
5. Problem-solving model
Consider this 6-step general problem-solving model summarized below (adapted from various problem solving processes online).
- Define the problem (what do I want this note/phrase to sound like?)
- Analyze the problem (what is causing it to sound like this?)
- Identify potential solutions (what can I tweak to make it sound more like I want?)
- Test the potential solutions to select the most effective one (what tweaks seem to work best?)
- Implement the best solution (make these changes permanent)
- Monitor implementation (do these changes continue to produce the results I’m looking for?)
Or simpler yet, check out this model from Daniel Coyle’s book The Talent Code.
- Pick a target
- Reach for it
- Evaluate the gap between the target and the reach
- Return to step one
It doesn’t matter if we are talking about perfecting technique, or experimenting with different musical ideas. Any model which encourages smarter, more systematic, active thought, and clearly articulated goals will help cut down on wasted, ineffective practice time.
After all, who wants to spend all day in the practice room? Get in, get stuff done, and get out!
You might also enjoy:
- The Best Time of Day to Practice
- Should One Practice Very Much on the Day of a Concert?
- Does Mental Practice Work?
- Yes Practice? No Practice? Why You Must Decide
- Frustrated with Lack of Progress in the Practice Room?
{ 129 comments… read them below or add one }
hola:
sorry for the bad translation, in this article you you mean that no progress beyond the 4 hours and the results decrease after 2 hours, then the ideal number Sobna practice 2 hours a day, or you mean that 4 hours fall if you do it all without Naptime
Hi and thanks for your response
Hello Juan!
There is probably no “perfect” answer to this question of how many hours one should practice, as ultimately, it depends on the individual. However, yes, it seems that for most people productivity begins to diminish after two hours, and by four hours, the potential gains from practicing seem to diminish markedly relative to the cost of the extra time, energy, and effort that it requires. This is perhaps not the best metaphor, but it’s a bit like eating a cheesecake. The first slice is great. The second piece is still pretty tasty, but not quite as fulfilling as the first piece. You might start tiring of cheesecake by the third slice, and by the time you start digging into the fourth piece, you really aren’t thinking about how it tastes anymore.
At the end of the day, know that number of hours is not really the critical factor. If you can stay focused and practice consciously and productively for 8 hours, terrific. If you can only stay focused for an hour, then so be it. Someone once jokingly remarked that music was one of the only skilled activities he could think of where homework was assigned in units of time (e.g. “practice your scales for 30 minutes” as opposed to “practice your scales until you can figure out how to make them sound like ______ 4 times out of 5″). With this in mind, so long as you can stay focused, productive, and fully conscious of what you are trying to accomplish in your practice session and not just mindlessly repeat passages over and over (which can create bad habits that are difficult to unlearn), I think you can feel free to practice as long as you’d like.
Good luck!
Sounds the law of marginal utility and diminishing returns. Satisfaction/pleasure decreases with each additional unit consumed (in this case, with each additional hour practiced per day).
Finally , i found the answers that i was looking for.
Very very good article , thank you very much!
Hi, I’d like to ask if you know how many minutes does the mental concentration, even if you have heard about the technique pomodoro “the 25 minutes” and if you recommend for the practice of
instrument, and finally if you think it is better to sessions
practice 40, 45, 60 minutes to be concentrated well which do you think
which is the most appropriate.
Thanks and sorry for the bad English
Julio,
I have to admit that I’ve not heard about the pomodoro technique you mentioned, but I’ll look into it. The question of how long to structure practice sessions is a tricky one as it depends on a variety of factors (how well-rested you are, the strength of your ability to concentrate in general, time of day, and so on). Try paying closer attention to when your concentration starts to fade during the course of your practice sessions over the next week. This will probably give you a pretty good baseline average. You can then begin to stretch your concentration “endurance” by going another few seconds or minutes longer the next time you notice yourself starting to fade.
I am not a musician, but a painter, and as a painter I face many technical challenges such as color mixing, value judgment, drawing accuracy, etc. I can testify from experience that after four hours of painting I have a very difficult time concentrating and I begin to lose my way. The painting “performance” begins to suffer. What you have presented in this article I can see being very useful to me. Thank you!
Kevin,
Thanks for the comment – very cool to get the perspective of an artist. It is really interesting how generalizable across domains the 4-hour limit on intense concentration (such as required for deliberate practice or other such activities) seems to be.
Thanks for the article. Excellent!
I play both trombone and piano and take them both up seriously, so my practice time is very much divided. So I find it hard to give a good practice on both and stay focused throughout and for as long as i would like. So my question to you is what is the best thing to be doing in between practice that leaves you most feeling refreshed and ready to practice again?
I have found that completely relaxing in between practice, i.e. just vegetating in front of the TV, can have a negative effect and make me feel more lethargic and unable to fully apply my concentration. Whereas continuing to do something mentally taxing naturally wont help matters. So what is the best thing to do?
I’m sure there isn’t a steadfast rule and there as many factors as there are with everything, so it may even be an idea for you to do a full article about this and go into it from many angles, as I’m sure many other musicians share this question.
Thanks
Jason,
Thanks for the comment and the article idea. You raise a great question – perhaps other readers will chime in with what has worked for them. I don’t know that this topic has been looked at in any systematic sort of way, so the answer probably depends on the individual. Like you, I found that watching TV (and even playing on the computer) tended not to be very conducive to a good day of practice.
Have you ever experimented with taking a quick (i.e. 20-minute) power nap or going for a walk? In theory, the ideal activity for between practice sessions would be something that allows you to clear your mind a bit and refresh your body or get the blood circulating a bit without being too strenuous. You could even try an easy run followed by a shower. I’ve only recently begun learning about meditation, but there is some pretty compelling research on the benefits of meditation, and this may be worth looking into as well. In fact, I like a book called Mental Resilience, by Kamal Sarma. It’s as practical and down-to-earth a book on meditation as I’ve found.
Great article! I’ve tried to get this message across to students over the past years. So many think that if they spend more time that solves the problem (or gives them an excuse). This same concept can/should be applied to school scheduling and school calendars! Focused concentration over short periods yields better results than extended “mindless” hours. Thanks!
Teaching practicing habits is hard. Thanks for the great ideas!
Thanks Dr.Kageyama, excellently thought out and conceived article. These ideas are SO important. I wish somebody had taught me how to practice when I was a young kid. So many wasted hours. I spend so much of my time in lessons teaching my students these ideas. Thanks for helping me focus my ideas and inspiring me to renew my goals to move my students in this direction!
What a great article! I was so fortunate to have as my first teacher in the ’70s, a lady who was very into “quality” not “quantity” of practice and so many of the things you write here are gentle reminders of her philosophies.
It is all about the concentration, and practising “Smart”.
Thank you for writing this so concisely:-), Ingrid
Great article! It will be required reading for all my students. Many thanks!!
Great article! Really put in simple words what should be done by every serious musician/music student.
best regards,
Jose
Would you suggest that these guidelines for practice are the same or similar for all variants of musical genres? Classical, popular, jazz, folk? I play guitar, bass and piano but find it hard to practice on the bass because I am only practicing a part…yet when I play piano or guitar I play melody AND harmonic accompaniment and thus can hear and feel the entire form. So when I want to learn a piece, I do so by playing and practicing the piece on BOTH guitar and piano…then it seems to just fall in place on the bass. (Is that practicing with my head?)
Thanks for a thought-provoking presentation!
Hi Tom,
Indeed, I’d argue that these principles and guidelines are essentially the same not only across musical genres, but most skilled endeavors in general (i.e. dance, acting, sports, public speaking, sales, cooking, and so on). One of my favorite books that addresses the topic of what it takes to achieve mastery is called, simply, Mastery, written by George Leonard.
Your idea of learning the other parts involved in the group, so as to have a better sense of where your bass part fits into the whole is a great idea. Classical musicians can benefit from this kind of approach as well, especially when it comes to orchestral excerpts, which, played in isolation out of context, often feel and sound more like etudes than great music.
These are ideas all worth remembering. I find them most difficult to remember when I have an enormous work load to practice. When I’m in a position where I need to cram a lot of music, I often get to a point where I think “Ideally I would stop right now because I’m not practicing efficiently, but unfortunately I have to learn this music now so I need to trudge along regardless.” Still, in those circumstances the principles of mindful practicing are the same even if one needs more than four hours to cover everything.
Fred,
Indeed, it’s awfully tough to practice productively when we’re feeling a time crunch (which is probably more often the case than we’d like it to be). Sometimes even a quick 2-minute water break or poking our head out the door for a breath of fresh air when we’re in the midst of a frustrating lick can help get us out of our unproductive rut, clear our head, and get back on a more productive track. The industrial psych literature indicates that people are more productive when they take breaks; I expect that this finding would be just as applicable to musicians in the practice room as well.
From what I’ve seen, the breaks are essential. Especially if you have the time to really clear your head between sessions. In my experience, I can usually go an hour-hour and a half, then take a thirty minute break, then about another hour before I’m just spinning my wheels.
This is an excellent article; however, thank you.
I’ve been struggling on HOW to practice for over 60 years. This year I started with a most fantastic musical opportunity and I said I can’t do it. With this now maybe I can.
Thanks ever so so much.
Also I’ve been very comfortable with practicing about 2 hours a day in the late afternoon.
My best time to learn is late at night – just before I go to bed – I’m an owl.
Also I started – playing for fun when I get a chance in the early mornings.
I’ll try again. Thanks ever so much.
I’m preparing to write an article on practicing music (it will be a bit different than this one- much longer for one thing), and I’m looking for a bibliography on music practice. Have you run across something like this, or compiled your own?
Hi Dick,
Nice to hear from a fellow Obie grad.
I don’t know of any formal bibliography on music practice, but the Cambridge Handbook of Expertise and Expert Performance is a good starting point, as most of the books and research literature on expertise are ultimately based on or derived from the work of K. Anders Ericsson.
Excellent article!
I found out some of this stuff, interesting enough, by being required to cut way back on my practice. Indeed, I practiced way too much because I thought it was required since I just couldn’t get that consistent sound (classical guitar).
As my index finger cramped up on me and carpal tunnel began to set in, and my hand got sore, there was no other choice but to cut way back. And guess what? I actually sounded BETTER in just a matter of days and resolved SEVERAL problems and issues.
This article puts the cap on it–thankyou!
Hi Matt,
It really is funny how much can be accomplished when we don’t have much of a choice. What is that common saying? Necessity is the mother of all invention, or something to that effect? There’s an adage I like that I believe I first saw on my favorite blog Lifehacker, called Parkinson’s Law, which states that “Work expands so as to fill the time available for its completion.”
I find dividing my practice time. I spend about 15 minutes on scales and arpeggios just for technical. Then another 15 minutes playing things that are fun to play. A couple of hours doing the “hard” practice. usually in snatches of about 45 minutes. And I think your article is going to improve my focus for the hard practice, as it’s all too easy to lose focus and drift into mindless reps as you so aptly point out. And about an hour of organizing playlists for the ipod, on Sibelius doing arrangements, surfing youtube, or score reading, not really practicing per se, but activities that support it. And then of course listening as much as possible– actively whenever I have my brain to myself. This article is getting a link on my blog.
Thank you for a well written article. The conversation it has generated is also informative. Seems it boils down to no single across the board answer. Yet focus, goals, time limits, spending time in other activities are an overriding theme. It applies to so much in life. Being fully present in what you are doing is a foundation for quality.
What a great article. It has been personally helpful and I’m requiring all of my students to read it. As a follow up, have you written anything about how to measure “deliberate practice”? Besides determining an effective length of time to practice (not too much, not too little), how do we create benchmarks for ourselves to actually see how much we are getting accomplished? I’ve listed a couple of ideas on my own blog: the “breakthrough day” when all practice goes well, monitoring metronome markings, being able to play longer stretches of music, and improvement in tone quality (verified by a recording device). For the more “artistic” elements of music, though, like tone color and phrasing, how do we ensure that we are practicing these effectively and making progress? I’d love to hear your thoughts.
Tammy,
Great question; the idea of articulating deliberate practice in behavioral or measurable terms is a helpful one. A couple thoughts come to mind.
Practice log
If the point of practicing is to sound better, and sounding better requires the advancement of our skills, we can measure practice time productivity not only by how we sound, but by what we have learned. Often, we just launch into practice and go at it without any particular agenda other than just to improve in some general way. On the occasions when we have a clearer idea about how it is that we would like to improve, we enter into our practice session with more of a targeted problem-solving mentality, and more productive practice often follows.
For instance, let’s say I’d like to clean up the intonation in the first line of an unaccompanied Bach movement. The process might go something like –> Let me figure out which notes tend to be out of tune –> Hmm…let me figure out in which direction they are out of tune, and by how much –> Ok, I wonder what I’m doing currently that makes them consistently out of tune in that way –> Well, it seems that I a) am clenching a bit which throws off my accuracy, and b) need to adjust what I’m aiming for as it seems my idea about where these notes are is a bit off, and so on. From this process, I may then have figured out a few technical tweaks that help me play the line better in tune, which I can write down in a practice log (so I don’t forget what I’ve discovered), which becomes one of the measurable outcomes of having had a more productive practice. Note that even though I’ve figured out which notes are out of tune, in which direction and by how much, and even why, I may not in that single practice session develop the skill to consistently execute what I’ve learned. But over time, with more practice and problem-solving, I’ll start hearing progress as well.
Music first
I’m a big fan of Robert Duke‘s work at the University of Texas at Austin. He and his colleague have written a great document called The Habits of Musicianship which gets at the idea that we have a habit of creating a separation between the technical and artistic aspects of music-making, with musicianship becoming almost like an add-on reserved for when technique is more established. This resonates with what Leon Fleisher once said, which is that one only needs as much technique as is needed to say what they’re trying to say. In other words, a reminder to clarify our musical ideas first, then the technical details that support them.
For instance, a particular phrase might be most convincing (and based on the score, also make the most musical sense) when the opening note is played in a single bow, despite it spanning several measures. Pulling this off will require greater bow control, which will require figuring out the optimal combination of bow weight, speed, and point of contact between bridge and fingerboard, as well as minimizing the arm tension involved such that there are minimal wobbles or shakes when one is nervous. Starting with an idea of what one wants this phrase to sound like, then using this target to identify the technical issues that have to be solved in order to bring to life the sound one hears in their head can help ensure that we don’t get too lost in problem-solving mode and forget that we’re ultimately trying to create something of beauty, not just solve a series of technical puzzles for our own satisfaction (which I’ve been guilty of far more often than I’d like to admit).
You should take a look at my practice videos on my YouTube channel kathywilliams76. I’m no elite musician, but post my practice sessions to inspire others. You should also mention that 30 minutes of technical work, scales, long tones and staccato will save a lot of time down the road because if you have the fundamentals down pat then you don’t have to spend time working on them in your piece. For example, that staccato bit in the Nielsen Clarinet Concerto is a piece of cake if you can already staccato that fast, and you sightread better in difficult keys if you do returning and interrupted scales from the Baermann method in those keys. And at least 15 minutes of your practice at the beginning should be a warm up on your long tones and staccato etc. After all, you wouldn’t do sport without a warm up, why should music be any different?
Thanks for sharing the great article. My question is when we learn a new piece, it seems inevitable that we practice mindlessly. Because we are still at a stage of “sight-reading.” how do we practice with our head when learning a complete new piece?
Another great question. One key to practicing mindfully even when we are in the very beginning stages of learning a piece is having an idea of what exactly it is that we are trying to accomplish (or as Stephen Covey’s 2nd habit suggests: Begin with the end in mind). Whether it is based on recordings of the piece, or score study when there is no recording, having a concept of what we would ultimately like the piece, movement, phrase, note to sound like can keep us focused on trying to make continual progress towards our goal, and avoid the trap of mindless repetition sans phrasing, dynamics, etc.
That being said, we needn’t get overly obsessed with it sounding perfect the first time through either. Practicing mindfully doesn’t mean we must have a zero-tolerance policy for mistakes, otherwise we could easily spend weeks on just the first phrase. One of my teachers helped me understand this by describing practice as an iterative process using the metaphor of filters. He suggested that when we’re hiking and need to filter water for drinking, we don’t take water from the stream and use our finest filter. First we use a filter to get the rocks, dirt, and sediment out. Then a finer filter to get rid of smaller particles, then an even finer filter still to remove larger bacteria, and only then do we use our finest filter to remove the smallest microscopic elements that could make us ill.
Iterative. Helpful concept, and also a fun word to use because it makes you sound really thoughtful and kinda brainy – but in a good way.
Great article. I’ve been working my way through “Practicing for Artistic Success” by Burton Kaplan and this article reiterates many of the same ideas. Kaplan’s book has charts and methods to engage the brain in practicing. I have found one suggestion most helpful – plan out the practice session with goals for the next day immediately after finishing a practice session. I have done that for years in the area of homemaking, but never in the area of practicing.
For health reasons I have incorporated 2 sessions of 20 minutes of Skilled Relaxation every day. This is a great way to rejuvenate between practice sessions.
Great suggestion, Nikki, thanks!
What a great article. Thanks for the help.
I love this article! I am a vocal major, and many of my instrumental friends always give the vocalists a hard time because we don’t practice nearly as much as they do. They call us lazy and not dedicated. But in reality, we can not physically practice as much as they do because our instrument is inside us, and as you may know, if you talk for a very long time, your voice becomes sore. Same with singing. We can not put in the hours that instrumentalists do, because our instrument will start to not work as well. So with this information, I can show them that working longer than us does not make them better.
Hello!
Thank you for writting this wonderful article! I found this really helpful even though that I’ve heard this from my teacher some couple of times! Thanks
This is probably one of the most vital articles for us musicians. All musicians. Having a strong ability in various music genres I get overwhelmed by practice sometimes. BUT, I do believe that practice does not make perfect, however, “perfect practice” does make perfect. I like the beliefe and the acceptance that resting is just as important as practice. I think that it is important that everyone, especially I, make our practice schedulres based on the information here. Take the time to engage our brains and our fingers will follow.
I just recommended this article to some language learners. I think the idea of “mindless practice” is very valid to the way people learn a language.
Thanks for sharing.
Lynne,
I hadn’t thought of learning a language in these terms, but you’re totally right. I can see how deliberate practice would absolutely apply to acquiring/developing language expertise more efficiently.
Thanks!
Noa
What matters is what you expect to accomplish in a practice session. Practice doesn’t always mean playing with your axe to your moouth all the time. It may be reading and JUST reading your music. It may mean listening to the masters in recordings so you can achieve your own sense of mastering. The comment about intonation brings upon another consideration, practice intonation. Playing random notes with a tuner for the sake of intonation then practicing without the tuner to learn to hear intonation. As a jazz musician you want to develop your “bag of tricks” practicing modes and various scales even if it is just to grow accustomed to playing off the page. But none of this matters without some degree of inspiration which is exactly what this article does for me.
Mary,
Thanks for the additional info! Would love to hear more details about how deliberate practice applies to jazz musicians and the unique skills they work on in the practice room…
Noa
Dr. Kageyama, I would love to share information on this subject especially since I am also classically trianed. Like legit musicians, you must feel comfortable with scales. But with the jazz musician, we need to learn not only major, minor, chromatic, we also need to get a grasp on the modes, blues scales, be-bop scales. We have to learn to understand chord changes and develop a crazy sensitive ear. It is a must to have the jazz books such as the Jamie Aebersold series or the Hal Leonard play-along-books. It is nice to see what playing with a band which is the main purpoe of the books. Now, with all this practice you still are not a jazz musician. In jazz the performer/soloist is the composer when you begin to improvise, therefore the performer must develop an imagination. These bag of tricks are simply useless to learn, if you don’t first develop the intestinal fortitude to get out and play. Participate in jam sessions and open mics. You must practice not fearing mistakes and being less than perfect. Jazz is musical freedom. Many people say there is no wrong notes in jazz. Well this isn’t exactly true but mistakes should be the furthest from your mind. If you play something that doesn’t sound very good, your ear will help you to get out of that habit quickly.
In a sense, mindless practice applies here also. There will be times as a performer you might run out of improvisational ideas, but you won’t have time to come up with a magical idea. This may be just the time to throw in some mindless drivle…but only briefly.
I have a very hard time physically practicing longer than 2-3 hours at a time. I learn the music and the chord changes before I play it. I believe strongly in taking a break- so there should be a day or two of rest.But I concentrate on what I need to concentrate on and I find that it makes my next project so much easier.
I hope this helped.
When I studied w/ Jeff Berlin he said to practice 4 at the most. His point that you need to have a life or what could you possibly express to an audience. My favorite quote though is by Robert Fripp, which I’ll paraphrase here: “To get good at ones instrument, one must practice 8 hours a day. For some it’s 4 and others it’s 16″
So many of the things I learned the hard way 20 years ago, spelled out clearly and rationally. Ah well…
The specific penny-drop moment this article gave me was the relationship between mindless practice and low confidence. In my coaching I have been encouraging ensembles not to keep doing multiple runs-through of pieces each rehearsal because (a) it wastes rehearsal time, and (b) it locks in habits you are actually trying to change. Some believe me; others find it hard to let go of what they experience as a comfort blanket.
Understanding how a mechanical rote approach actually undermines confidence, rather than increasing it as they currently believe, is going to be a useful tool in helping people into more productive ways of working. Thank you.
liz
I double dare any scientist to give 2 student probes the same practice schedule but one group practices 8 hours while the other only 2 or 4…i bet my jem prestige that the ones practicing 8 hours will outdo the 4 hours group, ive seen it, im proof of it, all the virtuosos did this..
Vai 30 hours routine is the perfect example of it..
none of the electric virtuosos got away with less than 3 hours a day NONE.
Vai, Malmsteen, Gilbert, Satriani, Petrucci, Buckethead, Rustey.. they even practiced more than 12 hours a day.. look where they are now.. look where the 4 hours practicers are.. the hell knows..
Sorry for the triple post, another example.
Electric guitar again:
Student A practices for 4 hours. Student B practices the same for 4 hours and then practices some other material for another 4 hours. eg. scales. After 3 years he will without doubt know a lot more than student A. Its common sense..
It all depends on how one practices. Repeating a passage numerous times and playing the same mistakes means that you’ve done nothing but practice mistakes. Practice often means to just read the passages, recognize keys of each passages so that you can play them correctly and move on. I’ve had students come to their lessons and play passages incorrectly over and over again. I will remind them of the mistakes they are practicing. THen I make them look at the passages they are playing and often the passages may be variations of their daily scales. Once they recognize the passage they can play it.I do not believe that a person who practices 4 hours cannot play as well as another one who practices for 8 hours regardless of the numerous examples given. Reading a passage for a few minutes can equate to at least 2 hours worth of practice. Also, scales and etudes ate of course just as important as repertoire but I do not believe that they should or need to be played in the same practice window. One day practice scales, the next day etudes, the next day repertoire. Anytime scales, etudes and rep are played in the same practice session-etudes and scales should be used as warm-up and repertoire should be the primary focus.
ITs pretty interesting, since some have the opposite strategy e.g practice the same things everyday.. i forgot however to take something into consideration, the violin and other instruments are way more stressing than the guitar.. one can spend 8 hours on the guitar pretty concentrated and not tire the body too much.
Practicing mistakes or bad technique indeed is the worst case scenario.. i remember having to spend months just to tweak a couple of bad habits i picked along the way.. which arises another argument (applies again to electrci guitar): Some of the best have actually flaws on their technique, they however put so many hours and energy into it that they made it work..
I encourage anyone to take a look at Steve Vais take on it:
http://www.sevenstring.org/forum/music-theory-lessons-techniques/108876-steve-vais-martian-love-secrets.html
He even suggests you to spend 1 hour just exausting the multiple ways of playing a note or vibrato..
I think there is no definite answer and learning is an individual process, but i do know something, when you love what you are doing, there is no such thing as practicing too much.. you will always want more.
I am talking about 8 hours of concentrated practice of course (which can be done with perfect technique , concentration skills and pauses) the average person works 8 hours a day.. if music is your job or passion it seems like a decent amount of hours per day
Sure, music is a full time job but practicing isn’t just about playing your axe. Practicing is also abour axing your play. Working in the wood shed for hours is rather useless if you don’t also add listening and jamming as a part of the practice. When I say jamming ,that not only goes for jazzers but also legit musicians as well. And as far as actual practicing an instrument goes, taking the time to rest and enjoy everything that life has to offer solidifies what you learned.
I agree with you
I do however believe one can accomodate all the things we mentioned into either a 4 or 8 hour routine.. thats where an excellent teacher makes a hard working student shine.
It requires tremendous mindfulness from the student too, one can practice the mechanic excercises like mindless scale runs or trills for periods where one is not at the fullest concentration point, and when energy is restored concentrate on the creative process again.
Some also say you should focus on your strenghts and exaggerate them, others say you should always seek to improve that which you lack and transform it into strenghts.. guess music is like life and every approach is valid as long as it gets you the results you want.
hello, when you say that you do not get great results after two hours refers to when these become straight? or refers to day? recommend that you do two hours 40 minutes to stop such other 40 so 10 minutes to complete the two hours to do 40 minutes in the morning, 40 in the afternoon and 40 at night, which we would recommend you according to your experience?.
greetings and excuse my English is terrible
Hi Juan,
The two hours was referring to practice over the course of a day. This phenomenon of diminishing returns came from economics I believe, but applies to many other things as well. For instance, athletes certainly benefit from pushing themselves harder and harder in training, but beyond a certain point, working out more doesn’t improve performance much.
In the case of music practice, it seems that the gains we make per unit of time tend to diminish as the hours begin to add up. It’s just like anything else – we’re fresh and alert when we start studying for a test, but after a few hours we just aren’t learning at the same rate, or absorbing as much information as we were when we started. Whether you practice in chunks of 20 minutes, 40, 50, or 75, the important thing is to pay attention to when you are no longer practicing mindfully. That might mean you’re due for a break.
Note that this doesn’t mean you shouldn’t practice more than 2 hours a day, it just means that you’re probably getting the most bang for your buck in the first two hours of practice. I’d encourage you to do what you can to make the first hour or two of practice as productive and focused as you can, and try to work on as much high-value, high-importance stuff while you are mentally and physically the most fresh.
this is such an useful article! wow, awesome.
Hello,
I am finding that I am not consistent in my practice and playing. I go through certain stages in my ability. Just one week ago I was playing great, now everytime I play it just doesn’t feel right and it sounds horrible. It seems as if I can’t even play a basic song well. Do you have any thoughts, advice, or solutions??
Hello celloboy,
It’s a little difficult to say without knowing more about what your practice habits look like. On one hand, if things change from week to week (and you’re not sure why), it could very well mean that your good habits and bad habits are both pretty well ingrained, and you would benefit from more of this deliberate, mindful, thoughtful practice to identify and reinforce the good stuff. There are times when this is an indication of our ears as well; as we improve and are able to play at a higher level, we start hearing more and more things that could be better. It can be discouraging to climb one mountain, only to find yourself at the base of the next higher mountain, until we realize that this is what the process looks like, and that the mountains never end. The book Mastery (by George Leonard) helped me realize this, become more patient in the practice room, and appreciate the process.
Celloboy, exactly what are your paractice habits? Do you warm up before playing? Personally, warming up defines your quality of practice. Do you visualize your music when you are NOT practicing. Do you read your music before playing it, especially before you actually practice it. I wonder if you are experiencing the old adage ” outta sight outta mind”.Practice is a culmination of many things not just the tactile. Your music should be full of pencil markings that identify scales, phrases and sections that repeat themselves. Do you practice the entire piece or just portions. I always have my students concentrate on portions of big pieces because things often repeat themselves so why practice the same segment more than once…
Another idea, make a copy of your music and cut it up. put the pieces in an envelope and just take 1-2 pieces and practice them, only and nothing else. This is especially helpful with the more difficult passages. I do believe this idea comes from athletes and it is in a book. If I can find the book, I will post some information on it. I hope these ideas are helpful.
The other day, my daughter was acting like this boring, repetitive set was really blah. Her posture slumped, her intonation was bad. I took her aside and told her that she had to play it like she meant it, no matter what it is, because it’s all a road. If you practice like it is lame, then you will perform it like it is lame.
if you dont love your instrument why play? because someone forces you too ?
Anyways here is what Howard Roberts (founder of GIT has to say about it)
http://www.talkbass.com/forum/f140/practice-233652/#post2889719
(which supports the concept that you can pretty much practice all the time you want, be as productive as you can, as long as you manage your time frames correctly)
” Two Kinds Of Memory
There are two kinds of memory involved in the learning process, motor memory and data memory. Your motor memory is the training of the physical or motor skills and your data memory is the memorizing of conceptual data. If you are training motor skills, you can practice for many long hours without doing any harm. The more of this kind of repetition the better. In fact, much of this kind of learning can be accomplished unconsciously. A person can achieve wonders while mindlessly staring at the television, playing or doodling for hours, even with the sound on.
With data memory (memorizing scales, fingering patterns, licks, songs, harmony etc.), you must work within very short time frames, making sure you do not exceed your attention span. Bear in mind that your attention span will vary from day to day, and may be as short as five, ten or fifteen minutes at any one sitting. The signal that you have come to the end of your natural attention span, may be anything from staring at the wall, to thinking about your vacation, to playing that little old blues lick you have known since you were seven. In this case, your unconscious mind is telling you, “you’re done, you’re full, and you’ve had enough for now”. This is perfectly natural. So take a short break. It’s no big deal. You’ll recover quickly and you can continue on effectively.
Remember, then, that there are two completely different aspects to gaining musical control of the instrument. First, learn by mental rehearsal, visualization and recalling it from memory. Second (though no less important), develop and train your motor skills through repetition. Don’t fall into the trap of confusing these two different types of learning by spending hours working without concentration trying to acquire conceptual data (data memory). Also, don’t be fooled into thinking that there is a short cut to acquiring motor skills.
Recall
Studies have shown that the mind is like a camera. Once it gets a clear impression of the material, the picture is snapped into focus. You have it. It can now be recalled and replicated in order to train the motor system. Memory should not depend on repetition. Rather, the rote learning we are taught in school is actually destructive to the learning process. What you should be doing is looking at the material once to get a very clear, focused picture: then, mentally rehearsing it without actually using the instrument. On the old rote-memory system, you are taught to repeat the learning process over and over. This is where you start to forget. The picture blurs, and you do not learn how to remember.
Reinforce this new way of learning by staying away from the printed page as much as possible. Make the snapping of the image only once a matter of habit. Practice recalling the sounds and visualizing the fingerings that match those sounds. Do this when you’re stuck in traffic, waiting for the bus, standing in line at the bank or having lunch. In time this will become a second nature, and you will become a perpetual learner, able to learn as much away from the instrument as you can with it in your hands.
Time Frames
You may ask “ How long should I work on new material at any one time?” The answer is, you should work on new material in very short time frames. A few minutes of concentrated, thoughtful study can make a solid impression and can prove far more beneficial than hours of unfocused drudgery.
You will need to assign yourself breaks by the clock until you become sensitive to your own physical and mental signals. So get yourself a kitchen timer and time each section of your practice.
I recommend practicing:
15 minutes on
5 minutes off
15 minutes on
5 minutes off
When your timer goes off, obey the discipline of the signal. Do not break it and go beyond your assigned time limit! Then as time goes by and you become better at managing your time, you will become more and more sensitive to your own limits, and you’ll be able to sense when you have gone on too long and need to rest. Remember that, while on the old method it is all right to practice until you drop, the new method requires you to re-train yourself for a whole new kind of learning experience.”
Hi Todd,
Thanks for posting all the info. Howard Roberts seems to have been a really interesting fellow.
How about switching the piece I play ,like 15 minutes concentrated practice ,then 5 minutes review,etc.
It often depends on the individual, whether a fixed time schedule works effectively or not. I’d say give this a shot and see how it goes. Modify, tweak, and reflect on your observations as needed to come up with a schedule that works well for you.
I have to strongly disagree with Mr. Roberts on this point:
“If you are training motor skills, you can practice for many long hours without doing any harm. The more of this kind of repetition the better. In fact, much of this kind of learning can be accomplished unconsciously. A person can achieve wonders while mindlessly staring at the television, playing or doodling for hours, even with the sound on.”
You can do plenty of physical harm if you’re not conscious of your posture, the ergonomics of your instrument, the feedback you’re getting from your musculature, etc. Both Dr. K and the also very wise Bill Plake (http://billplakemusic.org/) make this point repeatedly. “Mindless” practice of ANY kind will waste a lot of your time and do much less good than the kind of concentrated practicing Dr. K (and many others) advise.
How about review? I don’t want to forget pieces I already learned.That takes time.Also review can help w/ learning new material faster. You mentioned the motor skill. I know that applies to speed.How is the concentrated practice and gaining speed for a passage ( or in generel) connected? Should I limit these times too? Like when I use the metronome to gradually increase speed? Thanks
I stumbled across a study once which suggested that the most efficient way to get a motor skill up to speed, was to focus on speed first, then accuracy second. I can see where this could apply in some cases, but I’m not sure if this applies to music or not.
Remember that the number of hours one practices is not the relevant factor – it’s how one practices during those hours that is the real key. The 10,000 hours number is just a number, just like 25 is a number – the number of minutes it takes for muffin batter to turn into muffins (assuming the right ingredients and the right oven temperature). It just seems like expertise requires at least that much time spent practicing deliberately to “bake”. Maybe I should put it like this: feel free to practice as long as you like – so long as you are fully focused and concentrating on the task at hand. If you’re going through the motions, your mind is wandering, or you’re no longer listening and analyzing and making specific adjustments, then stop. For most, our ability to devote this sort of mental energy to the task at hand, seems to tap out around 4 hours. This goes with reviewing repertoire too; you’ll get a lot more out of it if you play through something with some sort of purpose rather than just playing through it mindlessly to keep the notes under your fingers.
What you say here ties it all up in a nutshell. Make sure that the bulk of your practice takes place within the first 2 hours. For me, If I fail to do this, anything afterward is like confetti. Something that will need to be cleaned up eventually which is just more work. I am referring to this quote here:
Note that this doesn’t mean you shouldn’t practice more than 2 hours a day, it just means that you’re probably getting the most bang for your buck in the first two hours of practice. I’d encourage you to do what you can to make the first hour or two of practice as productive and focused as you can, and try to work on as much high-value, high-importance stuff while you are mentally and physically the most fresh.
I am almost ready to head to the recording studio. In jazz, it’s not so much about mistakes as it is about imagination and being cool. Mistakes can happen, but it is how you use the mistakes that requires practice. Yes, you can make a mistake in jazz and make it sound like you meant for it to happen. You have to practice getting out of, what would normally be a, tight situation. So my practice involves thinking about chord progressions and how to move seamlessly through them even without the music in your face or instrument in your hand.
Great article! Would it be possible to give references to the studies, facts, and research you cite? It would give more credibility to what you’re saying, as well as give the reader a starting point for further reading. Thank you kindly for your consideration.
Hi John,
Sure, here are a couple classic papers on this subject that are available online:
Ericsson, K. A., Krampe, R. Th., & Tesch-Romer, C. (1993). The role of deliberate practice in the acquisition of expert performance. Psychological Review, 100, 363-406.
Ericsson, K. A., & Charness, N. (1994). Expert performance: Its structure and acquisition. American Psychologist, 49(8), 725-747.
And then there’s the 918-page Cambridge handbook of expertise and expert performance which is not online, but here’s a sample chapter.
I have to say that I also enjoyed reading the books written in the popular press about this research (e.g. Outliers, Talent is Overrated, The Talent Code, Bounce). If you were only going to read one, it’d be a tough call, but The Talent Code might be the one I’d start with.
How does all of this apply to learning multiple instruments? Can I perhaps do 2 to 4 hours on Violin, have a 30 minute break and then do 2 to 4 hours on Piano? Realistically I tend to give each instrument 1 to 2 hours, but at weekends I try to give more. I play the drums too and have for many years, but Violin and Piano are new to me so I am giving them a little more attention, especially Violin which I’m loving even more.
Much like studying for finals in multiple classes, our ability to focus and concentrate (and to a degree physical stamina as well) are the limiting factors in deliberate practice. It might freshen you up a bit to switch over to another instrument, but my guess is not by too much. The key will be to see what works for you, what your limits are, and what sort of practice schedule is sustainable over the long haul. I remember making myself go through huge marathon sessions on occasion that wore me out so much that it was tough (emotionally, mostly) to get myself to practice at all, let alone effectively, the next day.
Wow! What an informative article. It will help a lot in my practice sessions. Thank you very much!
This is some good info. Thanks a lot. Even though I’m sure it depends on the individual, I’m wondering, does the “4 hour limit” apply when the hours are disbursed throughout the day? If I did 4 hours in the early morning and then another 4 hours at night, would the time inbetween be enough to refocus the mind for that 2nd 4 hour session? or are you pretty much mentally spent until you get a night’s sleep?
Hi Ian,
You could certainly give it a shot. Personally, I think this sort of schedule might be hard to sustain over the long haul (could maybe do it for a few weeks, but perhaps not for months), and the tricky thing is going to be ensuring that the quality of your focus throughout stays high. Say, if you started at 6am and did four 50/10′s (50-minute practice, 10-minute break), and then another two 50/10′s in the afternoon and two more 50/10′s in the evening theoretically this could all fit into a day. Most will probably find their focus wandering as the sessions start adding up and the days go by, but if this is something that you have time and the inclination to experiment with, there’s certainly no harm in trying to hack the 4-hour “limit” by being a bit creative. Let us know if you discover something that works for you!
Hello, I was just wondering what is the ideal way to learn and practice a new song?
Hi celloboy,
That’s a toughie. It’s a perfectly valid and important question that probably deserves a more thorough answer than this, but I think it depends on the person. I personally learn pieces best when I have a basic understanding of what it sounds like first, and then I throw away all my preconceived notions, ignore convention and what others have done in recordings, and take a closer look at what the actual score seems to suggest. I struggle trying to go the other way around. It’s probably my Suzuki upbringing.
But my wife (a pianist, and no Suzuki background) starts with the score first, and generally listens to recordings only when she’s already developed a pretty strong idea of what the piece is about. It may be no coincidence that she has stronger instincts for contemporary music than I.
My guess is that the readers of this blog have their own ways of learning and practicing new music as well; perhaps some will respond to this, or you may even be able to ask some of them directly via their blogs or contact info.
Often the hardest part about practice is getting started. If you are someone who finds it difficult to practice regularly don’t get hung up on how much practice you need to do. Instead of thinking about minutes just set yourself the target of picking up your instrument and at least starting to practice every day.
This article is remarkable. I’ve always felt that there was a solution besides the 10,000 hour model. Other things in life have taught me that it’s best to work smarter and not harder. I thought, how can I do this?
It’s with attention.
Your article is talking about exactly that. It’s about bringing the most intense attention to your practicing so that every move is deliberate. As more of a blues guitarist I have been experimenting with ways to get more out of less hours especially when you come home from a day job feeling drained and only have energy for an hour at best of practice.
I still think it’s useful to segment out the time you have, 5 minutes on this phrase, ten minutes here and there, but as long as it serves an ultra-specific goal.
Once again, great article!
Well Jimi Hendrix used to take a shit with his guitar still around his neck … so that should give you an idea – you never never never stop playing !!!!! Ha ha
rideforever, seriously??? That was waste of a good sh*t. Don’t sacrifice such a wonderful moment with anything strapped around your neck.
Hi there!
First of all great article! It’s so nice to be able to discuss such an important subject like music practicing. I have two questions to you:
I’m a drummer, and we are taught by many teachers that rudiments is the way to go, and that they should be practiced every single day in order to progress. Now rudiments in my opinion are as mindless as one can think of: repeating for 30m or 1h a set of exercises, which rapidly gets boring for me and my mind gets distracted very quickly, which doesn’t happen if I’m playing over a song. How to improve technique without doing this mindless exercises? We are taught that it’s the only way, which kinda contradicts what you discussed in your article…
My other question is related with having the ability to keep to your schedule. I have a day job of 8h, and after my job I normally go practice for 2h or so. Since it’s very exhausting to work 8h, it’s very hard to be concentrated when practicing, being much easier just to lay down some songs and play along them and reach my zen state, which on other hand doesn’t really help on my progression as a drummer. How to get the proper motivation to stick to a plan and being disciplined in this case? Or it’s just a lost cause?
Thanks a lot!
Rafael,
I think that most of the time teachers are biased to their own methods of learning. I am beginning to feel like though rudiments will improve your skill, but it’s more like 20% versus learning songs improve you 80%. There’s more to music than mindless exercises -especially- if you want to develop improvisation. Rudiments won’t teach you that.
I work full time too 8-5pm and I 100% understand where you are coming from as far as having the energy to put into practice. You race home, whip something up to eat (probably junk processed food), jump on your instrument, and struggle to concentrate and keep from falling out of your chair. I’ve struggled time and time again with the motivation to practice, write, or record. However I do have one way that I deal.
The absolute best way to get the proper motivation to stick to any practice plan and be disciplined is to BE ABSOLUTELY CRYSTAL, 100% CLEAR ON YOUR GOALS.
It’s no small feat, but you should set aside time whether it’s a day, several, or a month to really visualize what you want out of music. This has been the only I’ve been able to deal with the exhaustion that comes with working a day job full-time.
I would also dedicate time to diet and exercise as those things will boost your energy. Speaking of Zen, I find it a good time to meditate when I just get home from work so I can calm my mind and shake off the worries of the workday. It makes concentrating much, much easier when I practice. Hope this helps!
-Kyle
Thanks for the response, Kyle. I thought I’d add my 2 cents as well.
I think I’d probably want to know more about what these rudiments look like, but I think you can still find a way to look at these exercises from a mastery perspective – that is, to constantly be seeking ways to improve them in some way. To make them more even, or more precise, and so on. I’ve mentioned the book Mastery, by George Leonard before, and this comes to mind. One of the most impressive things I’ve ever witnessed in music, was cellist Natalia Gutman playing a scale. The bow control, sound, intonation, precision, fluidity, ease, effortlessness were all exquisite and remarkable – we were all blown away. And I assume she always played even the most basic of scales fully aware and completely attuned to what she was doing and what she was working towards.
I might be inclined to make your practice time centered around specific music-related goals rather than time. And once you’ve identified compelling goals, perhaps to restrict your practice time, so that you are only allowed to practice a certain amount of time (and make this less than you feel you ought to practice). If we have lots of things we want to get done, and relatively little time in which to get it done, we can’t afford to dilly dally or get too obsessed about something minor. We have to move on. And we tend to be more motivated to work on things when we have less time than we want.
God points, as they say, work expands to fill the time allotted. I really feel that everyone has their own things to work on that will give them the most growth. The trick is to do some self-examining to figure out what that is.
Great article. I’m going to try some of the ideas that you wrote about. This may make practice something that I look forward to instead of something that I have to do. Maybe that’s why some people don’t look forward to practicing, ’cause they don’t have a Practice Plan. I’m gonna make my plan out right now. Cheers!
Great Article!
If I were able to tell the young me anything, it would be to practice better,not longer. I would concentrate on how I learn a piece of music and not the mindless repetition that I did. I would practice sight reading so I could learn the basic piece faster, and then spend my energy on refinements, not spending the majority of my time learning the piece.
I’ve been on this site alot quite recently when i came across this article. I am about to become a first year music major, and i had to take the time to learn how to sight read quite well. I am a guitar player and though i have played for years, i was not raised learning how to read music. So wrapping my head around practicing less than 2 hours a day is hard, because i sight read for at least an hour if not more. i need some advice
Hi Dr. Kageyama,
I stumbled upon your blog a few weeks ago and I must really thank you for all your thought-inducing articles. They made me start to look at music and practising in different perspectives. I have found them to be extremely useful in helping me become a more effective music student.
I am one of those who fall under the category of mindless practising, and in retrospect, I am guilty of approaching my practices using these inefficient methods:
“I must complete the whole cycle of major and minor scales in 1 hour in 120bpm.”
“I must practise 4 hours today.”
“I must repeat this particularly difficult section over and over until I get it right.”
Those, and over-emphasizing on the quantity of practice over the quality. Of course, it is debateable when we talk about quantity of practise in terms of building stamina as it is different for all individuals.
For a start I tried out the method of grouping my practices into 45-minutes sets, with each set having to deal with 2 different issues (e.g. 1 articulation study and 1 lyrical etude so that my mind is kept fresh), and resting my mind for about 10 to 15 minutes after each set, perhaps taking a walk, chatting with my friends or doing some push-ups. I found that while I pried my ears open and having certain goals in mind during my practice, I found myself subconsciously working intensively on importantly aspects of these studies in the 45 minutes and my goodness, it was extremely draining because,
1) Certain playing issues that was masked over during mindless practices surfaced, and
2) I pushed myself to complete as much as I can in the 45 minutes. This is good in a way as I constantly searched for the best ways to tackle my playing issues within the time constraint. I will need to move on to the next task instead of getting stuck with the same problem.
Usually by the end of the 3rd set (a little over 2 hours) of deliberate practice I have to call it a day because it is so physically and mentally draining.
This method comes as a shock to my mind and body, but I am going to continue and hopefully see that it is effective for me!
Hi Sean,
Thanks for the detailed reflection of your practice habits. I think it’s really valuable to be able to see what others’ experiences in the practice room look like. It’s funny that we see other musicians’ finished products quite often, but often have no idea what they do in the practice room to get there.
This article is completely fantastic. I’m going to make this the way I practice every time I do from now on. Thanks for writing such a helpful, and wonderful article. It taught me more about my playing and practicing than anything/anyone has.
I believe there are problems using time as the gauge for practice success. For one, the practice required of an intermediate student differs significantly from that of a seasoned professional. No great virtuoso got that way with 30 minutes of mindful practice a day, but one can maintain their skills with that regimen. Another issue is instrument dependent. Some instruments have stamina issues (winds, brass, larger strings, e.g.) preventing the player from dedicating the same number of hours as a pianist. The teacher that most influenced my concepts of practice would tailor an intense 30-45 minute daily session where every moment worked to address the passages he wished to improve. If he was preparing to perform the Elgar Cello Concerto, for example, his choice of “warmup” scales, arpeggios, and chords would be in the keys found in the concerto, using rhythms and bowings from the work. The key for him was properly identifying what he needed to accomplish that day. In addition, as others seem to have found helpful, he scheduled some time during his week for just playing, to eliminate the temptation to “play” rather than practice.
During my undergrad days, my piano professor (a brilliant performer) appalled some of the more “traditional” faculty members because he practiced astonishingly less time than was considered “appropriate”. He taught me that the secret was not practicing LONGER but practicing SMARTER. In the years since, in which the opportunity for longer practice has become increasingly rare, this has served me well. I have not read all the comments above and may be redundant here, but one technique that has made a world of difference to me in performance is learning the ending first. There is something really wonderful about being in a performance and the farther you go the BETTER and more confident it gets rather than the other way around, which is more usual. Excellent, excellent article. Required reading for my students now.
Great suggestion Stephen, thanks!
“man, how you play so great when you SOOOO drunk???”-intreviewer
“ya gotta practice drunk” zoot sims, world reknowned sax man
i was beaten down from lesson one-and told to visualize every great trumpet player in the world sitting in my cell, and to focus on the moment. every goddam moment.
“i used to practise 6, 7, 9 hours a day. now i practise 3 and listen to every note”-maurice andre
i learnt a lot from cats who grew up doing 10 shows a day during the war. WWII.
i learnt a lot from art velasco, ace trombonist-we started recording horn parts , over dubbing 3 and 4 section parts-shortly after he flew in from japan. he sounded like king-kong. road chops. you travel and pack/unpack, hit the mouthpiece, horn, bang, you practise your craft, stay up ridiculous hours, eat salads and drink gallons of water, struggle with jetlag, freezing cold terminals when a connection gets missed, sleep on floors, busses, trams…and make world-class music’
i worked a 2-hour session, 4 parts each on 3 tunes,slept a bit, did a 2 hour big band in a bar, slept a little, played a 4 hour salsa job till 4am/struggled to get a sound at 1130 AM and played a 2 hour small group set at 2pm/the next day, i slept 10 hours, and played a big band again…
no, it wasn’t perfect, it wasn’t bach or stavinski/but it sounded right/and today i am buzzing away for tonights musicfest//on shows, for acts/concerts, etc we come in and read the things down, take a dinner break, and do an avg. 90 min performance, then never see the music til the act rolls in agin.amazing what some cats memorize…and there were 90 shows in between!!!some folks retain that music for years, and scare ya.
doc severinsen warmed up for hours, starting with roadworkweights flapping his chops buzzing, then the mouthpiece crap, then low chromatix, more flapping then long tones/crikey. thats before noon!!!
but trumpet is physically insulting to the body. like boxing.rodeo.and doc sounds pretty rough the first few hours/then BANG a golden bubble of pure beauty fills the space he stands in. the sound is all around, even behind him.big, pure, resonant, not loud, full…wow. awesome
bobby shew walks in, flaps a bit, and roars.like doc. go figger…
they both put in 10 hour days on the horn, and spent way more time figuring it out.
guru bill adam says start with a great sound, move towards it-and you do 3 hours of sound-long slow low/high/fast chromatix/slow moving slurs…
now i gonna go work a few bars of some chopin waltzes i am trying to transpose at sight/”just the notes” at slow tempo is absurdly hard for me. but my reading is getting better, my concentration is improving, and the humiliation is devastating.
i thank you for many many new things to bust my ass on, and am going to buy lotsa batteries for my metronome&tuner.
Two things i find work infallibly-practise slow/slower/sllloooower/and correct every mis-step as it occurs, no matter how many times it takes to get through 3 or 4 beats of a bar. then crank up the metronome, blaze through at tempo + a few clix, never stop, repeat…then slow way back down& focus on every phrase at 1/3 speed…exhausting
painful, effective, boring, challenging, and you will sleep so hard after work it’s unba leeeeevable. you will be able to pull a 6 hour job off, though
Great article! I can personally relate to every bit of advice, and it’s wonderful to hear it come from such experts. I’m looking forward to sharing this with my guitar students!
In college I majored in music and even though 5 hours a day seemed to be the key timed mentioned I did 4 a day and could not seem to ever do 5, so interesting that I see that here.
Now I am going for a mid life crises career change in court reporting and funnily it is all about practice just like music. So here I am again practicing daily chasing speed to get to 225 words a minute. There is an extremely high drop out rate, that is because they say the average is 2 years to get to the required 225 and the average one should practice is 2 hours a day. I do think it is almost crazy to get to that in 2 years where your fingers should be working without thought and what took me years to get to in music. So only a small minority get there and the rest drop out even though it is true they all could get there, but they pressure themselves with time and the cost of schooling. I definitely feel I have a one up because of being used to the whole practicing thing, I actually enjoy practicing in itself.
With this the goal is simple though, 225 wpm as accurate as possible, and that is it, no need for interpretation. So my practicing daily is highly organized to what will get to that goal and I will change it if it is not working. Everyone has different techniques they use to try and get to the goal ASAP . I try to practice 2 hours a day and also try not to practice too much over that, don’t want to feel burn out.
When in college I felt I did a lot of water practicing just to make sure I could say I did my 4 hours, no matter what the expense. Now as an older person I don’t stand for wasted practice and when I feel it happening, which I do, I revalute and change my routine.
Hi Lara,
I think musicians really have an advantage when it comes to learning new skills – we have a deep understand of how meticulous, patient, and detail-oriented we need to be to achieve a mastery level. It’s cool to see the parallels that can be drawn between practicing in music and practicing elsewhere. Thanks for sharing!
As a “sleight-of-hand artist” (aka, magician), I am fascinated by this article. There are so many applications of your suggested practice method that extend so far outside of music and even performing arts, in general. I see this article as more of an expose of committing a new skill into the human psyche – whether that be performance music, magic, acting, or even programming in a new computer language. I plan to adjust my routine practicing into this model simply to see how it relates into my chosen art – and I can already envision the application. Thank you for the insight!
Chris,
Now that you say it, it makes complete sense, but I never would have thought about applying deliberate practice to the practice of slight-of-hand. You make a good point – imagine the level of expertise we would see in the world, if we were all committed to mastering our craft via deliberate practice!
Actually, what’s a little unsettling is to think of all the professionals upon whom we are dependent, but who don’t engage in deliberate practice. Surgeons, for instance, perform a lot of surgery, but don’t necessarily apply the principles of deliberate practice for continued improvement. Here’s a fascinating article in the New Yorker about a surgeon who decides to enlist the help of a “surgery coach” to help him improve his skills.
Excellent post. I added a link to this page on my website. I am learning to play a new one-handed saxophone after losing the use of my left hand after a hemorrhagic stroke in 2008, so I’m having to kind of “start from scratch” in many areas, such as practicing techniques. Trying to make sure I make the most progress in an efficient manner to make up for not playing for three and a half years.
I’ll bet the author is not a trumpet player. Endurance is also an issue when considering practice length. If you have a four-hour big band gig on the horizon, there had better be a three or four hour blow or two in your recent history.
The critical factor is to practice NEW ideas, techniques, structures, melodies. To constantly push to expand one’s musical vocabulary and bag of tricks is essential if greatness is to be achieved. Otherwise, and I’m sure we’ve all seen this especially in the pop world, one can play for 30 years with very little advancement.
I’ve been a performing pianist for close to 40 years. I’ve never found the ideal practice regiment; it just never got a chance to materialize. Caught up in earning a living thru music, I find myself accompanying Dance classes, playing from 2 – 4 hours a day, 5 days a week (for the last 20 years). This effectively destroys any energy I have for practicing, and in fact makes me not even want to touch the piano by the time I get home. In addition, I perform with various jazz groups thur – sun evenings. The end result is I don’t practice at all from September thru May (when the Dance Conservatory is in session) and the rest of the year I’m just playing catch up.
So if you have the time and energy to practice, DO IT!
I am curious as to how this would relate to the often arduous task of learning notes–that is the very first stages of learning a piece upon its recent assignment. I often get very frustrated and feel that there just simply isn’t enough time to go through all the pieces assigned my in a suitable time period in which I can maintain a proper level of focus. Any thoughts or comments?
Christopher,
I’m a little biased by my own experiences and training, for better or for worse. Being a Suzuki kid, I learned music by listening to it over and over and over and over. By the time I set out to play a piece, I already had it in my ear. It was just a matter of figuring out how to produce what I heard in my head on my violin.
I know that there are pros and some serious cons to this approach as well, but it’s what I’m used to. When I’ve had to learn pieces from scratch where there is no recording available, it’s been more of a struggle.
Does anyone have a suggestion for Christopher?
When learning something completely new with no recording, i like to work on small portions at a time rather than trying to go through the whole piece every time and start at the beginning again. I’ve seen people take on the whole piece (or large sections) then repeat repeat repeat. I highly suggest setting small goals … even if it’s just 16 measures (or less) per hour until it’s set in your brain. If you get bored, move on to another small attainable section then come back to the part with which you already tried to learn.
Since I started playing by ear at the age of 5, and am now over 70, and have made a good living as a pop pianist/organist, I regretted that I never got to study piano, however, I never practiced, but only played, and played and played. I was addicted to making music, and I still am. No practicing for me. Thank you God. Wanna see me play? go to Youtube.com and search yamaho5 and Voila! Wally Brown
congratulations, we all need to know about this.
Hi Dr. Noa …
This has been a most educational read and I will appreciate the information for a long time to come. My current Coach (I’m a Baritone) pointed me in the direction of your article. I believe that I do currently engage in very mindful practicing for short periods at a time and I think I got that idea from the (non-musical) college studying method, “where there’s a will there’s an A”, which emphasized the difference between “hard work” and “smart work”. That being said, I believe the Problem-solving model and the journalling will serve me very well for continued improvement because while I do mindfully practice, I’m not as detailed in my questions to myself as in the model and it’s so easy to forget what you felt in your previous practice, thus the importance of a journal (which my coach has been after me to start since we started together a few months ago).
Also I do believe as stated in one of the previous questions that vocalists definitely need more “breaks” than instrumentalists because of the very fragile anatomy of the vocal folds … do you agree?
Hi Aaron,
Indeed, I think listening to our bodies is a great policy whether it is practicing, working out, or eating…
This was a great read – thank you!
I wrote a couple of blogs about practice methods which I’ve attached below, should you be interested:
http://katyaherman.tumblr.com/post/10780144207/some-words-on-the-ever-elusive-art-of-practising
http://katyaherman.tumblr.com/post/13134237438/a-new-practice-plan-from-your-friendly-neighbourhood
I have found both the article and the comments fascinating. Such a wealth of material!
Recently I was reading a series of articles on singing by the great Australian soprano Dame Nellie Melba. In them she addressed the subject of practice as follows:
“Your practice should be divided into periods of actual singing. At first they should be very short, not more than five minutes at a time, gradually working up to twenty minutes. Three periods of twenty minutes each are enough for any student.
But the time of study, apart from actual singing, should extend over several hours daily. How are you to find the real meaning of the words of a song unless they are read over many times, both silently and aloud? Should they be in a foreign language which you do not speak, much time must be spent in translating them, so that you know the exact meaning of every word you sing.”
So Melba divided the concept of practice into physical practice (which should be done sparingly and with diligent attention) and mental practice (time taken studying the music). And of these, the one that comes first is the study away from the instrument. Melba’s argument is that it is difficult to use your time with your instrument effectively if you don’t know what you are doing!
For me, as a musician and as a mother whose child is starting to learn an instrument, I also wonder about how practice is taught to young musicians. As a child, I know that I was given no guidance by my music teachers about how to go about practicing. It was something that I had to learn about later. Does practice have a prominent place within current music pedagogy?
Jennifer,
This is great, thanks for posting!
I can’t say that I know much about current music pedagogy training and best practices. I suspect that others more familiar with this area can respond to your question better than I; frankly, I’d be curious to know the answer to that question myself.
From personal experience, with my two little ones starting cello and violin this year, I can say that there seems to be more emphasis put on what to practice than how to practice. I think it’s a lot of work (mentally and emotionally draining) for parents and teachers to guide their kids through deliberate practice at that age – and there is pressure to demonstrate progress, which I suspect may be measured in units of repertoire, rather than quality of sound, ease of playing, or creative improvisation for instance.
The few times we’ve had the awareness and patience to engage with our own kids that way, it’s been fruitful I think. Essentially it boils down to asking more questions, encouraging the kids to listen for themselves, and problem solve, which I think the kids find more engaging and interesting than “ok, play that same passage 3 more times exactly like you just did” (even though that way is quicker and easier). With deliberate practice at that age, they may not progress through repertoire as quickly, but I suspect they end up learning more about music and how to be more comfortable with their instruments. What have you observed with your own child?
While I completely subscribe to this philosophy and strive to discipline myself to this high standard of practice habits, I am not sure how appropriate this concept is for beginner students.. Except for a parent monitoring and guiding practice sessions, I wonder about the discipline of a young student to strive for this standard. I wonder if the “quantity of practice” technique may be more appropriate for beginner/dabbling musicians who aren’t totally sold out to their instrument yet… Thoughts?
Good article. I play piano and horn, and I find that practicing each instrument is a unique experience and requires a completely different mindset. On the piano you are constantly learning a huge new set of notes and patterns….lots of info for the fingers and brain to digest. On the horn you are playing much simpler music, but striving for purity of tone, intonation and connection between the notes, plus playing in a convincing lyrical way. And physical endurance is a big issue, so just putting in the hours and right kind of playing is in fact crucial to keep your chops strong. But you are right, the “do it over and over again til it’s right” mentality is the proverbial definition of insanity. Good work, keep it up.
Roger Kaza
Principal Horn
St. Louis Symphony
Hi Roger,
Thanks for the note. Indeed, that is an interesting thing that I’ve learned about brass players – the need to maintain a certain degree of muscular endurance. That’s certainly far less of an issue for string and keyboard players.
Thank you for sharing such an insightful and thought-provoking article! I am now rethinking not only my own practice, but my requirements and suggestions for students as well. Bravissimo, maestro!
Great article , although I disagree with a fair amount of it ..as well as agree
kk …my main concern , was the whole not going over 4 hours thing for practice …umm , you can condition yourself to practice more hours and have great results …also , if you just make whatever your practice routine /schedule consistant and take a break every so often ..then you’ll be great ! …anyways my practice is 11 hours guitar , 1.5-2.5 hours vocals one month straight at a time with a 4 day break and i never feel burnt out or lazy .( I work from home)
p.s. just practice a variety things and keep track of them……trust me , if you do an hour of straight technique then go into some thing like “chord explorartory mapping ” , then your mind wont get bored
Loved the article!!
I do have a question. For me, it’s never really been an issue of smart practicing; I always have goals when I get in the practice room. For me, the issue has been getting myself to the practice room. I find it hard to get motivated and practice. When I’m there, practicing is wonderful. How do I keep myself motivated to the point where I will practice every day instead of every other day??
Thanks,
Roddy
thank you for the article i just have a question. how do you deal with lack of progress.
I Don’t Practice the guitar that much methodically but I do play the guitar a lot, i play guitar when ever I see a guitar mine or some one else’s. I probably end up playing guitar on a good day for up to seven hours or more just messing around with song ideas or with other people jamming. I do I guess practice improvisation a lot because that is mostly what i do when I play guitar. This article seems to pointed more to classical musicians particularly violinists. This Article is very good but I am unsure of how I would apply this to me playing guitar unless I was learning a hard song or going to play a gig with songs I wrote or covers?
I will be marching DCI(drum corps international) this summer. For a Drum Corps practicing more than 12 hours per day is an everyday thing for us, however this does include physical training as well. 12 hours is the average day to day schedule(this does not include individual practice time). what are your thoughts on this sort of practice?
Hi Paul,
Sounds like an intense summer ahead! In regards to your question, the key is differentiating between playing (rehearsing, playing through, etc.) and practicing in the way that Ericsson et al. define it. For many instruments, it’s certainly possible (and not even all that uncommon) to play a combined 12 hours a day, but doing deliberate practice for that length of time may be a challenge, and probably not so fruitful.
Funny … one of my favorite professors used to say “Practice does not make perfect, practice makes permanent!”
Great article … and I can totally appreciate the approach and deliberateness.
Thanks!
So how do you encourage children or teens to work effectively? Cognitive development must play a part in being able to apply these principals – or do kids naturally apply these principals when doing something that they love?
I ask this question because I have noticed that kids and teens naturally go through love-hate relationships with things they love. I expect the worst time for kids to give up an instrument is when they are going through the “hate phase” because most work through it and eventually come back to the “love phase”. The problem with the hate phase is that this is when the kid or teen only time that they play is in a lesson, progress becomes slow and they are most likely to become disenchanted with music-making in general.
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