What is your daily practice routine?

hi, nice advice. I used to start with sclaes and arpegios. Thank you

I’m pretty unorthodox in practicing. In the past I followed the recommendation to try to study everything in my repertoire daily and as I could have 1h30m to 2h max of training, it was really those 15 to 20 min of practice for most things. I had a problem because I was not good in making longer practice sessions, so I had to stop every time I changed the next thing to practice and lost some time. Also, after 2-3 things practiced, it was psychologically hard to go to one more, so I made longer breaks and spent a lot of valuable practice time.

I decided to adapt my practice to something that worked best for me, even knowing it is not optimal. So, my focus is usually one thing for the day (technique, piece) and take it really seriously, spending energy and time to be more careful and take it until a point that I feel things improved. If I get to the point I get tired with the piece, but feel I want to take something else I do. On weekends I study more things, but I can still spend a whole day in one thing if I feel I’m practicing with quality. And if I’m tired I stop. I can jump a day of practice also if I’m too tired without feeling guilty.

The downside is that not practicing daily implies in losing some of the progress made to take the piece back to the point it was. I do improve slowly, I feel I need double the time to make the progress of what would be a one year curriculum. But at least for me, practicing this way made me appreciate more the practicing session, as in the past I felt it more as a burden which would be hard to keep for these many years.

What I really miss is not having completed the theory (particularly harmony), and perception (aural skills) / solfeggio classes and even history, it is being hard to learn without formal classes those things and I’m at a point that I really feel the impact of the lack of those skills/knowledge in my progress.

A more sincere answer than the one I gave last week in case it's of any use. I think it was helpful thinking it out into writing:

I'm about 50 and fairly new to piano (6 "real" years) so my process from year to year is still changing a lot.

Here's what I do now as a practice routine. Generally mornings before work gets busy, roughly 5-8am

1. Set the stage - Maybe the recording of the last lesson should be going on the ear buds as I walk around. Likely something was said I didn't get marked on the score or Excel task list -- or didn't translate to symbols/words well and I need to hear it again.
   1. Turn on the PC by the Piano, get it booting up.
   2. Start the coffee water boiling, measure the beans on the scale
   3. Log in to the PC, load Word (my "learning piano" notes - a @John_Mortenson style zibaldone) Excel (menu of practice tasks) and browser (mostly for Newzik and Piano Marvel)
      1. Watch myself glance at - and than consciously-close-quickly - the favorite news web site. Notice how it's all the same stuff and it's amazing how interesting the news is all of a sudden. There will be time later to read it.
   4. Coffee water boiling, add a little cold to get to around 195-205. Grind the beans. Put together, start countdown timer on Fitbit watch at 3:45
   5. In Excel practice tasks files un-freeze panes from yesterday, copy all yesterday's tasks to new rows at the bottom. Update all the dates to today, shade all but the first 3 lines in yellow (indicating not done). Freeze pane on the top 3 items for today's list. Glance at them
   6. At around 1 minute, stir the coffee grounds back into the water
   7. Waking up the parts of the house I use. Glance at e-mail, if it's not crashed or bleeding, it can wait...
   8. Fitbit goes off, time to pour the coffee into my wife's Yeti so it's warm when she gets up. (I just dabble in coffee, trying to notice flavors)
   9. Fill and set the big water bottle by the piano. Every sniff of coffee requires a sip of water.
      1. All those bathroom breaks are chances for a bit of meditative mindfulness or reflection on how practice is going - to realize you've been forgetting to practice X the Y way - BEFORE time to practice is up. It is not time to read the news or check the mail. Keep working to make opening the news/mail app on the phone the habit trigger to meditate or reflect.
   10. Take off the Fitbit (playing piano confuses the pedometer)
2. Warm ups
   1. While doing Roskell warmups, work to really read the first 3 items on the Excel task list. Notice the brain getting uncomfortable about what's to come -- and the squirming. ("Laundry needs to be folded! That plant may need water, you should check it! Maybe we have emails to deal with…."). Abide with this, play with it, let it play out in the background.
   2. Think about what is newer in the learning process (i.e. just started yesterday). Plan to reinforce/solidify any recent learning with today's work.
   3. Open the Word Piano-notes Zibaldone document. Spend a few minutes with it, find something to organize/clean-up. Look at any one page and I'll be reminded of a good thing or 3 I wanted to remember
      1. Feel the brain squirm "but reading and deciding what to do and how to do it is a waste of time! We need to start wiggling fingers!!!!". Enjoy the squirming. Who's going to be the boss today, emotions or the intellect? How long will that last?
   4. Start to work the big warm-up task on Excel:
      1. Notes to play on the keyboard: Prefer coming-up-next or just-started repertoire, especially harder stuff doing 2-hands-together first-time type efforts. Older-probably-learned-with-some-bad-habits repertoire, and broken-chords-technique or lots-of-movement works like Chopin Op 25 #1 also good types of items for this task
      2. This is all about kinesthesia, clean easy movement, the brain noticing everything, fingers barely working at all, even when playing loudly
      3. Set the (usu. just mental) metronome on "excruciatingly slow - where a random 10-second listener can't figure out what you're playing"… or even slower ( @Maria_Lomozov's practice tip #7)
      4. This task currently reads: Position Practice, brain work not finger: (Mortenson) play only beautifully and easily. Super-neutral hands in dead/relaxed position. 3-dimension movement. Technique maybe 1-octave apart to help the hands synchronize/notice-differences in kinesthesia. Feel each release: In-and-out/thumb-jump-rope/swing/wrist pivot L-R/Wrist Rotation/From-the-shoulders, play on the edge, from the shoulders/elbows (swinging), notice how hands get out of synch, watch/feel the hands recover to neutral/level, elbows in/line-up-hands, level hands, free shoulders and arms, play from the back, try loud only from arm drop, no muscle force, listen to the sounds, usu. try for legato. PFx2, move-fast-play-slow, Anticipate the next note feel. Key Elaborations: over-do good motions to help learn them, 1 hand, Hands always neutral, arms move, learn how better-played notes sound. Play each note firmly and loudly to confirm good support, stick the landing in the center, force from weight drop and/or active fingers, not pushing down. Super slow, constantly aware of new things. Active fingers pushing down only (no side movement) with release. Eyes closed, feel everything, precise fingertips. Read and notice all the marks and notes on the score you've been ignoring
      5. The fingers are barely working but the brain is going crazy, anticipating, planning, feeling - make the mind feel a bit of strain
      6. Keep glancing back at the task text, find one or two small parts of it to work on next
      7. If this is going well and this task needs an hour, so be it.
      8. If a bunch of fingerings seem off or are missing and would be more natural if changed, so be it, figure it out, write it down now. You have all the time in the world if you get the motions correct right now
         1. Unlike @Dominic_Cheli I currently like using this "prime" time to work out fingerings. At my (much lower) level it's not just working out a fingering: It's working out groupings of fingerings and trying to decide the entire body and brain's approach to each note (i.e. @Henry_Kramer 's approach to learning 3rds in Chopin's g# etude), and trying to learn it so well I can hit it half as well when playing at tempo. There's plenty of crappy technique from childhood to still un-learn….
         2. A work where every "start playing exactly on this note" slightly-questionable fingering isn't written in - is a work I need to admit I'm not taking seriously
         3. Any key signature, ledger-line or un-fingered note hit wrong once or esp. twice on these first reads needs a finger-number/b/#/note-name written by it. No shame, momento mori - time is short, just write it in and save time getting it right every time after now.
3. More Active Warm Ups / Longer-term technique work (if #2 above took long and time is getting short, this might be skipped)
   1. Start working the Excel list. Choose from (a bit more finger work, even more brain-work) some tasks like:
      1. Poly-rhythms work using scales
      2. Learning @Boris_Berman technique of "floor" articulations, feeling the forearm release after each note
      3. Dohnanyi exercises 1-6
   2. Sight reading: Consciously choose to work on "no-looking, learning hand positioning by feel" OR "at-a-steady-tempo sight reading"
4. Now we're cooking (or about out of time…) Get started on some items from the big list of tasks
   1. Look at the "key focus" items at the top of the task menu, maybe pick 1 or 2 to try to apply to all tasks today, change to white background
      1. Be sure to re-visit newly started things until the learning is starting to stick
      2. Maybe do some technique
      3. Maybe do deeper repertoire
      4. Maybe listen to yesterday's short recording, find 1-3 things that you want to change, update/create new tasks as needed
   2. While working the Excel list change the background of items "completed" to white -- but I only get to do that if "the cake is baked" (Roskell) for that item.