How long do you practice, and how?

KDS How long are your sessions? 

KDS I find it impressive that you memorize as you go along. I am trying to memorize a short piece by Būrgmuller and I still don’t have it. I willl start devoting one practice session to memorization.

KDS Thanks for all of those tips, they’re great.

Yes, it is important to find and remember the patterns. Sometimes I change fingerings to get a repeating pattern when the given fingering breaks a pattern.

I will try color with a set of these erasable red/blue pencils,

https://a.co/d/00e3mFzv

I think I have the first Bergmüller almost memorized in three chunks. I just have to put them together. I haven’t played it in years.

KDS Oh, I am not advanced. I am a low intermediate player who is fighting against the urge to give up, lol.

I write in everything, including my Henle editions, but I do not scribble like Glenn Gould.

I dislike printing music from IMSLP because I get overwhelmed with single sheets of music. I’d rather just buy a nice bound edition.

I get the feeling you have played the piano your whole life. Am I right?

KDS You were lucky to have lessons as a child. I didn’t get lessons. We didn’t own a piano.

An Irish family one street over from my childhood home put about five or six kids through music lessons and wound up creating a bar band that still plays to this day, lol. Most of the sons played brass instruments.

There is a story that the father stamped his foot so hard on the floor when playing the piano that he put his foot through the floor. 
 

When I graduated from college and finally had a little money, I started paying for weekly violin lessons. I spent a decade or so, sawing away. Then, I moved to Manhattan and stopped playing the violin because I was trying to survive in the big city.

After that, there was a decade of classical guitar lessons, and then piano too. 

All in all, I believe I have paid for about thirty years of weekly lessons. I don’t regret my experiences learning any instrument.

I knew a programmer who also played the piano. He said he did it because studying the piano is an infinite time sink. All the hours you can give it, it will take. 

I play instruments to achieve “flow,” that state when time seems to stand still. 

KDS I suppose the violin does help with ear training but everyone has intonation problems, no matter if they’re amateurs or professionals.

I don’t miss that sound under my left ear. The violin sounds better from six feet than it does from six inches.

Jenny Young I need to figure out how to add in some exercises like Hanon and Czerny while I also learn from pieces.

It’s all a bit daunting, I must say, and I sorely miss my teacher. He’s such a good teacher, and we get along so well, but he has skipped so many lessons to the point that I don’t have lessons.

I will watch for that scale course.

Jenny Young Ok, I have ordered Czerny. I see that is missing from my exercise books.

Conrad Winn Yes, I’m the same, I also need to recharge. I can’t stay at the keyboard for hours. I think I’m applying the Pomodoro study method to piano practice.

I have a Japanese clicker device to count the 30 minute chunks. It’s 4pm and I’ve only got two clicks in. I’m not happy and will try to make up for it later in the day.

I also go off and practice the recorder, which is a different thing, and I’m at a much lower level there. 

Dustin Anderson I know you didn’t ask me but I’d like to mention that I am retired.

So, if I don’t let my days drift away from me by doing nothing, I can find 2.5-3 hours to practice the piano. I must be intentional about it, though.

I find another hour or so to practice two or three different types of recorders.

Now, people who have studied piano their entire lives with teachers have an insurmountable advantage over a late adult player who has been studying the piano for only 8-10 years.

I find the five days rule to be a bit strange. I always strove to practice an instrument every single day. It seems to me that you lose some progress by giving up two days a week.

My Russian violin teacher told me a story about Sviatoslav Richter and practice time. A television station interviewed Richter and asked him how many hours a day he practiced. He replied, an hour, nobody needs more! 

Then, they asked Richter’s wife how much he practiced. She said, he never stops!

It was well known in Moscow that Richter kept his entire apartment building awake with incessant practicing. He’d play the same passage twenty five times in a row at full volume.

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Dustin Anderson I understand what you’re saying but I do worry about slipping standards.

I read that a history professor at the University of California at Berkeley has cut down the amount of reading material he assigns, from 100 pages a week to 35 pages. Gone are the seven books students used to read, replaced by excerpts.

One has to distinguish serious students from other types of players. How many hours a day will a piano major practice at a conservatory? 
 

People do have to be careful not to injure themselves at the keyboard. Now that I’m not typing on a computer keyboard for ten hours a days, I have a little more life in my hands for the piano. But, of course, I am fighting age, and probably arthritis.
 

It actually never occurred to me that someone would study an instrument and practice less than five days a week. I can see why that would lead to threading water.

If I miss one day at the piano, or recorder, my wife will start thinking about selling the instruments, lol. If I practice less than five days a week, I am doomed.

My teacher (Juilliard/Yale) played through all of the Beethoven sonatas during Covid. He told me that he had had daily lessons as a child. That bit of information floored me.

Retirement does open up time but I need a teacher to be there for me week after week, to guide me and encourage me.
 

Hopefully, I will find someone when we move to Philadelphia. Surely, there are some good teachers there, the home of the Curtis Institute.