Practicing!

One of the things I get asked about the most is practicing. Students (and students’ parents— I see you too 😉) ask… How long should a practice session last? Should each song be played a certain number of times? Should I practice every day? Every other day? Twice a day? Well, the answer is…. complicated. There is no one size fits all answer, but there are three important things to consider when developing a practice strategy: the student’s age, level, and goals. If you are 5 years old and taking piano lessons for fun (or because you want to learn your favorite song from Frozen 2or Harry Potter), you probably will only practice for about 5-10 minutes at a time and you might find that you only need to practice 3-4x per week. If you are 16 or 17 years old and preparing for college auditions, you might find that 5 minutes is not quite enough time to squeeze in everything you need to practice 😆. It is more likely that you will practice 1-2 hours every day (especially during audition crunch time!).

While every one has a different way of learning here are some good guidelines for practice times and sessions per week (we will talk about how to use this practice time in a future post):

Primer/Preparatory level: 5-10 minutes per session, 3-4 days per week.

Level 1: 10-15 minutes per session, 3-4 days per week.

Level 2: 15-20 minutes per session (or two 10 minute sessions per practice day), 3-4 days per week.

Level 3: 20-30 minutes per session (or two 10/15 minute sessions per practice day), 4 days per week.

Levels 4 and 5: 30-40 minutes per session (or two 15/20 minute sessions per practice day), 4 or 5 days per week.

Levels 6 and 7: at least 45 minutes per practice day, 5 days per week.

Levels 8 and above: at least 60 minutes per practice day, 5 or 6 days per week.

Keep in mind that the above times are simply guidelines for healthy practice habits, you can adjust your times to accommodate your goals… if you are practicing to prepare for a festival, recital or competition then you may find you need to increase your times, especially as a performance or recording date approaches. And remember you can always chat with me in lesson if you have questions about how to plan and manage your practicing! If you aren’t sure what level you are we can talk about that too! I am here to help make this work for you, but at the end of the day YOU are the one who has to do the actual practicing— I have enough of my own to do!