How often do your piano parents ask you, “How long should she practice for?” or, “How much time should he be spending at the piano?” Parents who sign up their children for piano lessons are often looking for guidance when it comes to their home responsibilities, and asking for concrete tasks (such as timing practice time) feels like the right thing to do). It also feels easy to answer with a simple, “Thirty minutes, five days a week.” But what if that isn’t the best answer?
Parents are usually somewhat surprised by how I reply… until I explain.
Who Decided On 30 Minutes?
Setting time limits for home piano practice is simply convenient. Parents can say “There. She was at the piano for 30 minutes.” Teachers can say “He practices for 30 minutes every night.” Therefore he or she must be progressing… right?
Well… usually. If you sit at the piano for long enough eventually your skills will improve.
But the more important questions should actually be “How should she practice?” or “How should he be spending his time at the piano?” Because if the focus is only on the amount of time spent at the piano, we’re missing a significant chunk of the purpose behind piano practicing.
It’s not about the time spent, but rather how you spent your time.
Teaching our piano students to become efficient practisers seems counterproductive. After all… if they are efficient then it would mean that they’d end up spending less time on the piano! But the truth is that the opposite actually happens. Your piano students learn to practice efficiently… they progress more quickly… their enjoyment of the instrument increases substantially. This increased enjoyment leads to motivation to practice for the sheer enjoyment of mastering the instrument; of being immersed in wonderful music. And then you have a true musician.
If we as piano teachers shift our focus away from stopwatches and oven timers and instead turn towards teaching our students effective and focused practice techniques then increased practice hours will increase as a lovely by-product.
So how should you answer this question? By showing your piano parents how you layout practice tasks, rather than giving them a concrete timeframe. Explain this “quality over quantity” mindset and how playing through the same piece from start to finish 7 times over and over is not actually practicing. Armed with an understanding of what piano practice should be, you’ll have parents on board to assist with true learning.
Granted… teaching effective practice techniques to a 7-year-old is no easy task. This is why we created the Very Useful Piano Library. Filled with carefully-leveled music, note-reading games and activities, note-printing fun, rhythm activities, and more, these books are the first ones your students will open at home to practice.
jamila says
great article ! i am definitely going to forward this to my students !
robin mdden says
I just had a high schoolstudent who was not ready for the Masquerade Recital. We had to have a talk about balancing life and piano practice. We looked over the assignment book to see how long she was taking to master each piece. That got her attention. She went home and practiced for 3.5 hours at one sitting. “Kowabunga!” or something like that. Breakthrough. She dropped by the house to demonstrate the progress and performed well at the recital.
The name of the person who said this escapes me, but he said the secret of his success was “butt glue.”
Melissa says
This is so true! I have a problem with some students parents requiring them to practice a specified amount of time and setting a timer to be sure they do. How should I address this? Perhaps I should forward this link to the parents and ask them to read it?
Linda says
An hour a day is what I ask my students to do, or at least 7 hours a week. Most of them don’t get it all in, but they know what I’m expecting!