“How much should my child practice?”
This is one of the questions I hear most often from parents. Adults ask it, too, especially when they are returning to piano after many years and aren't quite sure how much time they should be spending at the piano.
The answer is: It depends. There isn't one magic number of minutes that works for every student. And honestly, I would much rather have a student practice for 10 focused minutes than sit at the piano for 30 minutes while playing the same things over and over without really thinking about what they are doing.
For my youngest students and beginners, I often recommend starting with 5–10 minutes of practice before breakfast.
Yes, BEFORE breakfast! There is something to be said for getting it done before the day gets busy. If practice becomes part of the morning routine, it doesn't have to compete with homework, sports, activities, dinner, and everything else that fills up a family's afternoon and evening.
Five focused minutes is better than skipping practice because you don't have time for a “real” practice session. As students get older and their music becomes more challenging, their practice time will naturally increase. An adult or more advanced student may need 20, 30, 45 minutes, or more, but more time doesn't automatically mean better practice.
Piano is a skill that develops through repetition. Your brain and your fingers need regular reminders of what they have learned, which is one reason I encourage students to practice throughout the week rather than trying to squeeze everything into one long session.
If you have ever heard a student say, “But I practiced for an hour on Saturday!” after not touching the piano for five days, you know what I mean. I would much rather see 10 or 15 minutes of practice on several days than one giant practice session at the end of the week. Research on musical learning also supports the benefits of spacing practice over multiple sessions rather than cramming it all together.
Of course, real life happens. You will miss a day sometimes, and your child will occasionally have a week that is simply too busy. The important thing is to get back to the piano rather than deciding that the whole week is ruined.
Here's one of my favorite practice rules: Three is the magic number.
When you are working on something that isn't quite right yet, try playing it correctly three times. Not three times while making the same mistake, but three good, careful repetitions where you are actually paying attention to what you are doing.
Three repetitions are enough to give your brain and fingers some reinforcement without turning the exercise into endless repetition. And if you can't play it correctly three times in a row, that's useful information, too. It probably means you need to slow it down, break it into a smaller section, or figure out exactly what is causing the problem.
Remember: Practice makes permanent. We want to be careful about what we are practicing!
This is one of the biggest practice mistakes I see.
A student starts at the beginning of the piece and plays along happily because they know the first few lines pretty well. Then they reach the difficult section, struggle for a while, and eventually stop. The next day, they start right back at the beginning and do the same thing all over again.
The result? The beginning of the piece has been played dozens of times and sounds great, while the section that actually needs work hardly gets any attention and continues to be plagued by mistakes.
There is no reason to spend most of your practice time playing something you already know. Practice the part that isn't working yet. That is where your practice time will make the biggest difference. Also:
One of my favorite ways to avoid this problem is to start at the end of the piece.
Play the last few measures until they feel comfortable. Then add the section immediately before them. Once those two sections are working, add the section before that, and keep working backward toward the beginning.
This makes sure that the ending gets just as much attention as the beginning. It also makes it much less likely that you will reach the last page and suddenly discover, “Oh... I haven't practiced this part!”
You don't have to work backward every time, either. If there is one particularly difficult section in the middle of the piece, start there. Find the problem and spend your practice time solving it. In other words:
This sounds obvious, but we all do it.
We like playing the things we can already play. It feels good to hear ourselves play a piece smoothly, and there is certainly nothing wrong with playing through a piece once to see how it is coming along. But if you have 10 minutes to practice, you don't want to spend eight of those minutes playing the easy parts and only two minutes working on the difficult ones.
Instead, ask yourself: “What needs to get better today?”
Maybe it's a tricky rhythm. Maybe it's a chord change that keeps falling apart. Maybe your left hand isn't keeping up with your right hand. Maybe the last four measures aren't secure yet. Pick one problem, work on it carefully, and give yourself a chance to improve it.
That is real practice.
Adults often tell me, “I just don't have enough time to practice.”
I understand! Most adults have jobs, families, errands, and approximately seventeen thousand other things competing for their attention. Life happens. But you don't need an hour at the piano every day to make progress.
If you have 15 minutes, follow the ideas above and use those 15 minutes well. If you have 10 minutes, that's enough time to work on something specific. And if you only have 5 minutes today, five minutes is still better than zero.
Instead of thinking, “I don't have enough time to practice,” try asking, “What can I improve in the time I have?”
There is no single answer that works for every student. A five-year-old beginner, a teenager preparing for a performance, and an adult who is learning piano for fun are going to have very different practice needs.
For a young beginner, I am perfectly happy with 5–10 focused minutes a day to start. As students get older, their practice time can gradually increase as their attention span, repertoire, and musical goals develop.
But regardless of age, I keep coming back to the same basic idea: practice regularly, practice thoughtfully, and practice what needs work.
If you remember nothing else, remember these three things:
1. A little practice is better than no practice.
2. Three good repetitions are better than ten careless ones.
3. Don't keep practicing what you already know—find the part that needs your attention.
The goal of practice isn't to spend as much time as possible sitting at the piano. The goal is to make tomorrow's playing better than today's.