I have always been a bit of an odd duck, because while music has not always come easily to me, practice has. I have vivid memories of my young self getting home from piano lessons and making a b-line for the piano just to play all the things I played with my teacher for the last half hour or forty-five minutes or hour or whatever increment my lesson was at the time. It didn't matter what she assigned me, I wanted to play everything!
I discovered as an adult that is not how most students function. Even the most devoted and enthusiastic students can feel overwhelmed or discouraged by practicing. What made me different? Looking at my current and past practice habits, I use my practice as a mode of emotional regulation, and having highly structured time with tangible and incremental goals is a good way to calm my nerves. I hope I am mostly alone in this purpose behind practice. I'd much rather know a student is practicing out of joy with music and to achieve a higher degree of ability than know they are practicing because they feel they are falling apart and practice is the one place they can reasonably control their inner dialogue.
The one thing I can say for my practice habits that I have continued into my adult life is consistency. And that is where I believe the most progress can be made with students. My studio practice policy is to practice five days a week the number of years you are old in minutes. 5 years old? 5 minutes of practice. 12 years old? 12 minutes of practice. Ultimately, the time is less important than the regularity with which you practice. "Cramming" is not a practice that works well in music. So, I'd rather know a 12 year old is practicing 5 minutes a day than 12 minutes on the two days before their lesson. Consistency is crucial to building healthy habits and allowing your brain time to process and understand what you are looking to achieve in your music.
So, this all comes back to me loving to practice. I guess I don't know how much I love to practice as much as I love the feeling practicing gives me. Stability, more assuredness in my abilities, time to experiment, emotional regulation. But I think these are all things people should experience while practicing as well. I don't know ifÂ