Hi,

I have been playing the piano for 2 and a half years, and just finished my grade 6 (distinction).

My current practice time is 1 and a half hours, and I divide it as shown (with my current pieces i'm working on):

10 minutes: Hanon warmup and scales
20 minutes: Czerny exercises
20 minutes: Bach Partita 5 Praeambulum
20 minutes: Kuhlau sonatina
20 minutes: Chopin waltz

How does this practice schedule sound? Do you think I should only work on 2 pieces a day or even 1 for a longer period? Would you spend longer/shorter on say scales/hanon or czerny? Or maybe increase or reduce the day's practice time?

Cheers!

How does it work for *you*? Are you improving, is your teacher happy with your progress, are you happy with your progress? If so, then that's the right practise schedule for you. It would drive me nuts to have the time blocked out like that but that is *me* - it does not mean that I am right and you are wrong or you are right and I am wrong. It just means that we work differently.

What works for me is like this -

10 minutes technical exercises
5 minutes scales
any amount of time depending on how much time I have and what technical problems I need to fix. It's different every day.

But I am happy with my progress, as is my teacher, and I feel that I am improving at a suitable rate. It might not be satisfactory for a serious student but it's Ok for me me, I am a post-grade 8 pianist (err post grade 8 by a couple of decades) who doesn't have exams to prepare for and just the odd forum event every couple of months. I am not driven by any particular big goal, I just set myself very little goals very often and try to meet those.

Well, it seems to be working pretty well for you from what you have achieved but looks rather boring after a while! Depends what you do though within the time. If you fancy an experiment and then see which is better you might try a few months of more task focussed and less time focussed? So the idea is you set a target for each day and work til you get there. Then you stop no matter what time it is.

On the downside you might be there longer and if that is regularly happening you might have to juggle the schedule til you know roughly what you can do per day. On the upside you see all the time what you are achieving.

I have always followed a versin of your time method personally (but tending to have one piece as major work to learn, a couple to polish) cos you dont have to do so much prep on paper and I'm dead lazy but daughter likes tasks and there is no doubt she gets far more done that way. You have to set up for the month/week/days carefully though - needs much more thought. And develop the ability to divide a piece into many, many (100s of) tiny achievable aims - read Philip Johnstons Practiceopaedia if you want more details on this and many other ideas about other practice methods.

The other really good thing about task focussed is when you have a deadline to meet you can work backwards from it to see what you have to do each day. That can be as basic as learn x number of bars and get previous y bars up to speed..... This is invaluable if you have solos, ensembles and orchestra deadlines to meet - butworks for an exam too if you have a date in mind. This is really like any exam prep. You cant work only to time - you work to get through the syllabus within the time available....Funnily enough this is a skill even post grads need pushing into I find (not music ones, medical ones...)

Sounds very sufficient, and congrats on your achievement! I've just hit the 1 year mark and am starting Grade 5 myself - the initial enthusiasm is starting to fade a bit, though. Any previous 'schedule' has completely gone out the window!

I'd say you should maybe vary your routine every now and then, just so that it doesn't become overly repetitive and stays new, fun and exciting