How Much Should I Practise?

There isn't a simple 'one size fits all' answer to this question as the ideal amount of practice that is beneficial will largely depend on your goals and how long you have been playing. However, a consistent, regular practise routine is far more beneficial and will provide more benefits and faster progression than infrequent long practise sessions once or twice a week. It's not about about how long you practise, but rather how often you practise and how you practise (I'll explain more about practise technique in a minute!).

Someone practising Piano

Shorter Sessions

Beginners should typically aim for 15–30 minutes daily, and in the case of young children, we often advocate as little as ten minutes a day to establish routine without it feeling like a 'chore'. Shorter sessions build muscle memory and in the case of stringed instruments such as guitar, regular shorter practise sessions will build fingertip calluses without causing fatigue. It's very tempting with a new 'all consuming' passion to throw ourselves into it and to play for hours on end, but as a beginner, we are unlikely to have good technique and are building and developing those muscles and joints that we are now using in ways we may never have used them before. Shorter, regular practise sessions not only provide more benefits and progression while significantly reducing the likelihood of injury to muscles and joints in beginners.

Advanced

For more Advanced players, we typically recommend between 45–90 minutes a day, dependant on your goals and ambitions, but as previously stated, regular practise is far more beneficial that one or two long sessions a week. If you know there will be certain days when you will struggle to maintain your usual practise routine, allocate yourself 15 minutes to practise on those days, as even a 15 minute session can help maintain muscle memory and progression. Remember: quality over quantity, 15 minutes of thoughtful, uninterrupted practice is vastly superior to an hour of distracted or unfocused work.

Practise Technique

How you practise has much more impact on your progression than how long you practise, and practise technique is a subject that I will be delving into with much more detail in a future article. I've lost count of the students over the years that have been struggling with the same section of a piece of music for several weeks and when we've worked on it together in a lesson, they have been able to address any issues and play their 'nemesis' section after 5 minutes.

This is a topic that deserves a dedicated article so I'll leave you with a a few pointers:

Plan - Plan what you intend to work on before you start practising and be realistic with your expectations.

Less is More - Identify and work on just one or two problem areas in a piece of music. Do not allow yourself to get disheartened and become distracted by trying to do too much. Focus instead on improving those one or two issues in today's practise session, and celebrate those wins and progress you can see.

Practise the Whole - When breaking down and working on individual sections in a piece of music, it's important to ensure you also play the adjoining sections of music either side of the section you have been working on to retain memory of the piece as a whole, as otherwise, you could introduce mental hurdles that could impact your long term ability to play the piece as a whole.

Slow and Steady Wins the Race - we've all heard the fable of the Hare and the Tortoise, and how 'slow and steady wins the race'. Experience and research have shown time and time again that this is indeed true, especially when practising, and in particular, when focusing on individual sections of music. Practising slowly provides noticeably faster mastery and memory retention. When we slow a process down, it encourages and gives our brain more space to focus on the activity, which helps the brain develop those neural pathways more quickly and efficiently.

The '21 Day' Misconception

There is a commonly held misconception that it typically takes 21 days to learn a new habit or break a 'bad habit', but research shows that this is simply not the case. Research demonstrates that it can take you anywhere from two months to eight months to build a new habit or behavior into your life, not 21 days.

Before you let this dishearten you, researchers also found that missing an opportunity to practise a new behavior did not materially affect the habit formation process, in other words, learning new skills is not an all-or-nothing process.

'Embrace the Process'

Finally, the best advice I can give you is to 'Embrace the Process'. Don't set yourself up to fail by convincing and pressuring yourself into believing that you have to do it all at once. Habits do not work like that! You need to embrace the process and remind yourself that this is supposed to take longer. Understanding and acknowledging that fact will make it easier to manage your expectations, and to commit to making small, incremental improvements.

And above all else, remember that this is supposed to be fun, something you enjoy, something you to do to relax and to distract yourself from everything else that is going on in your life. Practising shouldn't feel like a chore. You don't need to be perfect, and it's Okay to make mistakes. In fact, embrace your mistakes, learn from them and use them to develop and grow your musical ability.

You've got this!