How Much Time Should Students Practice Piano Each Day?
How long a student needs to practice piano each day is different for each person.
Is there a magic number that produces great students? No, not in my 30+ years of experience teaching piano. Julliard students practice 5-8 hours a day but that would ruin most any beginner’s desire to learn piano. What about 10 minutes a day? Can anyone learn much in 10 minutes a day? What’s the likelihood anyone will carve out that 10 minutes each day to begin with?
This common practice question from parents comes in tandem with another, what age children should begin learning the piano? I tell them it’s not about age in my studio, but more about their child’s maturity and ability to sit and practice. I point out that practice is work and the honeymoon for practicing (from excitement) typically wears off in 9-12 weeks. If their child is too young and unable to sit at the piano to practice, we risk them quitting prematurely.
Help discover your student’s best practice time
Does your student feel accomplished when practicing piano? And how do you judge that anyway? First, find out how much time was devoted to practicing today. Ask your student what they worked on. A line, a page, a passage? Then ask them to play what they learned. Assess their confidence and responses. Do they feel like they progressed?
If so, great.
If not, maybe there wasn’t enough time, or maybe not enough focus. Perhaps there were multiple distractions. Since the pandemic, both cell phones and snacking are the 2 biggest detractors to quality practice I have noticed with students.
Once you’ve got input from your student about their practice session, monitor it for a week.
After the week is up you will have a good idea of what time amount to set as a goal. Maybe it’s sufficient for the maturity level. Maybe it needs more daily effort.
Parents know their child better than anyone. They know best if sufficient time has been invested in practice.
Most Teachers Recommend…
Historically speaking, the majority of teachers require 30-60 minutes a day, 5 days a week, for piano practice. In one group of piano teachers, I heard the comment, “ask for the moon and you’re always setting standards high.”
I take a very different approach. I set the minimum requirement. I track it each week and require parents to sign off on it. Every one of my students and parents knows I only require 100 practice minutes each week. The very first thing I ask when students arrive in class is whether they met their goal that week. They are rewarded when they do and encouraged to get it done the next week if they didn’t.
It’s been a proven method of success for my students to know the minimal standard. When they find a song they love, they are motivated to sit longer and work for it because they like it. When they are finding progress (because they aren’t focused on how much longer they need to sit at the piano that day) they grow into more time on a regular basis.
Finding the best amount of time for your student to practice will ensure far more longevity than a randomly assigned time by someone shooting for the moon or applying the 40 min a day to each student. Real progress happens anytime a student is engaged and learning during practice. And then the subject of quality of practice becomes more important than quantity – which is a whole other sermon for me.
free for you
To help keep track of those practice minutes, download the practice record PDF I created by filling out the form below
