Piano Lesson Myths Piano Lessons
Reality: Shorter times are optimal. After about 15 minutes of an activity, the average person becomes mentally fatigued. Short bursts of concentration repeated frequently are much more effective than one long session. So, even if you only have 10 minutes, DO IT. Do another 10 minutes later in the day or the next day. By the end of the week, you might have 16 micro practice sessions, yet only practiced on 4 days. This is highly efficient. Instead, if you have the goal of practicing an hour or practicing a half hour, another day goes by with ZERO practice. Why is this? Because our life gets so busy and that half hour or hour just doesn’t materialize. The result is that you miss practicing ALTOGETHER. If you could sneak in five minutes here or 10 minutes there, you would miraculously accrue that half hour or hour that you had intended to practice! In fact, even if you had the luxury of sitting for six hours at the piano and didn’t have other typical competing issues that life brings, it would STILL be preferable to break up your practice into smaller segments. Also, do not practice if you are tired, angry, distracted, or in a hurry or you will “learn-in” these feelings. On a professional level, if you find yourself seated at the piano for an extended period of time, you can still observe these principles by rotating the activity while still remaining at the piano. For example, you can spend 20 minutes learning a new passage of one piece. Then switch to practicing some finger technique. This way, your mind is resting while your fingers are getting a workout. Then GO BACK to the same passage and you will be mentally refreshed. Then work on a section of a different piece. Then do a little sight-reading. Then back to the first piece. And so on. Keep it in rotation.
Another important point is the concept of “precedence.” If you happen to sit at the piano for one day on a rare occasion and you end up spending one hour or one and a half hours, you are doomed the next day! Why? Because subliminally, you will feel that you have to do it again or longer. Of course, this is impossible, because the long session that you did have was a RARITY, but it feels like the “MODEL.” This is truly a mistake because then you will always feel like you have to maintain this level of time at the piano. So then, of course, this is not possible in a busy lifestyle, so you end up going for the rest of the week and not practicing AT ALL! So, again, don’t try to practice for long times for these specific reasons! Just try to do short micro sessions and you will see the best progress in the shortest period.
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