The logic of daily piano practice doesn’t always make sense
The conversation around piano practice is built on a very peculiar form of reasoning. The single metric of whether or not you practice everyday is taken by so many people as the primary qualifier of whether or not someone 1) can call themselves a musician, 2) is a good piano student, and/or 3) is dedicated to their instrument.
It baffles my mind. Why does this single metric mean so much to people?
There’s certainly some logic behind the idea. The purpose of practice is to get better at what you’re learning. It stands to reason that you can get better at what you’re learning faster if you fit more practice time into your week.
But the logic doesn’t hold. There are lots of things we do every day that we don’t get better at. Brushing your teeth, for example. I brush my teeth every day but don’t expect to become better at it by the time I’m 80 compared to when I’m 40.
Why?
Because although it’s a daily habit, I zone out. I don’t pay that close attention to what I’m doing.
It seems, then, that the limiting factor to whether or not you’ll grow in a skill is not the amount of time spent doing something, but the quality of attention given to the practice.
The same thing can happen with piano. People who practice for the sake of practice often zone out because their goal in sitting down wasn’t to tackle a new learning goal, it was to maintain their daily streak. They’re concentrating on the clock, not their musical goals. Over time, this makes learning piano about as engaging and interesting as brushing your teeth.
On the other hand, if a person concentrates on how they can best improve their skills, it improves the overall quality of their practice when they do sit down…which makes practice more enjoyable…which in turn encourages them to seek out more opportunities to practice. It’s a feedback loop of the most wonderful kind.
If that’s not all, I also find that people who improve the quality of their practice tend to reflect on their musical skills even when they’re not playing piano, effectively extending their “practice” even further throughout their day! They’ll mull over a musical challenge while driving. They’ll hear a song in the mall and realize they could play it if they wanted to. Grappling with musical problems becomes a part of their day — one of the truest signs of musicianship if I ever heard one!
So I wonder if we could agree to reframe how we think about the ways our practice habits reflect on our musicianship?
You don’t need to feel sheepish if you admit you didn’t practice much in the week between our lessons. I’m more interested to know what you worked on when you did sit down.
What was the quality of the attention you were able to give to your practice?
Did you identify learning goals for your session that were interesting and meaningful to you?
Were you able to meet those goals?
Did you feel capable of figuring out the challenges you met along the way?
Did meeting your goals make you feel a sense of pride and accomplishment?
Do you have ideas for what you’d like to try next?
Whether you’re a child or adult, the quality of the attention you give your practice is more indicative of your likelihood to learn and keep learning piano than the regularity of your practice.
Aspiring to practice every day is a wonderful goal. Certainly if you can maintain purposeful practice everyday, your skills will improve very quickly.
But not everyone can do that. Especially people who have a range of interests they want to explore in a week.
And that’s okay!
Not being able to commit to daily practice does not make you any less of a musician. And it shouldn’t make you feel embarrassed at your piano lesson.
If you’re experiencing a real block in your learning, that’s another conversation I can touch on another time.
But let’s stop with the obligation that daily practice is a virtue. Daily practice is just one metric in a constellation of factors that feed into a person’s ability to learn piano.
Try to let go of practice for the sake of practice. Play for you instead <3