How Much Do Great Pianists REALLY Practice?
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- čas přidán 13. 06. 2023
- #piano #pianomusic #productivity
Ever wondered how much time the world's greatest pianists dedicate to honing their craft? In this captivating video, we delve into the practice habits of renowned virtuosos, uncovering the diverse approaches they take to reach the pinnacle of musical excellence. From the legendary Arthur Rubinstein and his grueling 16-hour daily sessions to the enigmatic Glenn Gould's unconventional mental rehearsals, each pianist shares their unique perspective on practice. Discover the fascinating stories of Frederic Chopin, Vladimir Horowitz, Claudio Arrau, Martha Argerich, Maurizio Pollini, Lang Lang, and Yuja Wang. Join us on this musical journey and learn the invaluable lessons these maestros offer. Don't forget to like, share, and subscribe for more intriguing insights into the world of music. 🎹🎶✨
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Rubenstein wasn’t devoting to practice. He was avoiding his newborn at home
😂😂😂😂😂
Lmao😂😂😂😂
You should read his Memoirs , which are a very informative reading ( and fun , too ) and he says exactly something different.
@@cooltrades7469 he's obviously joking about it
Realistically, (I could look up his financial conditions when his kid was born but confirmation but I won't), he wanted the extra money because he had a kid and wife to take care of.
Horowitz purportedly said, “If I don’t practice one day, I can tell; if I don’t practice two days, my wife can tell; if I don’t practice three days, anyone can tell.”
I thought that was Louis Armstrong. Trumpet chops decay rapidly, so I believe it.
I thought that was Itzak Perlman
And I thought it was Rubinstein.
Funny to say, an indian master musician was reported to have said "If I don't practice one day, I hear the difference; if I don't practice two days, my disciples hear the difference; if I don't practice for a week, the audience hears the difference".
I think that this is experience of all persons committed to music.
Personally, if I don't practice one day I feel the difference too, at least in the first twenty minutes of practice when I start again. It is a very annoying sensation, so I practice everyday.
@@PatriciaGoodsonpianist Ha-I guess a lot of them, or none of them said it
Louis Kentner said "There are two kinds of pianist: those who practice and admit it, and those who don't admit it. The ones that don't practice are, by definition, not pianists".
So many lie about as if we don’t know.
Yuja Wang is „a rising star” ... 😭
Well, imo she is better described as already one of THE BEST pianists of the 21st century 🙈
In your wet dreams, sugar... 😶
@@Pogouldangeliwitz seriously??)) She is the of the most popular pianists today🤭
Yuja Wang "BEST pianist 😮??!!!!!!!!!???????". She has very fast fingers and a big big brain (and a good manager...) but in the romantic repertoire she misses the most important : the respect of the styles of the great composers and the sensitivity of the touch to beautify their music. (In the modern and contemporary music, she is excellent though) . The young Japanese pianist Nobuyuki Tsujii is certainly THE BEST pianist of that generation : same age as Wang, same virtuosity (despite his blindness...) BUT he's got all the rest which makes him give true and deep emotions to the audience whatever he plays...
@@GingerIndiana Are you president of his fan club?
Weissenberg said the most difficult thing was to play a slow movement as simple as possible. Can Wang do that?….
I was considered to be a good pianist, and began college as a piano major. Starting as a boy I was required to practice 1 hour a day. As I improved, and excited by my progress, that increased to about 3 hours a day. In college it varied, depending on course schedules, ensembles, etc.,. but was always beween 3-5 hours daily. I think it varies from pianist-to-pianist, but at the start I think most of us require a lot of practice, just to become serious about it.
Chopin is the man! When I followed his advice, my playing improved over the next 3 months more than I had achieved over the previous 5 years (of 5hrs per day).
And also not 2hrs straight. The only practice time that is useful is the time you can be fully focused and dealing with problem solving. I can normally do 20-30 minutes at a time, no more than 3-4 times per day. After that, I’m no longer “practising” (or learning, improving, perfecting my play), it’s just performing,(for myself, mostly).
It still takes time to master a piece, but ironically, it takes far less time with this less-is-more approach than if I practiced more!
Was that merely limiting yourself to 2 hours a day, or was there more pieces of his advice that helped you improve in such a way?
Yes but I bet he didn’t start out with two hours. I bet he initially did more and when he got to a certain accomplished level then practiced for two days!!!
I couldn't agree more! Same here. I practice no more than 2h30 and noticed that my brain keeps on "practicing" (=integrating) hours and hours after the actual practice time. 80% of my piano playing happens in the brain. And brain needs rest in order to process and integrate.
@@darthvader7684 Here's one of the articles I wrote on this subject about how to practice effectively (and efficiently):
1. Less is more. I still struggle with this. I play close to a thousand pieces, but I've mastered only a few of them.
2. Go straight to the problem passages. This is how I mastered those few pieces; and how I practice the other pieces. Don't play through from the beginning.
I mark my scores with asterisks at all the problem bars or circle the tricky notes and practice just those passages a little each day. Nothing else.
For instance, I've got most of Beethoven's Moonlight 3rd mov off pat - the arpeggio passages are easy peasy. But I've always struggled with bars 9-10. So I always start here, and work on it by trial and error: not just dotted rhythms but also wrist rotations to try to get the weak fingers (in bar 10) to play the notes rapidly and securely. It's also all about relaxation (of the elbow and wrist), but also about maintaining the tension (of the fingers, so they don't collapse). It's NOT about strengthening the fingers. That's how I tried to play this passage in the past and that just makes you play unevenly.
BTW, YOUR FINGERS DO NOT NEED TO BE STRENGTHENED. This is the most damaging fallacy to playing piano and results in people practicing scales and etudes like Hanon. All the force comes from the weight of your hand (and arm, mostly). Your fingers just need to be strong enough to support the weight of your hand without collapsing. That's all!
Curiously, I can play it just right after a few minutes of working on it. But when I try to play it from an earlier starting point, my fingers collapse on me again. It's probably a vestige of my previous bad playing of this piece that's still very ingrained in my physiology. I'm having to unlearn those habits.
Anyway, this approach actually speeds up the mastery of a piece. There may be a dozen or twenty difficult or problematic passages in a piece. Once you've dealt with one, leave it and move on. You practice just the problematic passages until you've whittled them down and "conquered" them. And occasionally come back to check that you've got them just right (and the way to make sure is to play them slowly and deliberately a few times to "iron out" the glitches. If a "done" passage is still problematic then add it back into your list of practice tasks for the next time.
It's a kind of virtuous circle of perfection.
2a And then when you're playing through the piece just for enjoyment, stop and work on any glitch there and then. Don't just keep going. This is hard to do, you just want to move on - something I do often. But if you're in "practice mode" then you must stop and not carry on playing until you've reworked the problematic passage a few times (and perhaps re-mark it on your score for future "immediate" practice).
3. There's something you need to strive for that I don't know how to explain clearly. You need to get to the point where your hand and fingers feel strong and secure at every passage. I don't mean physical strength and dexterity. It's more something like a confident "reflex" action, akin to plunking your whole hand down on the keys (perhaps in a fixed chord position) and the right sound occurs naturally. It's a physical feeling of abandonment, but with the security of knowing that it's just right.
You can replicate this feeling by placing your hand on the keyboard (either the white notes from C or the first 5 keys in the Emaj scale... because it fits your hand so much better)... and then just rotate your wrist in a flicking action. You're not "playing" the notes (that's when you press down each finger individually, which is the wrong way of "playing"). You're just making a wrist action that's easy and natural (such as when throwing a pair of dice).
It feels natural and strong and secure, and it sounds natural, secure and right!
Try to play every passage like that. Practice playing with abandon, even exaggerate and deliberately play wrong notes (at least whatever notes your fingers happen to land on when you’re leaping about). The trick is to play like that - with abandon - and to get your fingers to land on the right keys automatically without your mind controlling them. Do this with Chopin or Joplin. And do it with your eyes closed.
You’ll be amazed at how easy your pieces will become… in time.
4. Sometimes when practicing, one has to exaggerate the mechanical aspects of playing. But try as much as possible to always think musically about every passage, even when practicing a few notes.
I always try to have an image or an emotion in my mind of what sound I'm trying to achieve.
The Moonlight is a good example of this and something I still struggle with. Beethoven is coming to terms with his deafness. So it's a sad, mournful and angry piece. I try to make certain passages sound like crying or sobbing (like bars 61-62)
Some of the other passages (like the syncopated section starting at bar 20) seem to be quite jaunty and could be played that way if it were a jazz piece. But I’m constantly having to control my urge to play it like that and ask myself, what emotion is he feeling at this point? I try to make it sound like he’s sobbing, in a jerky uncontrollable way - and I even play this passage with an “incorrect” slightly out-of-time and jerky rhythm to try to get it sound that way.
You can have more than one image of a piece, of course, and play it differently depending on which image or “story” you want to convey.
5. Finally… take your time. You can’t rush it. There are so many neurological and physiological developments that need to take place, and it happens gradually over a long period of time. You’re kind of growing a grape vine within your body, but training it to grow in a certain way. It needs “training” (it’s called that when growing vines too). and gentle watering over time.
Aim for small increments of improvement. Work on a problem passage to the point that you’re playing it a little better than before. That’s your only goal. The larger goal of mastering the piece will take care of itself!
One of my current projects is Liszt’s Bmin Sonata. Many of the passages are unplayable! But after several months of chipping away, some of the impossible passages like the very stretchy arpeggio runs starting at bar 18 (I have small hands!) are now trivial to play.
@@11kwright Maybe. Some (genius) kids just love to spend all day at the piano (or whatever their instrument is). But I'm not sure one makes much progress just by "doing the time". I also used to love going to the practice rooms at university (and I was allowed to skip classes at school or come in after hours to practice on the grand piano in the assembly hall) and spend hours at a time.
But I didn't make progress. I was mechanically sound in my playing, albeit very uneven. I realized much later that I had devoted thousands of hours to practice and ingrain bad habits and erratic rhythms, and "lock" any possibility of progressing and improving. I had a huge repertoire of pieces that I played consistently badly and always too fast!
It was a teacher in Jerusalem (who was preparing me to enter the conservatoire) who showed me how to play for the first time. His teacher was taught by Rubenstein, so many of the ideas handed down to me were essentially Rubenstein's. I made more progress after a mere three months of just 2hrs per day (an hour in the morning, an hour in the evening) than I had made over the previous five years!
I didn't go to the conservatoire in the end because I needed to spend the next few years unlearning and eliminating all those bad habits. This was so difficult to do that I even had to stop playing completely for a year or so in an effort to "forget" the muscle memories that were so strongly ingrained in my mind. And then to slowly start from scratch. I got impatient and reverted to my bad old ways. But, eventually, over a period of 20 years (!) of trial and error, and lots of pedagogical book reading and "inner game" thinking, I figured out what must obviously come naturally to the likes of Evgeny Kissin and all those other little child prodigies.
In fact, the epiphany was when I saw several 6yo kids playing pieces by Bach or Chopin or Liszt even with such ease, but that I was still struggling to master despite years of practicing. They have such small hands and virtually no muscular strength and can hardly reach the pedals even - so what are they doing right, naturally, that I wasn't doing in my playing?
About the same time, I also came across Edna Taubman (which has been extended and modernised by Edna Golandsky). There are plenty of videos on CZcams and a subscription plan to view around 160 instructional videos on the Taubman Approach.
Anyway, so I've developed a best-of-practice (no pun intended) approach to practicing and playing the piano, aimed at not-so-talented people like me - see my reply to darthvader, above... :)
golanskyinstitute.org
Pollini said he didn't practice much, but his neighbors say different.
I had the pleasure of attending a performance in San Francisco of Evgeny Kissin, and briefly chatting with him afterward. We were discussing the rigors of life on the road, and I asked him how much time he was able to devote to practice while on tour, and without giving a specific figure, he just smiled and said, "Each day is different...." He was just a bit reserved, but nice, and I greatly admire his art. 🎼🎶🎹👍
Haha. Evasive these artists are. But he's probably right. I just don't know how they're able to access pianos on tour
@@stefanbernhard2710 they have hosts who have pianos where they can practice
I wouldn't quantify in clock terms how much I pratice my instrument, because telling someone "I practice N hours a day" may convince him that you must practice that "N" hours a day. Since everyone has different needs and timings, I'd rather say "I practice as much as I need to feel that I have practiced enough to be better than yesterday".
Thanks for sharing!
Practicing over 12 hours a day and not getting injured requires a special talent.
It also requires knowing ergonomics. Sitting upright, not slouching. Head upright, not bent way forward. Shoulders relaxed. Forearms level to the keys. Taubman technique very helpful - vertical landing of fingers as well as rotation to help make note connections easier. I recommend watching some youtube videos on it.
There's a world of difference between people who play the piano and a career musician, especially when first starting out to learn an instrument. To become a concert pianist takes a special kind of person as this level of dedication is just not possible for most other people. It's not enough to simply love the piano, you must live the piano, often to the exclusion of many normal childhood activities. For those that truly make it, this is not felt as a sacrifice but rather a life long joy and purpose.
I had a friend like that in high school as well. One day, I went to his apartment - there was not a single place you could be without being able to reach a piano. This was a small apartment; just the kid and his Soviet parents. There must have been 8 (yes, eight) pianos in that small space.
There was an electric keyboard in the bathroom.
This was long before the Internet and showed the old Russian way to success.
When I saw that, I totally "got it"!
@@ananda_miaoyin that's a lot of pianos lol
@@ananda_miaoyin That is weird.
@@fionabegonia7802 They were Communist Soviet refugees. This was their way. It was weird but he was SO GOOD.
This is absolutely true.
It's hard to see how Chopin could accomplish so much with just 2 hours of practice each day. But, I read his advice as something like this: You can spend several hours at the piano, say 4, but never spend more than 2 hours of it practicing. The remaining hours, the fun stuff, should be spent experimenting, making variations, composing, improvising, basically recreation. For it's in playing, that one can be fully engaged without feeling like mental strain or effort. Finally, for most people, they learn best when they can create. And you'll enhance your musical abilities if you also 'create' instead of practice. There's a synergy to composing, analysis, and performance. And you'll learn each one deeper and broader if you do all three.
If this reading is correct, I wish I had this advice decades ago. I still enjoy playing Chopin, Rach, Debussy, etc., but I feel the fatigue entering. I'd like to compose my own stuff, but it's like an adult learning how to draw for the first time, it sounds rather infantile. I would have been in a better position had I just followed the above advice long ago! One thing I like to do is scribble an additional melodic line into the pieces I'm (uh..) practicing. I'm often admonished by my teacher, but he is largely just amused by it. But what do I care? I can decently play a Rach etude to impress friends and strangers, but I will never be a concert pianist. And anyways, this is way more fun.
Not to dismiss concert pianists but there isn't much creativity in reinterpreting someone else's work that's been reinterpreted by 1000x before. You won't convince anyone that the nth interpretation of a Chopin Nocturne is just as creative as writing it in the first place. You are just splitting hairs. It's not Evgeny Kissin! with Chopin. or Yuja Wang ! with Chopin. It's Chopin; no matter how great these pianists are. In a thousand years, who will be remembered? I'm more impressed with Bach than I am with Glen Gould.
For Chopin, he must have spent a noticeable percent of his days doing partimento. For those who don't know, look up partimento and how Chopin likely used it. It is an excellent story and you might learn a lot about Chopin's musical education and learn an less-known technique to improve your composition chops; very useful for learning to compose on the fly like Chopin did. I'm sure Chopin modified it for his taste. Happy piano playing.
Composing music was RECREATION to Chopin?! 🤣😃😲😲
@@funshine817 As compared to the repetitive nature of practice? It was recreation for him. I read a Georges Sand quote about how he would often get into a trance just improvising at the piano, coming up with wonderful pasages. Just imagine that we have record of a fraction of what Chopin did. Boggles the mind. Also, if you read his letters, he was very enthusiastic about composing. His high standards must have frustrated him at times, but I can't see how someone could have made so many gems if he didn't love what he did.
Seriously, I don't understand your cackles. Please explain.
@@gtd9536 Cackles was rather rude. Not cool. I LAUGHED simply because I was so AMAZED that Chopin considered composing recreational, as I find it very mentally difficult. Sheesh.
Rachmaninoff's concertos are sensational. I love all of them, 1, 2, 3 and 4. But curiously, I love Anna Fedorova's performances way more than Rachmaninoff's. 😹 it is still Rach, yeah, but it's Anna too!
Considering that there are many different versions of many of his pieces floating all around Europe, all of them authentic, and many pieces of his with 3 or more published versions, it did seem as though composition was like playtime for him!
Martha Argerich is an amazing pianist but she practices more than 2 hrs a day. Much of what is said of her talents is mythology. Genius is no substitute for practice.
Itzhak perlman only practiced the violin 3 hours a day
@@hugogustafsson4815 I suppose you were in the room?
@@russellgrant1535 It's what he says himself and it is what he teaches, dont see why he would teach wrong on purpose
"Hard work beats talent when talent doesn't work hard" - applicable to almost any skill.
She said she has never practiced scales or done piano exercises. She only practices pieces.
Often pianists say "I practice two hours a day" meaning "I practice two hours ALONE a day" They don't count 3-4 hours of rehearsals the same day or the two hours recital they play in the evening...
Good point!
This is a sign for me to practice, lol
In my son's first music school, there was a quote on wall from the director: "Tell me how much you practice and i will tell you how good you are." That said, it's definitely important to practise, which is targeted, with specific goal in mind, and involves much more than just "playing a concert for yourself". When new material is required, all bets are off- it takes however long it takes. One trick: set a timer every hour for a ten-minute break.
That's good advice! I made on video on my violin channel about time management in practicing. czcams.com/video/quu1EeXI1ZU/video.html
Yeah right, so it's all about quantity and not quality.... not impressive.
There has never been, nor will there ever be a pianist who could truly be considered great, who did not spend many years (I would say a minimum of 10), especially in their early life, during which they spent several hours a day at the piano. The reasons for this are: 1) For any such person, indeed anyone who loves to play, the sheer love and joy of music and of playing the piano could never be satisfied with just a few hours daily; 2) the repertoire, even in the late 19th century, is so huge that a few hours a day would in most cases not be enough to exhaust the interest of such a person; and 3) the physical requirements of a concert career (not to mention a concert career of one who would become a 'great' pianist) are such that only several years of playing a lot and at a high level would be sufficient to sustain it. You need only look at the hands of these people (even in their 20s) to know they'd been training alot and for a long time. It is only once they established their careers, and already had a great deal of repertoire under their belts, and had utterly optimized their studying and practice methods to be maximally effective AND maximally efficient (no mean feat), that they could continue to play at their high level while practicing 'only' a few hours daily.
No one should hear that "Rubenstein practiced only 3 hours a day" and think that reaching his level is possible at that level of commitment. It is not.
Two contemporary cases in point: Yuja Wang, Daniil Trifonov.
Also, any exceptions to this rule are so rare as to be rightly considered irrelevant. Mozart, Argerich, Baranboim, Kissin. All of these could do amazing things which they were still single digits in age and working, most probably, not more than 2-3 hours daily. None of them, even in their teens, were likely to be practicing so little, realistically. You're just not going to get thru the rep. IMO!
@@TerenceMarais Kissin is on record saying he practiced for fun all day
@@chester6343 Yeah that's right. From a very young age he was apparently playing for fun all day. At age 5 or 6 he would spend only 20 mins actually practicing. But by the time he was 9 or 10 this had already expanded to 3 or 4 hours of daily practicing, and whatever other time he could just playing.
@@TerenceMarais he was 12 when he performed both Chopin concertos so I imagine he was practicing most days in excess of 4 hours, whether that be just playing music he enjoyed or studying technic, he was a product of the Russian school system so would likely be very very well versed in hanon in all keys.
@@TerenceMarais How can you know ? Did you live in the same house ????
I practice once in a while and when practicing, life stops around me and listens. As long as this happens, I am good enough.
I think Chopin had it right, mostly because Chopin is never wrong. That being said, I have seen a psychological study about musical learning on piano and it found that for the majority of people, playing more than 2 hours diminishes one’s ability to concentrate on the music and also fatigue in the hands renders practice after that point not useful. Quality always has to be there for it to work.
Wait…you’re talking about practicing 3-6 hours a day and call yourself “fanatic amateur” player? I’d say you’re more of a “FANTASTIC” player if this is the case! Nothing “amateur” about that regimented schedule! Kudos to you fellow musician! Keep up the good work! We need more people like you! 🙌🏼
I practiced 4-6 hours a day to prepare for the entrance exam to study music. Even on weekends. Later, as a student, there were significantly more. By the age of 20 I had about 15,000 hours of practice.
I started on the beginnign of the year, started at 24 y and practice usually 1-2,5 hours daily, and making huge progress. My friend who play for 3 years told me im better than she is in the three months . But im not very stable person, some days i was too depressed or chronic pain was too bad and id say in this year it might be 7-14 days i left out and i also dont like routines, it makes me bored, depressed and impulsive after a while. Watching this video actually gave me new inspiration, im self learning and im getting too impatient when somebody explains their practice or how to play, maybe i should try leaning more into it ❤ this was helpful, thanks!
A professional solo pianist of several decades' experience once said to me that if you can't hack it on four hours a day, six won't make the difference (he then went on to add that if you have to learn a new concerto in a hurry then you do what you have to do). Myself, I'm an opera rehearsal pianist for a living. I actually *practise* very little, maybe 5-10 hours a month, but *play* up to 10 hours a day.
Very enjoyable to watch!
People often think practice means deliberate work. My granddaughter, when asked, says that she practices her singing for about 20-30 minutes a day. But this is roughly the amount of time she spends on vocal exercises. She actually sings loads more than that. She sings in the shower, in the kitchen, in fact when doing any mundane tasks of any kind. As well as this, she seems to be constantly running through songs in her head, singing them silently, breaking them down, mentally considering the perfect tone, dynamics, phrasing, resonance, timing or just checking out the meaning of the words. But she doesn't equate any of that with practice. I would estimate she spends 8-10 hours a day on singing in one form or another, but....she doesn't consider it practice because it's just doing something which fascinates her, and she enjoys.
Wonderfully brief, very informative and interesting, I've always been a big fan of Classical music.
Glad you enjoyed it!
Amazing video! thank you so much!!
Great! Thanx! 😊
As for some jazz musicians, Charlie Parker, John Coltrane, and Scott LaFaro are examples I can describe. Charlie Parker was a very average player, then famously spent 12 hours a day practicing for a couple of years and then became who he ‘was’. Similar story for Coltrane, as he was also an average player until he kicked it in high gear. Coltrane however continued to practice more and more, essentially never putting his horn down. Scott LaFaro played only when he wanted to. No schedule, only working out ideas. Usually stints of a few hours.
Thanks for sharing! It's always interesting to find out how musicians in different genres practice.
My other point about Chopin not withstanding, overall excellent, excellent video with superbly helpful points, above all building up to the most important one at the end: "Quality overrules quantity."
You put a lot of research and hard work into your video -- I had to subscribe to thank you for your hard work!
Thanks! It means a lot to mean!
My favorite classical pianist is Philippe Entremont. His performance of Rhapsody on a Theme by Paganini, works by Chopin and Rachmaninov really touch my soul. It is as if he was playing at the direction of those composers.
I play tenor saxophone. My instructor said I should practice at least 10 minutes a day to warm up. When I am more comfortable extend the time. My saxophone instructor in junior college told me that he started out practicing at least 8 hours a day. He started young and unlike today, didn’t have many distractions.
I have tried to learn the piano, but I was at a disadvantage because I didn’t have a piano where I lived. Just my saxophone. I practiced more on that.
Great information about these pianists. Great video.
Have a great day 🎷😎👍
It was really informative and clear, thanks!
Glad you enjoyed it!
Thank you so much for sharing. You helped save my time for searching such interesting infos.
Glad it was helpful!
Have to agree with Chopin. Too much practice leads to burnout. Good video
Thanks!
As George Sand, Chopin's lover said "He was as delicate and frail as a communion wafer". I can't imagine him doing 5-6 hours a day anyway.
Fantastic Bibi, thank you very much...
Happy to hear! Many thanks!
This was well done and a great idea for a video.
Thank you!
Very interesting!
Early training, where the myelin sheath surrounding the nerve cells are most receptive to development, seems to be a major contributor to exceptional life long technique
This type of dedication to master the piano can be applied to just about any musical instrument. Ask any well known and very skilled guitar player of which ever genre they play and they will tell you similar stories of hours per day of practice.
What is the saying: " The more I practice, the better I get." How amazing is that..!!
And the same with singers whose instrument is their voice. Practice...practice...practice....!
Just under 6 minutes and this is very informative and concise. Thanks.
Happy to hear!
Quality over quantity. Subbed.
Great video!
Thanks! Happy you like it!
Very interesting, thank you for your video! I'd love to see another one on how quality practise is done (especially by those greats who claim to practise only 1-2 hours a day)
First of all, practice slowly to learn the piece. Then bring out phrasing - ie the larger structure of the piece. Only go faster when you know how to play the piece and its phrasing.
Great Video.
Glad you enjoyed it!
Great video! Subscribing!
A former high school schoolmate of mine is a world class musician. We all thought he was a prodigiously talented kid, who didn't like to socialize too much. Years later I found out he had a regiment of practicing 10 hrs a day on weekdays, all the while going to (non-musical) high school and being one of the best students. On the weekends, he practiced 14 hrs a day. So much for the "prodigious talent".
The top musicians seem to start with prodigious talent then add rigorous practice on top. Those of us with limited talent will plateau at an intermediate level no matter how much we practice.
or alternatively, he was prodigiously talented for discipline...
@@christopher.stewart Ha, now you're onto something. Many great musicians also chose their parents well, to have musical instruments and music teachers around them from birth.
@@christopher.stewart Yeah, good point.
@@TerryClarkAccordioncrazy The parents factor was there for sure. The entire family are very accomplished. Great people.
💥 But there's a difference between practicing the pieces and practicing exercises, scales, arpeggios, etc. Many pianists dedicate part of their practice to that and some, don't. Horowitz was "allergic" to study scales and technique. He said that he didn't study scales or arpeggios, but he studied the music that he was learning. His technique came naturally. But other pianists, when do not practice scales and arpeggios, lose their technical power. So, it depends on how the person practices. Liszt said that he used to play his scales on the afternoon, but he was joking with a woman who insisted him to play anything, even some scales, and he didn't want, because it was a party at a house of a rich person, and his invitation was a trap that the woman made for him to play for her guests ( for free, of course ). There are several interesting books about the routine of the great pianists. I use to collect all of them. It's wonderful to know the great composer's lives with more intimacy. 🎉❤
Thank you.
The numbers of hours fit well to my expectations. This is simply what you need to be prepared for a piano recital, and continuing to expand your repertoire of excellence. About Liszt I read that he was often best when playing a piece for the 1st time. I think it was Edvard Grieg telling this.
Yes, that is my experience as a performer too. Thanks for sharing.
I had a teach say "Perfect practice makes pretty good."
Yes, quality over quantity.
Looking back my 60 years as a musician, it's a shame, that I wasted so much time practicing, because I never learned how to do it. Analysing it now, I see, that I learned very well and thoroughly how to practice making my mistakes. You do this by playing something, making a mistake, going back and "fixing" it. It becomes a routine to make the same mistake and fix it each time, each day. I taught myself how to efficiently make mistake, not how to play correctly.
I also wasted so much time doing senseless, unmusical exercises. I finally stumbled onto a different teacher who insisted I not blindly do scales and arpeggios unless I find a musical context for them. I almost never "practice" these today - I "review" them if and only if I have a piece of music that requires them. Before playing a piece that has a tricky passage in b major, I will run a couple of scales and arpeggios, basing the playing of these things on the melodic patterns I'll find in the piece I'm about to practice. This cuts down the effective time I need to "practice", something that plays into the physical endurance necessary to play - bass trombone.
Where I do spend time, but it's only about 10-15 minutes at the beginning of my playing is to set up the balance on wind to compression to aural tone quality in all registers, especailly concentrating on the low register and expanding upwards. This, at the same time, exercises flexibility. The initial exercise lasts about 4-5 minutes, then I apply this tone to musical etudes (exercises) that were conceived as lyrical vocalises. Only then will I take out repertoire. Before I retired, this consisted mostly of the pieces I needed to prepare for in the orchestra. Now that consists of excerpts from those good old days that tell me, if my preparation in the first 15 minutes was correct and sufficient. So, on an intensive practice day, I'll do a 30 minute initial session, take a 3-5 minute break and do another 25-30 minutes. Or I can try a 45 minute session. It's always fun and I do see my personal progress from session to session, because I'm not wasting time or energy on stuff because "you should". My "should" is dictated by what I want to play and if I can at will. If not, I know what I'll analytically add to tomorrow's session.
Thanks for sharing. I did a video on my violin channel about time management in prating an instrument. You might end it interesting. czcams.com/video/quu1EeXI1ZU/video.html
Thank you for your honesty. Yes, you can practice in your mistakes.......I think one thing Horowitz does is he imagines the sound.......makes a change.....and is able to implement it.
There is no reason a trombone player (any type) can't play many hours a day. It does require some endurance, but that just comes with practice. There is no such thing as a useless exercise or useless scales or arpeggios. Music is built all around scales and arpeggios. Arpeggios are the bread and butter for building flexibility. So long as proper technique is applied, every moment on the horn is useful. Just as a body builder benefits from every lift, the lips get improved tone, range, and power for every minute on the mouthpiece.
@@mouthpiece200 A horn requires listening to the output, changing input, etc. I know many keyboard players who never listen enough to change their sound.
@@sundancer7381 I'm aware how horns work. Hard to effect much in the keyboard though except pressure.
Each teacher with his book!! As a classical piano student, I practice between 4-6 hours a day. I really enjoy practicing. I also dedicate myself to improvising, almost always to warm up my hands before fully entering the repertoire. I take advantage of lighting a cigarette when the 4 hours have passed and I want to continue playing. I think that if you love the instrument, practicing is wonderful!
Hug everyone, good video!
Looking back at all of the teachers I had I am disappointed that none of them discussed the practice process with me. They gave me a list of things to practice, and maybe they told me to play slowly or play with separate hands (vague, unquantifiable concepts to a child), but they never told me what it takes to master the piano. The deliberate practice, the hard work - it was just never modeled. It was assumed children would figure out the concept of practice by themselves.
They probably felt you are not one of those kids who needs this information?
@MishaSkripach
Perhaps. I was good at other things, like math and science. But there was something about skills I had to learn, and that wouldn't come so easily, that I just didn't get. And this is about skill acquisition as much as musicality. Simple things like breaking the skill down to small parts and being patient during the learning process didn't come naturally to me.
@@josa720 Majority of teachers don't possess much skill themselves, some do, but those usually take on very gifted pupils.
So, you had no sourse really. It is a very hard path, and only those who are equipped by nature could persevere with results. For the rest it is a grand waste of time and effort.
What I find fascinating is that Radu Lupu stressed practicing *away* from the piano. He would sit down with the score and pour over the theory and interprtation, playing it in his head. Then he could simply sit down and perform some of the most beautiful Brahms known to man.
After 1000 s of hours at the piano . You can bet .
This was taught to me during my college years for classical guitar. Many hours with the score, charting out the picking and fingering/fretting for each note. By the time I would get through the entire score, the piece was mostly memorized. At this point I'd pick up the guitar and be able to work on dynamics, phrasing, tempos and everything else that turns notes on a page into actual listenable music.
I practice ear training and melodic analysis on my right hand. Thumb is do up to pinkie (so), etc. After decades, audiating away from instruments seems to create a NEW mind-body connection. A kind of Guidonian Hand before I even learned what it was.
As much as I love music, having a life is more important.
There needs to be a balance.
For some people, life is music, and being without music is like being without life.
Thats sad we dont have the recordings of chopin performances... we know him because of his compositions but its just another amaizing fact that public still mentions and recognises his pianist soul with his compositional life its just sooo big tragedy that we didn't have a machine for recording in 19th century : (() ❤❤❤
You’ve got that right!
there are recordings from the 19th century but yes, still long after Chopin unfortunately
Great topic. It's think what experienced players practice to get to an elite level and then maintain that ability are two different things. Sort of how an elite level bodybuilder may say that they now only workout 6 hours a week to maintain their physique but to get to that level it took years of 2-3 hours of working out 6 days a week.
I agree. They're able to spend less time practicing now, because they practiced a lot when they were younger and established their technique then. It's more maintenance and learning new pieces for them now, whereas most of us are still struggling to overcome technical challenges when we practice.
John Coltrane practiced until he fell asleep with his sax still in his mouth and then woke up the following morning and continued.
I knew someone who hosted a Chopin competition winner. He required that he practice five hours a day at a grand piano. An upright wouldn't do. If some place didn't have these amenities, he couldn't go there for long.
My son's piano professor is superb, as one would expect from someone twenty years invested. As a family man with a small child, he admits there are certain very challenging pieces he could perform, but never will due to the time required to perfect them.
Lang Lang is shooting the air!
A lot. A whole lot. The 10,000 hour rule. It takes years of laser-focused dedication to master any musical instrument. This is only possible if someone really, really, really loves music, and loves being able to make it themselves. Without this positive motivation, it's an impossible task. This is what the non-musician general public, deejays, and the remixers who dominate the music industry always miss. None of them actually love music, they just want to date it. If you truly LOVE music, you get a running start and plunge into the deep end, immersing yourself in it. Full dedication. The rest of humanity merely "loves" listening to music (or loves the potential profits).
Absolutely. A person has to practice. But if you don't have the musical gift, no matter how much you practice, you won't be.......Keith Jarrett. The 10,000 hour rule was just something Malcolm Gladwell dreamed up for his books. Malcom is a journalist, not a scientist. Another example is Bruce Lee. He was naturally talented to be a fighter, had the attitude of a fighter, grew up in a fighting atmosphere (Hong Kong) and was in the right time and place for his career. Practice (and he practiced to an extraordinary degree) served him well. Another person without those factors can practice martial arts all he/she wants, but that person won't be......Bruce Lee, Cynthia Rothrock, etc.
I feel like 2-4 hours a day is optimal. Just keep adding to the repertoire and play a wide variety of music as it all contributes to the greater goal by rooting out technical problems. I get the purely physical stuff out of the way in the first 15-20 minutes. The rest is just increasing familiarity with the keyboard. I agree with the comments that most of music making happens in your head, but if the hands can't get there or execute fast enough, it's a problem.
Käbi Laretei, an Estonian-Swedish concert pianist, music broadcaster and author (also, wife of Ingmar Bergman in the 1960s and a close friend and musical collaborator on many of his films long after they separated) wrote an engaging, fun book in the early 1970s about her experiences as a pianist and interpreter of music:: "For Whom am I Playing?" (it's only available in Swedish I think). Unlike many pianists she is not shy of talking of her work habits or practice methods, and at one point she cheekily describes meeting colleagues who are boasting "I practice eight hours every day!" and the like.
"The pianist /meant as first person on many pages in the book/ goes home moody and muttering to herself: "If those are his hours then he certainly can't be putting as much effort into the training as I do per hour, or he would be finished way before those eight hours are up! I know, because I certainly am after just five hours of serious practice!" 😀
Super story, thanks!
@@bibipelictalks You're welcome! Laretei also retold the story of a colleague who played Bach's Chromatic Fantasia and Fugue in concert - from memory of course - and accidentally skipped a large chunk of the Fugue due to all the chromatic passages and recurrence of the theme: "it's like driving down a road where you recognize all the signs and bends...". 😀
@@louise_rose that’s a good one too!
Think of the "Ten Thousand Hour Rule". Young concert pianists have to assimilate the vast piano repertoire usually before they reach mid-twenties. That averages out to 8-10 yrs of practice @ 3-4 hours/day!
I grew up playing the trombone. I have wanted to play the piano for years, though. Recently I decided to purchase a piano. I have been learning for five days now. I am working through the Premier Piano Express: Book 1. Currently, my schedule is to complete one lesson daily. I will eventually move onto Book 2. It is slow, but I will get there! Consistency is king!
As a professional musician myself, I know several very accomplished pianists. The ones that are really amazing artists, their lives are all about the piano. They don’t even have romantic partners as far as I know.
To practice on accordance with the Law. ❤
I believe that (apart of hours of practice) it's also important the daily consistency...even 30min would do "better than nothing" :)
Lots of practice. 😊
After learning how to play for many years l can tell you practicing is the most important thing in becoming a instrumentalist .talent is impirtant and having feeling but without practicing one will never realy know how to play .whoever says its not important doesnt know what he is saying
Nice video. One of my teachers told me that we spend 90 percent of our time practicing and less than ten percent on stage performing. If you don’t enjoy practicing, you should find another career. There’s great wisdom in that. It’s like any form of art or endeavor, the finished product is often less important than the process involved. Some great artists destroyed their own work after it was done. (Paul Gauguin burned his last masterpiece in Tahiti). Perhaps it wasn’t the final product that was their goal; but that act of working towards the goal which motivated them to spend hours on it?
Hey Frederick Chopin, you only need 2 hours of practice a day because you're a genius, bro.
Hiromi Uehara is more about creation not just interpretation…and with a world beating flawless technique.. does anyone know about her practice regime?
It's better to practice music for hours than watch movies. If you enjoy playing a musical instrument, time no longer exists.🎸🎹❤
Therefore I'm a virtuoso CZcams watcher.
Fascinating questions. It makes me miss my college Piano Maestro. The things I'd ask today. (1): When do you hit your peak, conquering all of the standard literature after which you never progress much further? About 10 years? (2): What's the smartest way to practice? With stuff that you have already mastered just for pleasure, or new stuff? (3): What about zen moments? Why am I sometimes flawless and other times horrendous? What explains that?
very true madam
Actually Martha puts in 8-10 hours daily. She works all night when friends are sleeping. She wakes in the afternoon.
I have found that my playing and 'feel' advance when I spend 4-6 hours a day. The more time I spend, the better I get. I can hear the difference when recording.
If I'm working on something, particularly learning something new, I find it effective to practise earlier in the day, be it thirty minutes or a couple of hours, do whatever else is to be done in the day and then have another practice session later on in the day (although for me it is probably the evening). I think it helps to consolidate what has been learnt more effectively.
The reason this works well is that when you practoce, the lactic acid from your spine flows into your arm/hand muscles, and this causes fatigue, both in your arms and spine and body overall. It can also cause aches and pains. When you rest, it flows back again, and your body recovers. Always break. Never more than 2.5 hours in any one stint. Best do 3 of those with breaks in between, then all 7.5 hours in one go. You will put rockets on your heels this way!
@@yourtransformationgenie I would say do 30 minutes and take at least a 5 minute break. Stand up and walk around the house/building. Do something different away from the piano. Then come back and start over. The best time for learning is the first 30 minutes or so. If you practice 2.5 hours, straight, then you only get that first 30 minutes ONCE. Take a break every thirty minutes and you can get that super-charged 20-30 minutes of peak learning time over and over throughout the day. What Sathrandur said is important too: a couple hours in the morning, a BIG break, then another session in the evening. Practicing hours and hours straight is a total waste of time. Your brain gets fatigued and all this information gets shuffled to "temporary" storage in your brain and not long-term memory. Starting over and over in short bursts makes your brain think this is new important info, instead of hours of the same boring thing that it starts to just toss into short-term memory...and is lost in no time.
I wonder how many hours a day Keith Jarrett practices. Keith was a prodigy, and he does jazz and classical well (which is the exception). Cecil Taylor must have practiced many hours a day, as well as McCoy Tyner, Ahmad Jamal etc. Art Tatum was a monstrously talented pianist who must have practiced all the time. A musician like Jimi Hendrix was known to have practiced all the time.
The most important is practice a lot from a very young age, if you are talented enough also, after 10 years you can become a good pianist, then you can practice regularly for keeping up and some new repertoires.
Not Quality vs Quantity.
QUALITY & QUANTITY 100%.
The most sure-fire way to elevate your piano skills musically & technically is simple.
Take Horowitz's advice" play everything ".
I on day 5 piano practice. Spend consistently 4-6 hours a day on the piano practicing reading sheet music and 20 mins of finger independant exercise a day. And spend most of my time practicing a piece. First piece i choose to learn is canon in c since its all white keys and its pretty easy.(Slighly easier version. Just chords and melody) I learnt alot and my finger become so much more independant. I learnt 90% of the song.
Well yes 4-7 hours practice is too much but i really have nothing else to do after i finished up my work. And im pretty obbsessed with piano after i got it lol. I used to play guitar 5 hours a day when i was a kid because im bored.
It really is quality over quantity. After breezing through the 8 grades, my piano skills suddenly plateaued due to lots of unaddressed technical issues which I was unaware of. Despite practicing diligently everyday for about 5 years my playing didn't really improve and everyone including my teacher told me I just wasn't practicing hard enough.
That was until I started with a new teacher - a concert pianist who completely reworked my technique and taught me how to use my body efficiently. I actually cringe looking at old videos of me playing as my technique was SO bad, my hands looked like drunk spiders. My playing ability skyrocketed and I was able to move onto the big virtuoso pieces by Chopin and Liszt in almost no time despite not practicing as much as I was before!
Work smart not hard.
Please recommend me your teacher! :)
This isthe problem with grades, they let people pass while having no technique, and who cannot memorise pieces. Ridiculous. Teendagers think they excel at piano , as they have grade8, when in fact they cannot play!
@@MishaSkripach they can play basic pieces in the sense that they can get most of the notes right and follow dynamics on the page. But the pieces below grade 8 are short so technical limitations in flexibility, stamina, tension, strength etc. can go under the radar if the student is talented and practices.
It’s when they start playing whole sonatas or big virtuosic works like Liszt, Chopin, Rachmaninoff, Ravel etc. and start getting tired, injured, make lots of mistakes, don’t feel physically strong enough or suddenly hit a developmental plateau (especially if they breezed through the grades), that’s an indication that they have unaddressed technical problems.
@@sacrilegiousboi978 The technical problems are evident at any grade piece, if a child has them: for example, playing by memory must be a standard. Playing with correct hand positioning must be a standard. Nobody should be allowed to pass the grade if their physical movements are wrong.
@@MishaSkripach yes, if they are spotted by someone knowledgeable eg. a conservatoire professor or professional concert pianist. But they tend to go under the radar because most regular teachers (the ones that ordinary primary schools provide) for think they and the student are doing a good job if they can play most of the notes, regardless of how they’re doing it. examiners for grades assess all instruments so don’t know about specific techniques and therefore don’t assess it.
This is why they (the student) and teacher can suddenly become confused when they ace the grades and suddenly they are struggling to make the jump to big virtuosic stuff. This is what happened to me.
The teacher who transformed my technique was able to teach his son and get him to Grade 8 in just two years because he was that good a teacher. Most primary school piano teachers rarely have students that get to Grade 8 because they don’t teach them proper technique.
Two hours can be a lot if you’re analyzing as and after you play. If you record yourself and watch/listen closely for mistakes or awkward fingering, difficult jumps, etc, and then plan/practice your plan, those 20-30 minutes can probably help you much more than even 4 hours of playing the same song over and over without analyzing your performance.
One thing to keep in mind. After a concert or recital how would you feel if someone said “You sound like you work so hard”!
That for me is a disadvantage of practicing too much. Also, if you practice long hours, when does the subconscious absorb the work you’ve done? For me, the most memorable playing seems effortless, with spirit and spontaneity.
I noticed when she was playing that her hand was flat, non-curved and non-rounded but not flat fingers. How does one do this efficiently, and when should they? I've seen people play like this and I'm not sure if it's correct or just Chopin's method, but if it is Chopin's method than I'd like to try it.
I like this story telling tone and accent of this English lady
There's no magic in any particular number of hours. It all depends greatly on each individual, at what stage they are, how they learn, what they're learning (or retaining), what is trying to be achieved, etc., etc. Not every day needs to be the same; sometimes it's good to get away for a break; practicing beyond one's ability to focus is mechanical and inartistic; mental practice is more beneficial than most people realize. I'm by no means anything close to a concert pianist or organist, but I can (and sometimes do) easily spend between 3 - 7 hours on *some* days between the two covering learned repertoire and learning new repertoire -- and love every minute of it; I also *enjoy* technical practice (I like making up technical games and challenges to try -- like combining alternating one measure each of Hanon #1 and #5 in F# harmonic minor in parallel 10ths and 6ths), and some days spend an hour or two (but not consecutive) with technical studies; in college I once practiced 18 hours in one day cramming for a jury recital.
It all just depends ...
Most musicians ignore ear training,sight singing, and playing by ear.Everything is easier with a good ear 👂.
Yes, the ability to hear the music internally really helps.
What did Chopin have to say about spring, winter and fall? I presume they didn't have air conditioning, and there could be many factors besides unpleasant/unconducive climate conditions that made Chopin think "2 hours in the summer" is sufficient/appropriate. I'd say that unless it's clarified by what Chopin meant by saying "in the summer," and that he actually meant 2 hours a day year-round as well, it could be reckless to say 2 hours was his rule.
Was about to comment basically this, it sounds more like he is drawing attention to the merits of doing things outside of practicing all the time, especially during the summer, rather than the merits of practicing less all the time all year.
@@Someonedoingnothing yes I agree; could be a lot of factors encouraging somewhat fewer practice hours in summer!
It’s possible he was talking to the aristocratic students whom he taught. Those people were not trying to become professional musicians.
@@pjbpiano yes; very possibly this could have been a factor! (However, while I don’t recall that much about Chopin’s disposition toward aristocratic versus more “plebeian” students, my - perhaps very flawed - sense of the matter was that Chopin would have expected every one of his pupils to become the very best pianist they were capable of, and being very pro-aristocratic, may have held his aristocratic students to a higher standard, expected and demanded more of them. While I suppose he would have respected a “Countess so-and-so” saying a countess had other priorities besides just music, and accommodating that stance, I sense his respect for the aristocracy and non-democratic leanings (“nobility” in the combined multiple senses of this word) perhaps more than any other ethos/spirit suffuses his music, would have led him to place his highest hopes and expectations in the “nobility.” Indeed, his performance ideals and focus were the elite salon, not the professional concert hall orientation.
I’m confident you’re familiar with “Chopin, Pianist and Teacher” as well as the “Cambridge Companion to Chopin”, but if not I think they are amazing resources for this topic, brilliant collections of original documents and contemporary scholarship on Chopin’s musical/aesthetic and pedagogical ideals and preferences.
Yes, you will rarely learn how someone practices from the person himself. Besides, everyone has different issues to address, by necessity and interest, and this changes throughout the life of the artist.
BTW, funny to hear your comment about Argerich’s perfect memory while seeing a pic of her playing from the score.
True🙂
A normal amount of practice time for a professional is 3-4 hours per day however occasional 6-8 hours especially before concerts is also acceptable. Doing 6-8 hours most days and especially if more than that is actually counterintuitive according to most professionals worldwide.
As an adult learner I am both excited and insecure at the same time 😅. At least they are basically normal human. For me it's like learning to drive a car, it's totally manageable to become a casual driver but to be professional "racers" like them is a whole different story
The lesson is to start very early and put a lot of work into it during the years when your brain is more plastic. Then once your technique is set, you can coast and do maintenance.
I’m a pianist and I don’t care if I say how much I practice. 40 hours a day
Czerny: the perfect technique requires at least 8 hours of practice daily
Liszt: *I prefer 24 hours*
So nice to hear Chopin say that... riding across the landscapes of sound instead kicking the dead horse of robo-nihilism. I can't imagine other composer don't mush out passages in their minds and if the song is good enough the music itself is the motivation to revisit the geography and by half love the skill is unlocked (usually lol). These days one can just get it pretty close, perfect it in midi (wha ha ha). Next year AI will be killing the music somewhat like the visual art though
I'm not sure how much we can learn from the greats - they are starting from a level of natural aptitude we can only dream of. It's only when natural talent is combined with discipline, intelligence, imagination and charisma that a great artist will emerge.
Natural talent is important indeed, but with vast amounts of practice, even regular people may seem gifted.
@@mouthpiece200 Depends what you mean by gifted. To become a top-level classical soloist takes both vast amounts of intelligent practice AND initial natural ability. Think of the many thousands of kids who sacrifice their childhoods practising all hours to achieve their dreams as pianists or violinists - the vast majority fail.
So yes, you can become highly competent if you only have average ability, but you can't become a top level classical virtuoso - they are almost all identified well before their teens and placed on elite programmes.
@@mouthpiece200There’s a Grand Canyon between genius and merely gifted.