How much should I practise?

There are many theories about how much one should practice and how often. For example, on an ABRSM forum I recently read, someone advised 15 minutes a day for Grade 1, up to an hour and a half per day for Grade 8.

However, I think this question itself completely misses the point. Of course, 15 minutes a day would not be enough for a higher grade, but does that mean that someone who does 8 hours a day will be better than someone who does only two?

Not necessarily..........

Much more important than how much practice you do, is the quality of your practice. Just analyse for a moment now, your last practice session. What percentage of the time did you spend playing stuff that you already know quite well? Many students, for example will always start playing a piece from the beginning even though that is the section they have been learning the longest and know the best.



Here's an idea you could try. Imagine you have a long piece you have been working on and you could divide it into four sections A, B, C and D. No doubt you started with the A section and have been working your way through chronologically until now, where you are just learning the D section. Start your practice each day with the D section. Then do the C and D sections together. Then try from the B section to the end and finally play through from the beginning once only. This method will ensure that the least familiar section gets the most time.

Whatever method you use, make sure you spend the most time on the thing that needs the most work. Oh and don't forget sight reading!! This is often a student's lowest mark in the exam. Why? Because they spent the least time developing that skill.

I hear from a lot of my students, especially ones who are in the middle of final exams in school, during this summer term, that they have very little time. I have some sympathy, but I am a firm believer, that if you really want to do something, you will find the time to do it. Back in the day when they were called "O" levels instead of G.C.S.E.'s, I took grade 8 on two instruments, within a week of each other in the same term as I took nine "O" Levels. Yes it was in the days before internet, ipads, Xbox, mobile phones and social media, but still, it took self discipline and that motivation came from the desire to succeed. I would start by going through the complete scale list every day and regularly use a metronome on technically difficult passages to build up the speed. Each session had a goal, it wasn't just a play-through.


That said, it is advisable to break one's practice time up into smaller sections. Your mind will be fresher if you take a break and you could even cause yourself "injury" by practising too long in one go. If you are doing other exams at the same time, music could also be a break from such academic pursuits and vice versa.

So instead of me prescribing exactly how long you should practise, which you might have been expecting when you saw the title, I would prefer that you went away with more thought about how you practice.

Please let me know in the comments below your experience. How much do you do and how do you structure your practice? And finally, if you found this post useful, please share on your social media, without of course, getting too distracted by your iphone and forgetting the piano sitting quietly in the corner.

How to pass an ABRSM exam - Sight reading

Along with Aural - Sight reading is one of the most dreaded parts of an ABRSM exam. In my experience, it seems that this section of the exam is not prepared as much as, for example the pieces and scales. Added to this, you have probably been playing the same three pieces over and over again for the last few months and have virtually memorised them, and in so doing you are not really “reading music”every day. To get better at sight reading you need to incorporate some music you have never seen before into your practice every day.

How should you practice sight reading. Again, in my experience, most students focus primarily on getting the notes the correct pitch at the expense of keeping the beat going. If you look at the marking criteria for a sight reading test, the FIRST thing that is mentioned for a distinction is, “Fluent, rhythmically accurate” followed by “Accurate notes/pitch/key”.

Then there is the “musical detail” such as dynamics and articulation. These also will get you more marks in an exam and finally in the marking criteria for a distinction there is mentioned “Confident presentation”. A sight reading test is an assessment on how well you can convey the music as a whole performance, NOT if you can recognise the pitches A, B, C etc - that is a theory exam!!

In an exam you are given up to half a minute to prepare. Now at this point, most people will tentatively start to try and work out the pitches of the first few bars. This is a waste of your 30 seconds. Try and get the rhythm in your head, look out for dynamics and articulation marks, try and get a sense of the music as a whole.

I would practise sight reading with a metronome, maybe set to a slowish tempo if necessary and keep going whatever. If you miss a note, DON’T go back and correct it, you’ll only upset the flow and rhythm of the music and this effectively then counts as a 2nd mistake. You can’t erase the first mistake, and the examiner is not interested if you can improve on your wrong note, he wants to hear a performance of the music as a whole, which conveys as best you can, the character of the piece.

With this in mind, you might find helpful, a playlist called "Sight reading trainer" which I have prepared on my YouTube channel, in which you get a few seconds to look at the piece and then you need to play along with the audio which forces you to keep time.

It's like riding a bike

Something I say probably every day in my teaching, especially with beginner students, is that play the piano is like a riding a bike. Imagine the first day you got on a bike, maybe at three or four years of age, you know, the one with stabilizers. Now remember how you tried to master the skill of trying to get your feet to go round the correct way. Your mum or dad were probably calling out to you, "Don't look at your feet, look where you are going!" as you forgot all about steering the bike. Sound familiar?


Well this is a lot like many beginner students, even using a simple hand position, which doesn't involve any movement of the hand, just keeping the five fingers in close position. They feel more confident if they can look at their hands, instead of the notes in front of them. Then however, just like on a bike, if looks at one's feet instead of where one is going, there is an accident waiting to happen.

I try to encourage all my beginner students to feel the notes without looking down. Maybe at first they feel uncomfortable doing this, but eventually this will develop better sight reading skills. One of my pet hates is those note stickers you can buy to stick on the keys. They are the WORST thing you can do as a beginner. Not only do they not help a student to learn the note names, but they encourage them to be constantly looking down away from the music. This will produce at best - hesitant playing,  and at worst completely losing your place.

If the habit of looking down is deeply ingrained, as sometimes happens when I take over students who previously learned with a different "teacher" I sometimes do a little experiment. I hide their hands by suspending a sheet of paper just a few centimetres above so that they can't see them. To their surprise, they invariably play better when they can't see their hands.

I am interested in you thoughts, either as a student or a teacher, so please leave a comment below.