Is it possible to practice the piano for long hours?

ranjit · 2026-01-15T05:38:03+00:00

At least on the surface, it seems like professionals work 40 hours a week or more in various fields (engineering, medicine, etc.). However, this seems pretty unrealistic for piano practice. Has anyone tried to practice the piano for long hours consistently? Is it even possible? Personally, I've found that I tap out after anywhere between 2-5 hours in a day.

rogerch

ShiroKuro @rogerch and @ranjit have you ever tried taking a walking break?

Definitely! Most days I either run, walk, paddleboard, bike or ski. I’ve had lots of musical, work, and personal breakthroughs while out in nature getting my exercise!

ShiroKuro

ranjit reading your post, yeah, napping is probably far better than going for a walk or a run for piano. When I'm working (e.g., doing analysis or writing) it's different because I'm doing something I'm already really good at, so the walk clears my head and helps me focus when I get back.

But piano learning is different, at least for me as an adult-beginner (no longer a beginner player).

Anyway, five hours a day is completely out of the realm of possibility for me regardless, so it's moot! 😃

BartK

The guy at whose house Yunchan Lim stayed during the Van Cliburn competition says he would practice all waking hours of the day. Even when not at the piano he would be sitting with a score open and doing some mental practice. I can't imagine being so obsessed and being so focused all the time!

Animisha

BartK he would practice all waking hours of the day. Even when not at the piano he would be sitting with a score open and doing some mental practice. I can't imagine being so obsessed and being so focused all the time!

Sounds like great piano playing and very meager life.

iternabe

I am reading Basic Principles in Pianoforte Playing by Josef Lhevinne. Here is what he wrote about practice, on p. 43:

Four hours a day of practice is good measure. Over-practicing is just as bad as under-practicing. It should be the younger student's aim and desire to get done with technic as soon as possible. There is no short cut. One cannot go around or under the mountain. One must climb straight over it. Therefore in the earlier lessons more attention must be given to technic than in the later lessons when a really masterly technic has been developed. The trouble is that most students seem to look upon it the other way. Two hours a day for those who are not advanced in music (not beginners by any means) are not too much for technic. I do not see how one can climb over the great mountain of modern technic at a less speed than two hours a day. Otherwise, they would be old men and women before they could hope to compare with others in these days of enormous technical competition. Everybody knows that technic is only a means to an end; but without this means one does not reach the end. There may not be anything very beautiful about the great, grimy engine of an automobile; but if one would get to the journey's end—to the dreamland of wonderful trees, gorgeous flowers and entrancing beauty-he must have the means. You must travel just so many scale miles and arpeggio miles and octave miles before you arrive at the musical dreamland of interesting execution and interpretation.

Always divide your practice periods. Do your technic at one time and your pieces at another. Approach the two sections with different aspects.

pianoloverus

iternabe I am reading Basic Principles in Pianoforte Playing by Josef Lhevinne. Here is what he wrote about practice, on p. 43:

Four hours a day of practice is good measure. Over-practicing is just as bad as under-practicing. It should be the younger student's aim and desire to get done with technic as soon as possible. There is no short cut. One cannot go around or under the mountain. One must climb straight over it. Therefore in the earlier lessons more attention must be given to technic than in the later lessons when a really masterly technic has been developed. The trouble is that most students seem to look upon it the other way. Two hours a day for those who are not advanced in music (not beginners by any means) are not too much for technic. I do not see how one can climb over the great mountain of modern technic at a less speed than two hours a day. Otherwise, they would be old men and women before they could hope to compare with others in these days of enormous technical competition. Everybody knows that technic is only a means to an end; but without this means one does not reach the end. There may not be anything very beautiful about the great, grimy engine of an automobile; but if one would get to the journey's end—to the dreamland of wonderful trees, gorgeous flowers and entrancing beauty-he must have the means. You must travel just so many scale miles and arpeggio miles and octave miles before you arrive at the musical dreamland of interesting execution and interpretation.

Always divide your practice periods. Do your technic at one time and your pieces at another. Approach the two sections with different aspects.

I think advice like this is not relevant for 99% of those studying piano, and it's not clear who Lhevinne was speaking to In the article. Four hours is more appropriate for those thinking of applying to a conservatory or for those already in a conservatory(probably more for them) or professional pianists. IMO two hours would be a reasonable amount for an ultra serious high school or junior high school piano student who loves the piano but is not thinking of a career in music. My guess is two hours of practice still puts someone in the 99th percentile.

ranjit

iternabe I have heard this quote, as well as others by different concert pianists. They mostly tell students what worked for them and aren't meant to be read literally imo. In the early 20th century, pedagogy was less advanced and more people seemed to have held on to the 'enlightenment optimism' that students could follow the master and mostly do what they did. It's now far more established that students have their own strengths and weaknesses, and so modern texts read differently.

For instance, Hoffman says you shouldn't practice more than 3 hours a day in his book, but the intensity of focus with which he suggests practicing (like the negative of a photograph where every sound and gesture is kind of committed to memory during practice) is well beyond most people. Ashkenazy suggests 6. Richter apparently practiced 10 hours a day often. The discrepancies between what people say and do should also be noted.

thepianoplayer416

Depends on the pieces you’re doing. A movement out of a Rachmaninov concerto or the whole thing would probably take a few hours practice.

A short piece under 3 min. you can run through it a few times in an hour. Once you can play it with confidence once through don’t need to repeat it many times. In a 3 hours practice you can probably work on 5 short pieces.

pianoloverus

thepianoplayer416 Depends on the pieces you’re doing. A movement out of a Rachmaninov concerto or the whole thing would probably take a few hours practice.

A short piece under 3 min. you can run through it a few times in an hour. Once you can play it with confidence once through don’t need to repeat it many times. In a 3 hours practice you can probably work on 5 short pieces.

The length of a piece has little to do with how long one could/should practice it. Practicing does not usually mean playing it from start to finish. Practicing does not necessarily mean playing it at performance speed. Of course, if two pieces are of equal difficulty but of very difficult lengths, the longer piece will take more time to learn but that's a different question.

ShiroKuro

@ranjit I will be curious how your thoughts about this, and your thoughts about your own practicing style etc., evolve when you start music school.

For example, will you find it getting easier to practice for even longer stretches, or will the intensity of your practice sessions ramp up so much that you’ll practice for shorter sessions…. There are probably other variations. And of course the other thing is, will you find yourself doing activities during practice that are wholly new to you, or will you find that your practice sessions don’t change all that much…. It’s interesting to think about! 🙂

thepianoplayer416

Go back to the 10,000 hours rule proposed by Malcolm Gladwell. If you reached 10,000 hours practicing anything including piano, a foreign language, you would become an expert. Of course you need to have mindful practice, do things correctly and make progress. Repeating hello & good bye in a foreign language day after day wouldn't make you fluent. You need to be adding new words & phrases every week.

Learning a 2 minutes piece in an hour you'd have already run through it at least 10 times and have all the wrong notes fixed. If you repeat the same piece for an hour for the whole week, you'd be able to play it easily but not making more progress.

As you learn more pieces, you learn them faster and vice versa. The faster you learn pieces, the more pieces you can learn. Putting in more hours you're not repeating the same things over & over.

« Previous Page