How much does my child really have to practice?

Like always, it depends.

The amount of practice that your child should be doing will be very different depending on whether or not you’re looking for them to become a professional musician or if you’re cool with them playing a couple of songs around the campfire. The rigour and nature of this practice will also vary depending on the skill level you want them to be at.

On average though, we recommend all of our students practice 15-20 minutes every day that their instructors don’t see them.

Does practicing really even do anything?

In 1993, K. Anders Ericsson published a study on the correlation between practice and the accomplishments of the musicians that took part in the study. He found that the more successful musicians- on average- devoted more time to personal, structured practice. The most successful of whom estimated around 10,000 hours of practice by age 20.

This is how Malcolm Gladwell’s “10,000 Hour Rule”- which essentially states that it requires 10,000 hours of deliberate practice for an individual to master a skill- was conceived.

Recently, there have been additional studies that aim to further explore the validity of Ericsson’s findings, and the results of these studies have shown that the amount of hours spent practicing explains less of the level of performance than Ericsson thought. So what does this mean?

Practice alone, is not enough.

It would be foolish of anyone to think that simply slaving away at your instrument is the way to become truly great. And while the argument could be made that- on a purely fine motor control level- repetitive practice is an effective way to get better, the truth is that in order to nurture the creative side of music education we have to embrace and discover new ways to teach kids.

A great musician isn’t just someone with great fine motor skills. A great musician is someone who can communicate ideas and emotions through the composition, arrangement, and performance of what is essentially organized sound.

So does he/she need to practice or not?

Yes. There is a still a level of performance that our students need to be at in order to encourage creativity. If you don’t know the alphabet, you can’t write a novel.

However, it is our jobs as instructors to encourage experimentation and critical thinking when practicing. Kids shouldn’t be repeating the same song over and over again in the hope that they get better.

And it is your jobs as parents to ensure that your kids really are having fun and enjoying the learning process.