Scheduling Practice for Success (Part 3)

Piano Practice

How to structure a successful practice regime for ABRSM exams

An effective practice regime is essential if you want to progress when taking piano lessons. A practice schedule will look different for all types of students. For example a beginner piano student shouldn’t have the same practice schedule as a student studying for ABRSM Grade 8.

Firstly, students/parents need to assess how much time is available to commit to piano practice. At Phillips Music Tuition we would suggest that if a student can not commit to 15-20 minutes 4 times a week then it will be difficult to see consistent improvement. This often leads to stagnation and boredom, culminating in stopping playing the piano entirely.

For ABRSM exams these are the time percentages which work most effectively for most students practice sessions. 25% scales and technical exercises, 25% sight reading 50% repertoire. Obviously, as students progress these percentages may fluctuate, with more time being allocated to weak areas. Below you can see how these timings would work.

Beginner Student Practice Schedule

20 minute session

5 minutes - scales and technical exercises

10 minutes - repertoire (ABRSM Graded Pieces)

5 minutes - sight reading

Advanced Student Practice Schedule

60 minute session

15 minutes - scales and technical exercises

30 minutes - repertoire (ABRSM Graded Pieces)

15 minutes - sight reading

These timings are a very broad and basic outline for a well rounded practice schedule and can be changed to fit a students individual needs. For example some of our advanced students will split an hour session into 2 30 minute sessions. One of which is scales, technical exercises and sight reading, whilst the other is just repertoire. This can help students who have a busy schedule with lots of extra curricular activities and shorter attention spans.

Ideally beginner students should be practicing 4-7 20 minute sessions a week, intermediate students 30 - 60 minutes 4-7 times a week, and advanced students anywhere from 1 hour daily as a minimum to 3-4 hours daily.

In our next blog post we will discuss how to construct an effective practice session for students who are studying Jazz and Popular Music in piano lessons.

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