[cel1ne]

Played the cello for 7 years as a kid. Gave it up and learned piano with 23 or so.

Your skill is going to depend on how much time you want to invest practising. In my experience, as a hobby musician, my most "efficient" practising schedule was:

* 5 day/week: 30 to 45 minutes

* 1 day: 3 hours

* 1 day: nothing, don't practise

[noname123]

Hi, thanks for your schedule; was wondering if you can give more details for what exercises you do during your daily regular practice (30-45min) vs. the long practice (3 hrs), e.g., improvisation/repertoire/mechanics?

[cel1ne]

Hi, the exercises I do for the regular practise change according to the pieces I play and they also change if I feel that I get tired of them or they don't work. Many of them can be found here [0].

There are also days where I just "listen", not caring much for technique, but rather playfully explore a piece or an idea.

The most important thing in my opinion is to not fall into the trap of just playing something over and over again, hoping for incremental progress, but instead find out what you can't do and work on improving precisely that. Playing the bars of a piece in reverse is a good way to get around this.

During the long practise I take that principle even deeper and use the time to work on the hardest parts (= the ones which aren't fun to play, because I'm not yet able to play them properly).

[0] http://www.pianopractice.org/

[Xcelerate]

> The most important thing in my opinion is to not fall into the trap of just playing something over and over again, hoping for incremental progress

My problem, in a nutshell. 12 hours at a time of useless activity, but it's so darn fun and addictive...

[cel1ne]

I know, i can't say that I follow my own advice all the time.

If you do just one thing: play hands separated at least for a while.