Practice less. Quality practice, not quantity.
Some friends of mine who are performance majors on the Violin were far ahead of me when I started. Now I'm ahead of them. They practice a minimum average of 4 hours a day. I practice a upper maximum average of 7 hours a week. Usually every other day or two on one off if I rotate pieces. Have to leave gaps in your practice for the QUALITY work to sink into long-term memory as well as accurate, fast recall.
When you practice more it causes in the brain what would be similar to stirring and adding water to concrete. It needs to settle. The brain can only handle about 30 minutes of exercise/ear training, and about 30 minutes of working on a piece. That gives your brain the maximum amount of information it can handle to then transfer to long term memory and adapt your fast recall/accuracy.
If you don't believe me, set up tests. Practice 4 hours, wait 2-4 days. Test your progress. Then, practice with a high mental sharpness and intensity, use your ear carefully, dissect the notes carefully, concentrate on quality. Do this for an hour. Wait 2-4 days. Test your progress.
It will be the same. Also test practicing every day one week. Then test practicing every other day. You'll make better progress from less because like keeping concrete in the mixer you're erasing much of your previous days work that the brain hasn't organized yet. The only improvements made will be mostly a lie and stem from inadvertent memorization due to sheer exposure to the material.
Less practice is more. The only exception is memorization. When I'm memorizing a piece I do put in some grueling hours till it's all in my fingers.
Funny thing is, same thing goes in the gym. If you were to work just one body part like biceps every day you'd never make any gains cause you'd never heal/give time to adapt. The body and brain seem to adapt to stimuli in similar ways, both taking time.
Some friends of mine who are performance majors on the Violin were far ahead of me when I started. Now I'm ahead of them. They practice a minimum average of 4 hours a day. I practice a upper maximum average of 7 hours a week. Usually every other day or two on one off if I rotate pieces. Have to leave gaps in your practice for the QUALITY work to sink into long-term memory as well as accurate, fast recall.
When you practice more it causes in the brain what would be similar to stirring and adding water to concrete. It needs to settle. The brain can only handle about 30 minutes of exercise/ear training, and about 30 minutes of working on a piece. That gives your brain the maximum amount of information it can handle to then transfer to long term memory and adapt your fast recall/accuracy.
If you don't believe me, set up tests. Practice 4 hours, wait 2-4 days. Test your progress. Then, practice with a high mental sharpness and intensity, use your ear carefully, dissect the notes carefully, concentrate on quality. Do this for an hour. Wait 2-4 days. Test your progress.
It will be the same. Also test practicing every day one week. Then test practicing every other day. You'll make better progress from less because like keeping concrete in the mixer you're erasing much of your previous days work that the brain hasn't organized yet. The only improvements made will be mostly a lie and stem from inadvertent memorization due to sheer exposure to the material.
Less practice is more. The only exception is memorization. When I'm memorizing a piece I do put in some grueling hours till it's all in my fingers.
Funny thing is, same thing goes in the gym. If you were to work just one body part like biceps every day you'd never make any gains cause you'd never heal/give time to adapt. The body and brain seem to adapt to stimuli in similar ways, both taking time.
Andrew // Site Architect "Attack its weak point for massive damage" -Giant Enemy Crab
