I was catching up in the blogosphere today and came across a post by Elissa Milne about her black key piece, Safari. I was struck by the way she used hours as a measure of readiness.

Safari is not, however, a piece suitable for absolute beginners! …students will need to have spent around 150-200 hours playing the piano before they will be anywhere near equipped to handle the technical challenges of this piece.

Of course, Elissa also talked about the skills needed to be ready for this piece. But, how many of us talk to students and parents in a way that stresses and graphically illustrates the importance of quality time spent at the instrument? The range, 150-200 hours allows for individual learners needs.

Let’s see, One year of study with 2 weeks off for good behavior (vacations, holidays, mental health days, etc) in which the student practiced 30 minutes daily (3.5 hours weekly) would add up to 175 hours.  One year of study in which a student missed 5 weeks of practice and didn’t study over the summer would equal about 129.5. For a student with a learning problem, I probably would just not use this method of talking about readiness.

Hmmm… Since students need to increase their practice hours as the difficulty and length of their pieces increase, there must be a ratio or logarithm involved here someplace.

Arghhh!!! So not a math person!

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