“How much should I practice?” It’s one of the questions I get asked most at Do Re Mi Studios, and I’ll be honest with you: there’s no magic number. No “20 minutes a day and you’ll be the next Hendrix.” It depends on you, your age, your experience, your instrument, what you’re actually trying to achieve, and, frankly, how much time you’ve got in your week.
Here’s the bit that usually comes as a relief, though. You don’t need to lock yourself away for hours every day to get better. A little bit of focused, regular practice goes a lot further than people expect.
Stop Comparing Yourself to the Pros
It’s so easy to hear that a professional musician practices for four or five hours a day and think, “Well, I’m never going to get anywhere doing fifteen minutes.” Push that thought aside. That comparison isn’t fair to you, and it isn’t even useful.
Most of us are juggling music alongside school, work, family, or a dozen other things pulling at our time. If that’s you, it’s completely fine. What actually matters is what you do with the time you’ve got, not how much of it you have.
Ten focused minutes, where you’re actually paying attention to what your fingers are doing, can be far more useful than an hour of half-hearted noodling while your mind’s off somewhere else. The quality of your practice matters.
Little and Often Beats Cramming
If there’s one pattern I see again and again with students, it’s this: the ones who chip away a bit each week tend to do better than the ones who cram it all in the night before their lesson.
You don’t need hours. Even a short session helps things stick. It keeps what you’ve learned fresh in your fingers and your head, rather than letting it go cold between lessons.
And when you spread your practice out across the week, you get more out of each lesson too, because you’ve had a chance to work through what you learned in your last lesson.
Some weeks will be busy. Some won’t. That’s life. Don’t stress about the weeks where you can only squeeze in ten minutes here and there. Just do what you can, and pick back up when things ease off.
It’s Not Just About the Clock, It’s About What You Do
Here’s the thing people miss: how long you practice matters less than what you’re actually doing during that time.
There’s also a difference between practicing and simply playing. Playing your favourite songs is great, and it’s an important part of enjoying your instrument. But practice has a purpose. You’re working on something because you want to improve a particular skill or reach a particular goal. For more guidance on making your practice focused and productive, see this resource on effective music practice from the National Association for Music Education.
Working on a new song? Don’t just play through the bits you’ve already nailed. That feels good, but it won’t move you forward. Spend your time on the tricky section instead, the one you keep fumbling. That’s where the real progress happens.
And please, play something you actually enjoy. Learning a song you love keeps the whole thing fun, and gives you something to look forward to picking up your instrument for.
Make Every Minute Count
Got a short window today? Then give it everything you’ve got. Phone away, pick one thing to work on, and put your full attention on it. You don’t need to cram everything into one sitting.
If you’re a beginner, this can be especially helpful. You don’t need to try to work on everything you’ve learned in every practice session. Pick one or two things from your lesson, work on them carefully, and finish by playing something you enjoy.
Even if you’ve only got ten or fifteen minutes, that can still be time well spent. Work through a tricky passage, drill a technique, or revisit something that tripped you up last lesson. A short, focused session is still practice.
Your Practice Will Change As You Grow
What your practice looks like now won’t be what it looks like in a year, and that’s exactly how it should be.
When you’re just starting out, you’ll probably need more time on the basics, getting comfortable with chords, notes, rhythm, all the foundational stuff. As those become second nature, you’ll naturally shift more of your time toward the harder material.
Your goals shape this too. Someone learning purely for the joy of it is going to practice differently from someone gearing up for a performance or chasing a specific milestone. Neither is “more correct” than the other.
It can help to have a simple goal in mind when you pick up your instrument. Maybe you want to learn a particular song, change chords more smoothly, play a section without stopping, or prepare for a performance. Having something specific to work toward can make it much easier to know what to practice.
So don’t measure your practice against anyone else’s. The only question worth asking is: am I moving toward what I actually want?
Keep Practice Enjoyable
Practice matters, but music was never supposed to feel like homework.
Try new songs. Push yourself with something a bit harder. And every now and then, just play for the sake of playing. You don’t have to be “improving” every single minute your instrument’s in your hands.
Honestly, the more you enjoy it, the more you’ll want to pick it up in the first place. That’s the whole engine that keeps this going.
At Do Re Mi Studios, we want our students practicing regularly, sure, but more than that, we want them genuinely enjoying the process. Music should be something you look forward to, not something you have to talk yourself into.
If you’re thinking about picking up an instrument, or you’d like a hand figuring out how to get started, have a look at our music lessons page to see what we teach at Do Re Mi Studios.