Daniel Barenboim on Concentration in Practice

In his autobiography A Life In Music, conductor and pianist Daniel Barenboim says this about practicing (p9 in my copy):

"All individuals have different spans of concentration. I have no strict rule mself, such as playing eight hours a day or no more than forty-five minutes. Both extremes are equally counter-productive. I never play a single note when my concentration is no longer at its height, for to do so would be to fall into the trap of playing mechanically."

This sounds great in theory but some caveats may be in order in the case of small children. After all, they may still be learning the rudiments of how to focus on anything. Follow this guideline too strictly and your 5-year-old might never practice. You have to gently toe the line and work to extend and optimize their periods of concentration.

But it is a very important warning. You can usually bribe, threaten, or otherwise cajole a child to eventually get through practicing the days lesson but it truly could be counterproductive. I'll bet most kids could learn as much in 10 minutes of practicing where they choose to concentrate then they could in a week of being forced to while they're trying to weasel out of it.

You need to gently redirect the wandering mind and try a few times to get back on track. But I agree with not pushing too hard. The trick to finding the period of concentration in the young child might have more to do with finding the right time of day in the right part of eating and sleeping cycles. And if focus is not there sometimes you have to just let it go.

I've often struggled with the case where my child brings plenty of concentration to the table in a practice session, except it's all directed at music outside of our assigned lesson plan. I'm loathe to suppress his creative expression though I'm sympathetic to the view that he needs to keep building his technical proficiency to ultimately increase the range of what he is capable of expressing on the instrument. Our violin teacher introduced the idea of 2 different practices, so you keep a very structured frame of mind for the "official" practice and are more laissez-fair on the other one. That view has sometimes been useful but proven a little too structured for us. When an idea arises, you need to pursue it. But if you do nothing but chase ideas you might miss important elements of your training. Emphasis on 'might'. Improvisation fits more naturally into our piano practice; no surprise there since our teacher is a jazz man.