Originally Posted by
John Morgan
I suppose the length of time you practice (or devote to practicing) is somewhat dependent on your goals, expectations, participation level in ensemble music and your own unique circumstances dealing with available time and space to practice. If you are serious about playing or perhaps improving your playing, and want to or currently are playing in groups, then 10 minutes a day is woefully insufficient IMHO.
I am a professional level player, and to keep my chops in shape and play with the level I expect for myself, I need to play usually at least an hour a day, more if working on something particularly difficult and where there is a pending performance coming up. To just stay in shape to play well in whatever ensembles I am in, I need a very minimum of 30 minutes daily, with perhaps skipping a day or two now and then, but still usually more than 30 minutes.
If 10 minutes is the total amount of time you can devote to playing, then I would question what your goals are and if you want to be a serious musician (nothing wrong with not wanting to be a serious musician, but if you want to be, then 10 minutes is not the right number).
As far as length of practice for effectiveness, I think 30 minutes with breaks is good, but also as much as an hour with brakes could work for some (me, for instance). You just don't want to play until your chops are shot. When you can't play above an F above the staff (bass clef) without really struggling, then your chops are tired. Don't play past this, preferably, don't play until you get there, rest sooner.
Some people are able to really be effective and efficient with their practice. They know exactly what to play to warm up and then what to practice to get the biggest bang for the buck in the time allotted for practice. I can warm up pretty effectively and practice fairly efficiently, but I also "goof off" frequently while playing. I sometimes just like to play nice melodies, play them with different tempos, phrasing, dynamics, etc. to make them sound nice. That pleases me. I will work on a piece where there may be difficult parts. The key here is to work on the difficult parts and not "waste time" with the part of the piece that is easy and you can already play well. But, again, I sometimes "goof off" again and play the whole piece, the easier parts and the hard parts just because I like to. If I am time constrained, then I will practice more efficiently and effectively. But I have the luxury of a lot of available time, so my situation is more one of when I should stop and not overdo it.
There are a lot of tricks to practicing. One is with fingering. To get really good at scales, major and chromatic, and music that uses these, always practice scales and runs. I like to be able to really move on chromatic scales, so during warmup I will practice chromatic scales, going faster and faster. But, if you keep doing this for several minutes, your fingers will get all in a bunch. So, you have to know when to back off and take a break. But consistent attention to runs and scales every practice session will result over time in much more dexterity, speed and accuracy. Just like playing high notes. You can't spend 30 minutes nonstop playing all the notes ever written above high Bb or your chops will revolt. So a high chops limit, fingering limit, etc. Slurs, the rapid type like trills, same thing. You can get faster by doing it frequently and gradually gaining speed over time. Same with multiple tonguing. Do it consistently and over time you will build up a rattlesnake tongue (that means fast).
This was longer than I intended. Short message, 10 minutes a day is hardly enough time to practice, IMHO. But if that is absolutely all the time you have, then use it well.