Practice Makes Perfect

“Practice makes perfect.”

We’ve all heard that expression countless times. As a piano teacher, it’s probably one of the topics I discuss most often with parents. The question is almost always the same: “How much should my child practice?”

It’s a simple question, but the answer isn’t always simple.

Many of us have heard about the famous idea that it takes 10,000 hours of practice to master a skill. Whether that number is exact or not, the principle behind it is true: excellence doesn’t happen overnight. It is built through consistency, repetition, and patience.

The challenge today is that children’s schedules are fuller than ever. Between school, homework, sports, extracurricular activities, and family commitments, finding an uninterrupted hour every day to practice can feel impossible.

Over the years, my perspective has changed. Instead of insisting on a full hour every day, I encourage families to find a realistic window of time—whatever fits their lives. Even five focused minutes are better than none. Those five minutes keep the habit alive. They strengthen the connection between the student and the instrument. Most importantly, they teach consistency.

Practice is less about finding large amounts of time and more about returning to the task again and again.

Finding the motivation to practice isn’t always easy either. I remember my own college years, preparing for auditions and performances. There were days filled with hours of practicing the same passages over and over. It could feel lonely, frustrating, and mentally exhausting. Yet there was also something incredibly rewarding about watching a difficult piece slowly come together and finally sharing it with an audience.

One experience has stayed with me over the years.

A close friend of mine is a professional opera singer. I once asked her how she managed to learn so much music in such a short time between performances. Her answer surprised me.

She said, “I do most of my practicing on airplanes and in hotel rooms when I’m away from home.”

She didn’t wait for the perfect environment or the perfect schedule. She used the moments she had.

On one occasion, she was preparing a song in Portuguese and was struggling with the pronunciation. She asked me if I could record the text for her. Since Portuguese isn’t my native language, I asked my Brazilian neighbor to help me make the recording. My friend listened to it repeatedly until every word sounded natural.

When she finally performed the piece, she sang it flawlessly.

That experience reminded me that mastery isn’t built by giant leaps. It’s built by countless small repetitions that no one sees.

Practice requires attention to detail. It requires patience, discipline, and compassion—for ourselves when progress feels slow, for the people around us who graciously listen to our unfinished work, and for our own bodies and minds as we ask them to repeat difficult tasks over and over again.

The audience only hears the finished performance.

They don’t hear the wrong notes, the forgotten words, the hundreds of repetitions, or the moments of self-doubt that came before it.

But those unseen moments are where growth happens.

Eventually, the music begins to flow. The sounds become expression. Technique becomes artistry.

The ancient Greeks believed that music was a gift from the gods—a divine art capable of moving the human spirit. Whether or not we see it that way today, I think we can all agree that music has a remarkable ability to inspire, comfort, and connect us.

And behind every beautiful performance is something much less glamorous but infinitely more important:

Someone simply decided to practice—again and again, one small step at a time.

So perhaps “practice makes perfect” isn’t quite the right saying.

Maybe a better one is this:

Practice makes progress. And progress, sustained over time, creates excellence.