Good piano practice and the ability to practice efficiently comes really with 2 factors - quality and time. Students that I have taught and teach often ask me what they should be doing regarding piano practice and how long they should be practicing for. As mentioned above, it really comes down to 2 factors - quality and time - based on what your ability is, how much you want to achieve, and the amount of time available to you every day.

Quality This is a simple factor. You could spend hours at the piano every day but without quality practice, your piano playing ability will not become proficient. Exercises, although they can seem boring and daunting to some, are one of the best ways to create quality playing. Exercises include scales, broken chord patterns, fingering technique, staccato exercised, arpeggios etc. I strongly recommend starting slowly and building up the speed over a period of several weeks until your fingers now exactly how far to travel. When you can do exercises from memory, at a quick speed, on auto pilot, then to progress with a new exercise. However, do not forget the simple exercises that you started with. Many pianists move on to the next set of exercises and when they feel they have completed the first set of exercises and, after a couple of weeks, they can't remember or do the exercises they started with. Apart from scales etc, there are books of exercises that can be bought to help with your technique. Also, there are many pieces that have been written with the sole aim of improving technique. So, for exercises, I would suggest concentrating on scales and a combination of small pieces to help improve your technique. The pieces should be in addition to the pieces that you are learning. Listen to what the exercises sound like. Vary them between quiet and loud, get to know how and when you should be using the sustain/damper pedals. Alternate between staccato and legato. Do many octaves starting from the bass to the treble and back again (descending/ascending). Alternate between curved fingers and straight fingers. What you are doing is creating regular repeating finger patterns that over a short period of time, your brain will do automatically. Only when this happens, proven by being able to do it all by memory and trying with your eyes closed, will you have mastered or be accomplished at the exercises. When learning pieces, I always recommend 2 or 3. This breaks up the pattern and helps keep your repertoire varies. When learning the pieces, I break them down into parts, beginning, middle and end and I tend to concentrate on a page for 1 to 2 weeks. Within the page, locate areas of difficulty, areas which are not as strong as other areas and focus your practice on these areas. Again, start slow, build up speed over the weeks. Sometimes, I recommend learning one hand, then the other hand, and once both are learnt, to play them together, again slowly generating a quicker tempo each time you practice. Over time, your brain records patterns and memorizes the piece so eventually your fingers know what to play next. I often recommend to my students, if at all possible, to listen to someone else play the piece, preferably by a professional. Not only will you be able to see the piece develop, but you will also understand certain areas of the piece, how they are distinguished between others, recommendations of how to play the piece etc.

Time. This factor is an important one but really is down to the individual. It really depends on how much time you have available to play the piano every day. Most people should be able to play for 30 minutes to 45 minutes. When I started learning, I played for about 30 minutes; 15 minutes on exercises and 15 minutes on pieces. This built up to 45 minutes, then 1 hour, again trying to split the amount of time I had evenly between pieces and exercises. The most important thing to stress is that the time has to be quality time. 30 minutes good practice is better than 1 hours bad practice. Breaks are recommended to allow your fingers to recover so to speak and your brain to take in all that you have done for the period that you have practiced. So it really is down to how much time you have to sit down and practice. One idea that I keep with is to separate practice from playing. I play the piano every day however, I don't deem this as my practice time. Practice is for learning, developing technique and skill, but my playing is for pleasure. Therefore, although I play the piano everyday, I also practice everyday. If you can get into this mentality you will be surprised at how quickly you are able to master the pieces that you are learning or being taught by a teacher.