Following the advice of Robert Boice, I write in 20-minute increments, with brief pauses in between to relax, shift my visual focus, do a forward bend, whatever, for up to net 120 minutes every workday. This has increased my comfort and fluency — and productivity — enormously.

When I started learning horn two years ago, my instructor told me to practice in 5-minute increments, with a break (handy for emptying horn as well as resting my embouchure) between increments. I started for a total of 30 minutes, and have gradually built up to comfortably to 9 or 10 5-minute increments (for a total of 50-60 minutes; my pauses get longer as I do more increments).

The main thing about practicing horn for more than 30 minutes, for me, is that I have to warm up for about 20-25 minutes every time I play, before I start working on the material for my weekly lesson. As it feels like a real luxury to play for 50-60 minutes every day that I don’t have a lesson, it’s hard to imagine practicing for only 30 minutes at a time — I’d never get to the lesson material, let alone practice the pieces for my first recital!

If you made a 30 bar rule, you might find that sometimes it would take you days and days of practice to learn 30 bars (if the music is complicated) and only a short time to learn 30 bars if it is simple music. Sticking to a time limit for each session (and I’m not saying you can’t do multiple sessions of 30 mins in one day!) allows you to approach big projects in a more sane way, I think.

Having said that, there is usually a balance one has to strike between the two approaches. In music school, I practiced for time/process most of the week, then the day before my lesson, I would usually switch to a more goal oriented approach! More on that rhythm of organizing one’s practice over the long-term in later posts.

Small sessions are good, but howabout instead of the 30 minutes rule you had a ’30 bar rule’? ie your aim for the session is to learn the notes for a 30 bar section? Or maybe the ’1 Minute Memory Rule’ where your aim is to memorise 1 minute of music.

Rules like these I think would be far more beneficial than setting an arbitry amount of minutes.

Lately, what I’ve been trying to learn is to STOP when I hit that point of diminishing returns, even if I hit it before the 30 minutes are up.

Thanks for pointing out the need to be intentional about breaks, because on those days when i do have more timed and practice more than 30 minutes… Well, you’ve already talked about it. I’ve been reading much the same thing about exercise. Makes a lot of sense.