Life In 19x19

As someone with a masters degree in music performance I can speak with some small amount of authority on this subject. I partly disagree with Fong's statements as relayed by John Fairbairn. It is true that there is no substitute for hard work, but equating the amount of time you practice with work is a mistake that far too many musicians fall into. When I was preparing for my grad school auditions I was practicing about 8 hours a day, but relatively speaking I did not get much accomplished. The key to mastering music is how you practice. Two hours of well mindful deliberate practice is worth more than 8 hours of drilling a passage mindlessly. Many of the world's most famous and successful classical musicians practice for 2 hours or fewer a day.

Mindful, deliberate practice in when instead of playing a piece over and over again trying to weed out the mistakes, you stop, analyze why the mistake was made, formulate a plan to fix that mistake, and set that plan in motion. This kind of practice takes an incredible amount of concentration, and is exhausting.

In the same way, spending hours a day "studying" go will not benefit you very much of you do not engage in deliberate practice. It takes 10 times the mental effort to practice this way, but the result is correspondingly larger.

DJLLAP wrote:As someone with a masters degree in music performance I can speak with some small amount of authority on this subject. I partly disagree with Fong's statements as relayed by John Fairbairn. It is true that there is no substitute for hard work, but equating the amount of time you practice with work is a mistake that far too many musicians fall into. When I was preparing for my grad school auditions I was practicing about 8 hours a day, but relatively speaking I did not get much accomplished. The key to mastering music is how you practice. Two hours of well mindful deliberate practice is worth more than 8 hours of drilling a passage mindlessly. Many of the world's most famous and successful classical musicians practice for 2 hours or fewer a day.

Mindful, deliberate practice in when instead of playing a piece over and over again trying to weed out the mistakes, you stop, analyze why the mistake was made, formulate a plan to fix that mistake, and set that plan in motion. This kind of practice takes an incredible amount of concentration, and is exhausting.

In the same way, spending hours a day "studying" go will not benefit you very much of you do not engage in deliberate practice. It takes 10 times the mental effort to practice this way, but the result is correspondingly larger.

All true, but that being said, 15 minutes a day is still not enough no matter how mindfully you practice!

What do you play?

palapiku wrote:All true, but that being said, 15 minutes a day is still not enough no matter how mindfully you practice!

What do you play?

I am a percussionist. I play mostly classical; I am in a few orchestras in the Denver area. But this year I have started a wedding music duo with my wife who plays flute while I play vibraphone, so I have been learning jazz and popular style recently.

Here is my Duo's website.
http://flutevibes.com/

My sentiments agree with

palapiku wrote:Miracles start to happen after the first hour of practice.

As with sports, I think a certain "warm up" period is needed in training anything at a reasonably high level.
With musical instruments and sports one could argue using purely physical reasons, but I think it also applies to mind sports such as chess and go.

You just can't bring your best performance out of the blue.

But then again this may be a question regarding playing strength. Whether it also applies to efficiency of practice is another question (I think it does).

Either way, 15 minutes seems extremely short.

IMO guqin and xiao go well with weiqi. I imagine the princes of your snapping stones on the board listening to the bass notes and whooshing sound of fingers sliding along the hollow board, like flowing water.