Ask Tyra #1

Sarah (8 years old) from Illinois asks: Do I really need to practice the piano for 30 minutes every day? That seems like a lot of time to be playing the same song. Tyra’s answer: Sarah, practice is an exercise in patience. Learning an instrument is a lot like making a new friend. It takes time, patience, and devotion to have a good friendship. This means that you will need to spend time learning about your instrument and how to take care of it as well as learning to how play it. The more time you practice, the more familiar you will become with it. The “30 minutes a day” is a good guideline to help people push through times of frustration during the early stages of learning. As your skills improve and your relationship with your instrument grows, you may find that you want to spend hours practicing. This may seem hard to believe now, but most best friends don’t start our that way, either: they learn to love each other by spending time together.