Dedicated Practice Quotes

Once a musician has enough ability to get into a top music school, the thing that distinguishes one performer from another is how hard he or she works. That's it. And what's more, the people at the very top don't work just harder or even much harder than everyone else. They work much, much harder.

It's much better to play the guitar a half hour a day, every day, than not practice for a week and then jam for five hours one day.

The more you practice, the better. But in any case, practice more than you play.

They, therefore, who are hasty in their devotions and think a little will do, are strangers both to the nature of devotion and the nature of man; they do not know that they are to learn to pray, and that prayer is to be learnt as they learn other things, by frequency, constancy, and perseverance.

The great composer does not set to work because he is inspired, but becomes inspired because he is working. Beethoven, Wagner, Bach and Mozart settled down day after day to the job in hand with as much regularity as an accountant settles down each day to his figures. They didn't waste time waiting for inspiration.

I think that virtuosity is the first sign of morality in a musician. It means you're serious enough to practice.

It takes ten thousand hours to truly master anything. Time spent leads to experience; experience leads to proficiency; and the more proficient you are the more valuable you'll be.

Someone might have a germ of talent, but 90 percent of it is discipline and how you practice it, what you do with it. ... Instinct won't carry you through the entire journey. It's what you do in the moments between inspiration.

Talent you have naturally. Skill is only developed by hours and hours and hours of beating on your craft.

Mastery is not a function of genius or talent. It is a function of time and intense focus applied to a particular field of knowledge.

In order to be a world-class expert in anything, be it audiology, drama, music, art, gymnastics, whatever, one needs to have a minimum of 10,000 hours of practice. Unfortunately, it doesn't mean that if you put in 10,000 hours that you will become an expert, but there aren't any cases where someone has achieved world-class mastery without it! So the time spent at the activity is indeed the most important and influential factor.

Meditation takes discipline, just like learning how to play piano. If you want to learn how to play the piano, it takes more than a few minutes a day, once a while, here and there. If you really want to learn any important skill, whether it is playing piano or meditation, it grows with perseverance, patience, and systematic training.

I'm actually better on the guitar than when I started, I think, because I've had so much time with it and I still practice and I love to do it and I love to sing.

Since I've been home-schooled since sixth grade, I've practiced six to seven hours a day. I wake up, practice for three hours in the morning, eat lunch, and then go out and play eighteen or more holes.

Your game is only as good as your practice.

The time that leads to mastery is dependent on the intensity of our focus.

You can't take it for granted. Even if we have two, three days off I still have to blow that horn a few hours to keep up the chops. I mean I've been playing 50 years, and that's what I've been doing in order to keep in that groove there.

People always told me that my natural ability and good eyesight were the reasons for my success as a hitter. They never talk about the practice, practice, practice.

The separation of talent and skill is one of the largest misconceptions in modern society. Talent is something you born with, but skill can only be attained through Hours and Hours of hard work perfecting your talent as a craft. Which is why Talent will fail you without skill.

I see someone like John Williams, the classical player, and the amount of discipline and the natural ability that man has is so frightening. That requires so much natural talent. And I think my talent came from just practising, and I feel a bit intimidated when I see players that good.

Play and practice like you are trying to make the team.

In many parts, I start from the outside and then it triggers things within. For 'The Piano,' I went, 'I'm going to learn these piano pieces. I'm going to learn this sign language, and I'm going to do them all day every day, five days a week.' It was a totally physical thing.

My advice for young people is that, if you want to be a musician, the thing to do is practice eight hours a day.

Practice is the hardest part of learning, and training is the essence of transformation.

I didn't start until I was 21, and most people I know were 13 when they had their first guitar - I missed that time where you sit in your bedroom all day for years and accidentally you're doing classical training, although you're not thinking of it that way. It's not as easy, as you get older, to do all that kind of practice.