Author: Marcos Vinicius Araujo. Psychology of Music 2015. Seems to be a PhD student’s work.

From literature overview:

(Ericsson etc) Practicing is deliberate when musicians

1) have a well-defined task representing a personal challenge to overcome
2) are concentrating as much as possible during the task
3) have the persistence to repeat sections and correct errors
4) find alternative strategies to try to accomplish difficult elements within the task

Method has problems with sampling validity as many cases were excluded without satisfactory explanations. What characterized the cases that were excluded besides the fact that the questionnaires were incomplete? And a 58 y old with a practicing experience of 56 years? What a talented man…

Results. Time of practicing per day:

< 1 h 22.6%
1-2 hrs 30.7%
2-3 hrs 20.3%
3-4 hrs 16.5%
>4 hrs 9.4%

So let’s see – 53.3% practices less than 2 hrs a day. But that means that it takes more than 20 years to comply with the Ericsson’s 10 000 hrs rule. These people are clearly not on the way to become experts. At least not in music performance. I have tracked the practicing time for years and am pretty much convinced that an 8 hr working day hardly ever contains more than 4 hrs of pure practicing time. Let alone deliberate practicing..

Btw what is the point of giving median values for a 5 point Likert scale – almost straight 4s?