My Story With Piano: Daily Practice, Competitions, Teachers, and More

hi everyone I'm Josh and this is Josh Reggiano TV I got a video request from gene who had asked if I could explain a bit about my background and how I got where I am today how many hours I practiced on average so here's a little bit about my background it started my mom taught piano in our basement when I was young she did a little bit of college for piano and actually had to drop out because of a sickness that she got very serious but she did recover which is good and I started like tinkering around on the piano probably when I was four or four and a half and she taught me the names of the notes and immediately she asked me go stand in the corner and I'm gonna play these notes and name him back for me without looking and I was like oh okay I thought she did that with all of her students and I turned out I could do it so she's like wow you've got perfect pitch this is so cool and I that meant nothing to me as a four and a half year old I was just like okay cool I just wanna bang on the piano but shortly thereafter I took a few lessons with my mom and then of course I knew everything that she knew at four-and-a-half because every little kid is like that so I had to go to a different teacher who would actually discipline me and so I went to my grandma for about five years she was a wonderful teacher really teaches the basics extremely well like she teaches all of her students to be very good note readers she teaches the basics of technique very well and teaches a wonderful love of music and passion for it so I was very lucky to study with her from about age five to nine or nine and a half and during that time I was probably when I was five and six I was doing about a half hour a day and then I think when I was seven or somewhere in there maybe a year or two after I started I went up to about 45 minutes or an hour a day and then when I went to my current teacher earth not my current teacher but the teacher I studied with for like 15 years Susan dual Meyers she took me on when I was about nine and a half she said I need you to be doing at least two hours a day and then she upped it to two and a half hours shortly thereafter because she she said what are your goals with piano I said I want to play with the symphony that was actually the catalyst of switching teachers from my grandma to her I saw one of the five Browns I think it was Ryan he played with the Utah Symphony and I said I want to do that and my parents said oh okay and they knew I had talent but I mean to play with the symphony as a little kid is pretty tough it does take a lot of skill the right teacher and a fair bit of luck too because you audition for these competitions if you win the competition you get to audition and like you know 50 people audition they can only choose six and I was lucky enough to be one of those six like two years later and when I was 12 I played with Utah Symphony was huge and so I did about two and a half hours a day with Susan Dule Meyer for the next you know seven years or so until I was like 16 and then I tried the up it I was consistent with my two and a half a day forever but and then I on many days I tried to do more like four hours a day but I was also going to a pretty intense high school lots of like AP classes honors classes things like that and I also loved golfing and skiing so I was on the ski team and during the winter and then the golf team I think it was the spring that we did golf team so I felt I was like it was important to stay well-rounded sometimes I wish I had done a little less golf and skiing and turn a little more practising learned more repertoire but it was good it was a good life good childhood and I actually served a two-year church mission from age 19 to 21 and then I came back and actually before that I did early admissions to the University of Utah I I went to high school two days a week and I did one class a day because I had enough credits because the high school that I went to his really intense I actually had enough credits by the end of my junior year to only need two more classes and so I was doing full-time college at the University while I was finishing the last year of my high school just with those two little classes actually was it was two classes period it was one class every other day for the full year I was like this is the biggest waste of time I know what I want to do but my mom's like my son will not be a high school dropout so anyway I I did that I finished it - you know appease my mom and and I did my first year at the University and then I did summer courses and I actually did those with my future wife Lindsay who we got married when I was like 22 we got married very young but we spent you know years together starting at age 16 or 17 when I started going up to the college and and we did summer courses and about killed ourselves doing those we took five really intent because a summer course is crammed into like two months and we took five and so we finished all of our generals and then I loaded up with more courses the following semester before I left on that church mission so when I got back I had like five class classes left of my bachelor's and performing was never an issue for me and so I said I don't want to leave the University of Utah yet I want at least another year with my teacher I wonder if I could do the first year of my master's combined with the year of my bachelor's last year of my bachelor's and so she's like yeah you can do that because most people that the the tough thing is preparing recitals that was the thing I was good at and so because I'd competed a lot before that so I had a lot of rapid two-hour built up that I could use for these recitals so I combined the last year of bachelors first year of masters and then I did one year one more year of masters after that so as I've actually able to finish my college bachelor's and master's in four years or nine semesters total counting that summer semester and then I took a year off while my wife was finishing her doctoral coursework she was a little head of me in school she's a little bit older and then she was finishing her doctoral coursework I waited for a year while she did that and I was just a teaching assistant up at the University I was I think taking like a class or two for fun doing a lot of accompany teaching up there doing a lot of private studies and that's about the time that I started Joshua right piano TV on YouTube you can go back to those super old videos and be like wow these you've changed a lot your hair was crazy and your video camera sucked but anyway got a nicer video camera now after all these years so after that I auditioned at five schools Michigan Peabody Julliard Cincinnati and Cleveland and Cleveland was originally my first choice with Bobby on but he didn't have room in his studio and then I was like I don't want to leave him Cleveland anyway and I said maybe I'll go to Peabody and the Peabody teacher says trust me you don't want to live in Baltimore and I still really wanted to go to Michigan and so I was like well maybe I'll I'll try Michigan my Michigan teacher was so awesome Logan Skelton I recently did a video about him I love him to death and it could not have been a better choice like I do feel like you know there was a lot leading me to Michigan and and it was just the most positive experience so I did that that was 2012 to 2015 that I went to Michigan doing doctoral studies it's about two years of coursework and then your third year is just finishing up your recitals and doing some teaching assistant work along with two very very very difficult oral exams like they just about kill yeah the ones at the beginning of the year ones at the end and I studied for many hours hundreds of hours so it was not an easy third year it sounds easy and then ever since then I moved back to Utah I'm an adjunct faculty member at the University of Utah I was adjunct at snow college for a year is about two hours south here the drive just got too intense for me so I'm now teaching adjunct University of Utah teaching quite a bit on skype and then teaching a handful of students here in Utah along with my performing schedule and creating these online video courses so that's a little bit about my background Jean I hope that's informative for each of you guys during my studies I would always shoot for about three or four hours a day I feel like if you do three or four hours a day you're going to get a lot accomplished these people that are doing eight or nine hours a day certainly play more perfectly than I do and I'm the first to admit that I know that my technique is not as perfect as those guys but I also have had many things that I've enjoyed in my life I would not trade being married to my wife or my having my baby girl to be a little bit better at piano so I'm not saying there's anything wrong with practicing the eight or nine hours a day I just personally don't have the interest in doing that except before big performances I still do that but I don't do that every day it's too tiring for me personally I found that three or four hours a day is a really good regimen on average when I'm preparing for concerts and things and then maybe a couple weeks before the concert all of that - like six hours a day so I know probably each of you are asking about how much I practice throughout my life so I wanted to include that little disclaimer at the end but yeah anyway if you have enjoyed this video or want to see other videos on technique musicality anything like that make sure to hit that subscribe button thanks so much for joining me today you'll see a subscribe button up here you can view all of my videos down here or you can keep watching more videos over here have a great week good luck in your practice sessions

Channel: Josh Wright

Views: 50,344

Keywords: piano, lesson, piano lesson, piano practice, how much should I practice, practice the piano, practicing, performing piano, piano skills, piano technique, piano tips, piano tricks, how to play the piano, piano tutorial, piano teacher, become better, improve on piano, classical piano, university of utah, sergei babayan, susan duelmeier, logan skelton, university of michigan, online piano teacher, online piano instructions

Id: ZnLxb_s3gAI

Length: 9min 59sec (599 seconds)

Published: Tue Apr 24 2018