How much practice do you put in daily?

[Alex Orr]

1-2 hours most days.

[Fr. White]

I practice about 1 1/2 to 2 hours each day. Been mostly unemployed for the past 6 months (am in the Military but medical conditions have resulted in me being placed in a position with no responsibilities or duties, heck I don't even need to show up most days, while they work on kicking me out). I was struggling with depression so I decided to learn a musical instrument as a bit of musical therapy. Picked the mandolin because I loved it's sound and the smaller fret board fit my hands better than a guitar. Been playing for about 3 months now and I think it has been helping me. I look forward to playing each day and that is a change from before I started playing and I wasn't looking forward to anything.

[Dagger Gordon]

I play for at least an hour a day at the moment.
It's quite good to have a specific reason to practise - ie you want to perform some new tunes somewhere.

I also think of practising as 'training', in the sense that an athlete would. It's not only learning tunes, it's also a not inconsiderable physical workout and I think you need to keep 'in shape' as it were.

[Bill Slovin]

I practice about 30-45 minutes per day. I always warm up for 5 min with a few hand stretches and then some finger busters (thanks to the Mike Marshall mandolin site). Then I move on to practicing some sight reading (right now I'm working on a Choro). Then I'll end with playing a few fun tunes. I keep a spreadsheet of all of the tunes I know and I try to play 1 or 2 each day so I make sure I don't forget them. I make sure I do both the melody and the chords.

I'm doing some theory work now too, so I'll spend 5-10 minutes with scales, arpeggios, working around the circle of 5ths, improvising over a tune in various keys, etc.

Lastly, if I'm up for it, I'll take a tune or a solo, etc (it can be anything as long as I don't know how to play it) and I'll figure it out on the mandolin. Usually, I just do a couple of bars.