Imagine playing the piano for 1,170 hours.

Over the course of a year that’s the average amount of time freshman Barry Zhang practices piano.

He has been playing for nine years.

“I do about two and a half hours on school days and on weekends I do between four and five hours a day,” Zhang said.

Zhang also drives to Lawrence every week to take lessons from a professor at the University of Kansas.

“There’s a really good teacher in Lawrence that I work with once a week and he really helps a lot with helping me,” Zhang said.  “I usually go on Tuesdays and they are anywhere from an hour to maybe even two hours long.”

Zhang’s practice routine is focused mainly on repertoire. He plays extremely high-level pieces.

“When I practice I try to split my time between different pieces I’m doing and just make them better,” Zhang said.

With most of his time being focused on practicing, Zhang has a busy schedule.

“My schedule revolves around it and its definitely something I really like,” Zhang said. “It takes up a lot of time so I can’t do as many things and I have a lot less free time and everything is a little bit more busy and I have to stay up a little bit later but I think it helps. Any day when I’m not practicing I just feel like I’m sitting around and not doing anything with myself. Occasionally I get to hang out with friends, but not a lot any more, because I’m busy on weekends and there’s still a lot of classwork so I’m usually staying up kind of late.”

This massive time devotion, along with natural talent, has led Zhang to win local, state and regional competitions.

“Usually I do well,” Zhang said. “It’s all up to the judges and whether they like you or not. So I just always think they can like you they can make you win and if they don’t like you just move on to another competition and someone might like you there. I usually try to warm up before and when I play I just sort of play and hope it goes well.”

Zhang feels at his best when playing, as it comes naturally to him. He hopes  have a career in music.

“It means a lot,” Zhang said. “I think its something that I want to do later on in my life because it’s something that comes easier to me than other things. I want it to be my career. I’d probably choose to split my time between teaching students and performing.”

With thousands of hours of playing experience, and far more to come, Zhang’s potential seems limitless.

“Music for me just comes fairly quickly,” Zhang said. “I can learn things faster in music than I can learn other stuff and I think if I work hard at it I can do pretty well.”