How Many Hours/Day Should I Practice My Guitar?
Thursday, September 2nd, 2010 
“How many hours/day should I practice my guitar?”
This is a very important question if you want to learn not just guitar but anything really.
If you ask around, people will advise you that exercising at the very least four hours/day is the best way to learn to play guitar fast. Well, a lot of comments could be made to this statement.
First, playing the guitar involves many skills that need to be practiced separately. Here are a few:
* Right hand exercises (finger/plectrum picking, rhythm)
* Left hand (practicing chord changes, scales, arpeggios etc…)
* Reading
* Sight Singing
* Ear Training
* Improvisation
These are just a few aspects of guitar playing of course but each of them demands conscious attention in order to be mastered.
So, what do you do? Do you spend hours and hours practicing each specific skill, before
moving to the next one? Do that and you will soon get completely bored only by the idea of going to your practice room!
What you can actually do is to choose to practice 3 times a week. In my experience, 3 hours/session are plenty.
Here’s what I like doing. I work on 2 or 3 skills that I want to develop. For example:
* Chord changes
* Rhythmic patterns
* Improvisation on a particular song that I decided to add to my repertoire
That’s lots, believe me! Once I have decided the topics, I divide my practicing time into 3 (e.g., 45 minutes on each topic/skill). I also take breaks, drink some tea, stretch etc…every 20-30 minutes. In doing so, you give your brain the opportunity to work on as many as skills as possible, skills that are necessary to work together during performance.
The last, and perhaps, most important step, is to spend the last 20-30 minutes practicing just for the fun of it. With no attachment whatsoever to the outcome. In doing so, you’ll relax, feel free of making mistakes and guess what…you’ll practice playing out of your intuition, with no rules to observe…
This, altogether, will leave in your brain a feeling of pleasure that will motivate you to start your next practicing session. Practicing even complicated tasks will become fun-
and not a chore…
So, to summarize…
Go to your practice room, spend only a few minutes practicing one single skill and then stop. After a few minutes, a good cup of coffee and some stretching, start working on something else…you will soon build up a standard practicing schedule that will take your guitar playing to the next level in no time.
This is what I personally do. As with any advice you decide to take on board in life, you might want to adapt my approach to your particular situation. Bear in mind that practicing your guitar should always be fun and something to look forward to each and every day. So let go of your frustrations if you relize you need more practicing sessions in order to master a specific skill. It will happen, I promise.
Francesco
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