Guitar Practice Plan

What are the most important qualities of a successful guitarist? Successful guitarists have goals in what they want to achieve, remain disciplined and persistent in practicing the guitar. The most common pitfall that I see in many beginner guitarists is that give up playing the guitar after a while as they cannot achieve the results they want. Do keep in mind that becoming a very good guitarist will not happen overnight. Learning the guitar can be a lifelong process as you continuously improve your playing skill from one level to another.

First things first, you should ask yourself what do you want to achieve from playing the guitar? Is your goal to simply learn a few songs and impress your friends or do you dream of being on a stage and performing in your own concert? What about the types of songs and genres of music you want to play? It is important to identify your goals as it would then determine how you can work towards them.

To really accelerate in learning the guitar, you should set yourself a practice plan, stick with it and review your plan periodically. Now, I want you to set aside and commit yourself to how much time you will spend on the guitar. You should be realistic about this amount of time. An 8 hours/day plan on practicing the guitar is probably not sustainable for the long term. If you are a full-time student or working adult, 45mins - 60mins a day would be a much more reasonable target.

I have seen students who tend to make up for practicing time with long sessions because they weren’t disciplined enough to stay in a practice routine. Think about it: If you are a world class athlete, would you be training for 18 hours in one day and take the next 6 days off? The idea behind consistent practicing is that the human mind and body takes time to learn and absorb new information. You should spread out your practicing time. Consistent practicing of 20mins everyday is alot more effective than practicing for 8 hours in a day once per week.

Let me show you an example of a guitar practice plan I had used. When I first started playing the guitar seriously, I was an undergraduate doing full time studies for a degree in engineering. It was impossible for me to spend 3-4 hours each day on the guitar due to my studies commitment. Hence, to make full use of the time that I had set aside for learning the guitar, I would use about an hour each day to do the following.

On some days, I get so busy with my studies that I could not spare 1 hour of my time to even practice my guitar (Especially during exams). However, I make it a point that I would still do at least 5-10 minutes of guitar warm-ups to keep my fingers “in shape”.

The guitar practice plan is not casted in stone. You should make come out with your own tailored practice plan since the learning capacity for each individual is different. One very important point to take note is that there is a difference between playing the guitar and practicing the guitar. Practicing the guitar involves an organized method to work on your weaknesses until you can overcome them.

To make the practice plans more fun and effective, part of your practice plan should include new stuff which you had never learnt before while the majority of the plan works on “perfecting” the older stuff.

As you start to learn new stuff and advanced techniques, it is very easy to get frustrated because you do not see the results that you desire or because some parts of the practicing are too difficult. When this happens, take a short break before coming back to it at a later time. By forcefully putting yourself through such difficult practices would not only hinder your progress but also get your motivation killed in a short time.

My last piece of advice is: If you fail to plan, you plan to fail.