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how long to practice

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(@jonetoe)
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Joined: 19 years ago
Posts: 365
Topic starter  

Say after three weeks to a month as a beginnger. I read somewhere that less then two hours a day is not good enough but I don't know if thats true. I sometimes do an hour sometimes a half hour. Sometimes my fingers hold out longer sometimes they don't; sometimes the strings become blurry after a half hour, sometimes they last a little longer. Am I just lazy?


   
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(@forrok_star)
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Joined: 21 years ago
Posts: 2337
 

Here's a great place to start, How to Practice

Joe


   
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(@ignar-hillstrom)
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Joined: 21 years ago
Posts: 5349
 

Practice as much as you want/can. The more you practice, the faster you progress, that's about it. If you want to be darn good real fast, practcie a lot. If you're less ambitions, practice less.


   
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(@jonetoe)
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Joined: 19 years ago
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Topic starter  

Thanks for the link and feedback. Sometimes I like to confirm my own common sense against others


   
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(@wes-inman)
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Joined: 20 years ago
Posts: 5582
 

I love to practice. Even after all these years I never get tired of it. I will play all day long if I can.

It's like Arjen said, play as much as you feel motivated to do. If you get tired, put it down. I know what you mean about the notes getting blurry.

Just be careful not to injure your hand. If an excercise causes pain, don't keep pushing ahead. You can cause some real and even permanent injury to your hand. Work on something like that slow. And try to find out what is causing the pain. Sometimes a little shift in position can correct a problem.

If you know something better than Rock and Roll, I'd like to hear it - Jerry Lee Lewis


   
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(@red_dwarf)
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Joined: 20 years ago
Posts: 56
 

I started using a nike hand/grip gel. It's really built up my finger and hand strength, and that helps tremendously when playing. I found the ring and pinky fingers to be the weakest in the beginning and that makes playing chords tough.

"The whole purpose in life is to not be bored"


   
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(@omega)
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Joined: 20 years ago
Posts: 92
 

Be a real man and practise for 8 hours a day!!! :D

...Seriously, practise how and when you feel like it. Obviously try and have some discipline, but if you feel like your attention is waning, then just give it a rest...you'll be less productive and less motivated to do it again.

As with Wes, I love playing/practising, so I do it for hours at a time. Other people manage just fine on 20 minutes a day. s entireably dependant on how long you can play whilst enjoying it.

Somnium Dulcis.


   
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(@stormymonday)
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Joined: 21 years ago
Posts: 429
 

Be a real man and practise for 8 hours a day!!! :D

8 hours? What kind of sissy are you? I hear tell that Hendrix would put in 18 hour days. :)


   
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(@noteboat)
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Joined: 21 years ago
Posts: 4921
 

Don't let the big numbers (or any numbers) tell you what to do... while it's true some people practice extraordinary amounts of time, it's not the quantity of practice, but the quality, that brings improvement.

When I started, I overdid it - about 5 hours a day or so. I literally played until my fingers bled... that's not an approach I recommend. Not only was it painful, but I also had no concept yet of what (or how) to practice... did I mention this was in my self-taught days, before my first teacher?

I recommend my students who are just starting out do about 20 minutes a day. You want to ease into building callouses on your fingers - playing until they bleed will simply set you back while they heal. As you learn more, you'll want to practice more.

I spent several years practicing 4-5 hours every day, but now focused practice is 1-2 hours, except for special occasions (last week I needed to learn a bunch of new tunes all at once for several different jobs, so I ended up doing 9 hours 4 days in a row).

You also don't need to practice all at once. I usually go straight through what I want to work on each day, but sometimes I'll split it up into two shorter sessions. It's better to do 30 minutes where you're fully engaged - mentally alert, concentrating on the material - than 3 hours while your mind is elsewhere.

Guitar teacher offering lessons in Plainfield IL


   
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(@jonetoe)
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Joined: 19 years ago
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Topic starter  

A man has to know his limitations :wink: I have decided to just practice simple chords and boring prescales until I have that down. I try to go ahead of myself at times like seeing how fast I can switch chords because I want to play something that sounds together, so i'm hungry to advance, but it ain't gonna happen that way


   
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(@rip-this-joint)
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Joined: 20 years ago
Posts: 110
 

What did you practice for 5 hours a day when you first started? I dont think i would have enough material for that long of a practice session


   
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(@noteboat)
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Joined: 21 years ago
Posts: 4921
 

When I started I practiced chord changes from songbooks, reading from the Mel Bay books, and playing phrases by ear from TV themes and whatever I was listening to at the time. Finding things to play has never been an issue - there's always stuff to work on.

Guitar teacher offering lessons in Plainfield IL


   
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(@idiot85204)
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Joined: 20 years ago
Posts: 36
 

Hey, when i started out i was playing just shy of 15 minutes a day. I just got sick of playing the same 3 chords over and over. To play guitar anyone will tell u that u need deternimation however im not sure if its a good thing to push your self to practice so much that u hate it. It should be fun right?


   
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(@noteboat)
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Joined: 21 years ago
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I never play until I hate it... although I'll play things I dislike and find boring. For instance, I start every practice with scales and technical drills. After doing them daily for many, many years, they are quite boring, and I sometimes can't wait for that part to be over.

But if I skip them, or if I just rip through them mindlessly, it'll affect my playing to the point where I notice it within a few days or a week. So I do what I can to make it interesting, and I stay focused on tone quality - they're over soon enough.

I also try to do my practicing as early as possible. That phrase 'first things first' has a lot of meaning to it - if I put off my practice until later, I may have one eye on the clock... daily practice becomes a 'have to' instead of a 'want to'. Once my practice is out of the way, I'm likely to pick up a guitar several times throughout my free moments and chase down ideas that come to me - that's just playing because I love to play.

20-25 years ago I was terribly regimented in my practicing. In some ways I was a technically better guitarist then because of all the drills I did. I've learned to approach practice differently over the years, and I think I've improved as a musician, which more than compensates for any loss of technique as a guitarist, if that makes sense.

Guitar teacher offering lessons in Plainfield IL


   
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