Like everything in life, if you want to be good at something you have to put in the hours. And with the guitar, or music in general, it’s no different. As you have already heard, no sweat, no gain.
The good news is that, from my experience as a guitar player and a teacher, I have come to realize that the way you manage the time within your practice routine is far more important than the amount of hours you put into it. In this post I will talk about the way I organize my practice routine and why I think you should too.
Where to start?
1. Define your goals and try to prioritize them from the most to the least important; use a scale from 1 (not so important) to 5 (very important).
2. Set specific time-oriented goals.
3. Set up your weekly schedule.
4. Last, but not least, keep a practice journal
So, how do you turn these steps into something concrete? Let’s go through them one by one.
1. Define your goals
Let’s suppose that your general goals are:
A. Learn more jazz standards | 5
B. Strengthen your improvising skills over jazz standards | 4
C. Raise your playing speed | 3
2. Set time-oriented goals
I am going to define them as weekly and monthly goals. Keep in mind that your goals are to be simple and not too far of reach.
As you can see, I keep my monthly goals a bit more loose and forgiving so I can have room for errors and setbacks. If I am having some trouble with a specific standard then I can give it two weeks and not only one; or if I am stuck on 110 BPM and cannot raise it to 115 then I give another week of practice.
3. Set up a weekly schedule
This topic varies from person to person due to different lifestyles, but in general I believe that 15-30 minutes of practice, 4-5 times a week will get you good results.
Let’s say you have 45 minutes a day to practice and you can do it 4 days a week, so your weekly schedule will look like this:
I recommend my students to put a timer for each part of the practice routine and as long as the timer does not ring you keep as focused as you can on that specific task; when it rings you stop and go to the next one on the list.
4. Keep a practice journal
The last thing I highly recommend you to do is to keep a practice journal. You can write down the date, what you did practice on, how much time did you invest in it and the feelings that rose up after the practice (was it good? Do you feel this practice helped you? Were you focused?).
Journaling helps you to see your progress over time and can help you to keep motivated. There is nothing like seeing a practice journal full of sessions!
Furthermore, it also helps you to see if your practice routine is effective or if you should try to change it a bit: maybe add some more time on one of the tasks; maybe reduce some time from another; perhaps you find one of the exercises not very helpful, so you can change it to another one.
After trying many different practice routines and time management technics, I have come to realize that this method works best for me and for my students. It does not mean it will suit everybody, but I believe that the best way to find out what works for you is to try it.
If you find this article interesting and you want to create your own personalized practice routine you are welcome to contact me and schedule a class where we will talk, get to know each other, play and build a practice routine that works best for you.
For more information, contact me today.
Gal Dornay
Wow, this is really helpful. I will try it out and let you know how it goes. Thank you so much!