It’s a myth that guitar practice must be several hours long to be effective. Here’s how to practice effectively with limited time:
Practice Things That Improve Multiple Skills At Once
Not all practice items help you improve your overall guitar playing as efficiently as others. For example, practicing switching between open chords does not improve the same skills that practicing directional picking over scales does. Making your guitar practice time as productive as possible (when you don’t have much time) means spending the majority of it working on items that give you the most results at once.
Take the time to sit down and review all the different items you want to practice to find out: 1. Which ones improve the most variety of skills at once and 2. Which ones help you reach your musical goals fastest. Then plan your practice time around them.
Plan Your Practice Schedule Ahead Of Time
Figuring out the things you want to practice moments before you grab your instrument to get started ends up wasting time (you spend time thinking about what to practice rather than actually practicing). Thinking about what you want to practice ahead of time helps you come up with a plan of which items need to be worked on to help you reach your goals as fast as possible. From there, you just need to sit down and do what you planned. This also helps prevent mindless practice or noodling that happens when you aren’t sure what to do.
Track Your Practice Effectiveness Consistently
Don’t just practice and hope that what you are working on will help you get better. Track the results you are getting each week to find out which items are helping you and which ones are not. Tracking your progress every week also identifies which aspects of your playing are strong and weak so you don’t need to waste time practicing things you’ve already mastered.
Using all of these ideas in your guitar practice approach helps you make a lot of progress no matter how much time you practice each day.
However, there are a lot of other ways to improve your guitar practice efficiency. Read the ideas in this article about an effective guitar practice routine to learn additional ways to improve your guitar skills.
About The Author:
Tom Hess is a professional touring musician, composer and successful rock/metal guitar teacher. He helps guitarists around the world learn to play guitar online. On his website tomhess.net, you can find guitar playing tips, free guitar resources and more guitar articles.
