Your Classical Guitar Input Here

Practice Schedule?

by Keith Seaman
(Lexington, Kentucky, USA)

How often and how much do you practice?

I am RE-beginning after about 10 years of being away from my guitar.
I feel like could easily practice 2 - 3 hours a day and not be "finished".
HOWEVER ... at most I get about 30 - 45 min at 5:00 am and cannot practice every day due to schedule...
Maybe just seeking encouragement here...

Thanks.

Hi Keith,

I think I'm just like you...and perhaps everybody! It's always hard to find time to practice unless you really come up with some goals and strategy to do so.

Here's one example: I make use of "useless time". What does that mean? Well, if there's a show on television I want to watch I use the advertisement time with that show to practice. This is a very good strategy for practicing say a technique problem or difficult passage.

This is how I do it: I wait until the ad comes on TV I have my guitar handy and the piece or section I want to practice. The ads usually last at least 3 minutes. I mute the TV. and then I use repetition to go over the piece/section slowly for those 3 minutes. When I see out of the corner of my eye that the show is on again I stop playing and rest.

In the average 1 hour television show there's at least 5 ad breaks. 5x3= 15 minutes of very good practice time.

I've used this method even for practicing Giuliani right hand studies and it works a treat, as they say. Psychologically you know it's only a short time to practice but added together over the period of a whole evening it can really add up!

Additionally, here's some really good advice on practice routines from Christopher Davis from The Classical Guitar Blog...


I hope this was of help.

Kind regards,
Trevor M.

P.S. Anyone else with their thoughts on practice routines or other tips feel free to join the conversation.