Finding Time to Practice
Let’s face it, practising can be boring, frustrating and can make you want to give up and don’t play the guitar ever again. But, it’s really important if you want to improve and be the best guitar player that you can be.
I’ve always struggled with finding time and energy to practice, as I was always busy working or having fun. I can relate 100% with you but I can tell you that there is hope. If I can do it, I’m sure you can too.
Let’s start from the beginning and try to analyse why you don’t have time to practice. Write down on a piece of paper (or your notepad on your phone) why you are not practising. Maybe you want to spend time with your family when you’re not working, maybe you want to enjoy the summer sun with a cold beer instead of being inside a room, hearing that awful click sound of the metronome. Trust me, I’ve been there.
Now let’s take things a step back. You need to set your goals. Do you want to be a professional guitar player or do you want to play just for you, friends and family? Your goals will drastically change the number of hours you need to put into practice.
We’ll take a deeper look at the first example. Let’s say you want to play the song you like but can’t play yet, or change the chords faster so the song makes sense, or want to impress your friends with the Sweet Child o Mine solo.
In that case, you need to practice a few hours per week (the more the merrier. Let’s say you’re working a day job for 40-45 hours per week. You can spare 2 hours per week to practice new songs, scales and chords. What I’d like to say to some of my students that are in this category is that it’s better if you spear these 2 hours in the week, it is much much better than sitting around 2 hours straight practising.
So, what I advise my students is to spend 30 minutes every other day in practice. Sounds much easier, doesn’t it? But, you need to have 2 things in mind.
- Be consistent
- Spend 30 minutes practising.
The first one is pretty obvious. It’s like the gym, if you give up you’ll never be in the best shape you can be.
The second one is a bit more tricky because (we all been there) you sit down to practice, you start with a warm-up exercise and you end up cranking your lovely tube amp and playing what you always end up playing. It’s an easy fix but you have to you be real with yourself. When you’re sitting down to practice, you are sitting down to practice. No phone, no laptops (I’m always printing everything on a piece of paper). If you want to use your laptop to watch a video or have a backing track, always download everything on your computer and disconnect from the internet. Put your phone to flight mode or silent. I’ll make a blog post on how to practice soon.
Let’s take a look at the second option, where is that you want to be a professional guitar player. Let’s take a step back and understand what a professional guitar player means.
Being a professional guitar player doesn’t have to be the image we all have of the guy who’s shredding the guitar, or player eighth notes on 250bpm.
Being a professional guitar player means that you earn your income throw playing the guitar. It can be as easy as playing 4 chords over and over again with a band, supporting a singer or (why not) teaching.
You don’t have to be the best guitar player in the world to make a living out of it, but you have to practice a lot of things before you start making money and of course, while you’re making money.
So, in my opinion, you have to spend at least 10 hours per week practising and learning new things.
You can always learn new scales, songs and solos but you have to master music theory, being comfortable in playing songs that are in demand.
Practising as a professional guitar player is a necessity if you want to make a living out of it because you can always be replaced. There are a lot of guitar players out there that want to take your place, and you have to “beat” them. This can happen with other ways (that I will write about in a future blog post) but being the best you can be is always a plus.
If you want to be a professional guitar player, there are no excuses. You have to practice. As the doctor has to go to seminars and study new technologies, you have to practice (at least 10hours per week) to be on top of your game. I know that it can be frustrating and boring but you need to consider that you are having one of the greatest careers that you could have and you’re living your dream every day. Is it worth it to throw this away by being lazy? Take Joe Bonamassa as an example. He’s one of the best blues guitar players at the moment, and he’s always practising.
Finding time to practice can be hard, especially if you have more important things to do (kids, work etc), but it’s really important and crucial if you want to be a better guitar player. All I want you to take from this article is that you have to think where do you want to go as a guitar player and set up reminders on your calendar for the days and times you will practice.
If you have any further questions, suggestions or want to get in touch with me, you can always email me at vintageguitarnerds@gmail.com
Thank you for reading.
Dimitris.
