How Much Time Should You Practice Each Day?
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Short Answer
For most people, 30–90 minutes per day seems to be a good goal. Total beginners may see good results in just 15 minutes per day.
Long Answer
The question of how much you should practice each day depends entirely on your goals. If you’re going to buy a guitar, take lessons, or try to learn guitar with any seriousness, then you should be prepared to invest about 15 minutes per day for practice in the beginning, as a bare minimum.
It also depends on what your goals are. If you want to be a world master of the instrument, that goal certainly has different requirements than just playing in a local band for fun. Check out these totally arbitrary guidelines for setting your guitar learning goal. This may help give you an idea of how much you need to practice.
To enjoy as many of the benefits of guitar proficiency as possible, consider a strategy of front-loading. Basically, you set an initial goal to reach a particular level of competency as quickly as possible, probably measured in total hours of practice. You might decide to practice 2 hours per day for the first two months to get a head-start. This can have a big impact. In fact, many accomplished musicians practice little more than the beginning student might, but their cumulative experience over the years, especially from these periods of heavy practice, can really pay off.
In the long term, most people can find a realistic balance between accomplishing something on the instrument and the rest of their life obligations by investing somewhere between 30–90 minutes per day on the instrument. Periods of free time, vacation, time between semesters or jobs, and retirement all represent good opportunities in life to enjoy some extra practice.
It’s important to realize, especially if your practice time is limited, that an hour of effective practice is worth two hours of wasted practice. If you can learn to make the most of your practice time, you’ll reap a lot more benefit from it.
Ultimately, how good you are at the guitar depends on what your goals are, what you’re willing to invest, and—most importantly—whether or not you’re able to stick with it for the long term.
As the creator of Hub Guitar, Grey has compiled hundreds of guitar lessons, written several books, and filmed hundreds of video lessons. He teaches private lessons in his Boston studio, as well as via video chat through TakeLessons.