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Hey.
Question about practice-hours but in another angle.
Way back a no-bs-boy of rock came in an did spread some wisdom. He said he needed 2 hours/a day to just KEEP the stuff that he had.
What you think about that?
I can manage all my skills levels in 40 minutes perhaps...
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09-28-2025 04:28 PM
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Two hours min/day...that includes learning/finding/experiment - something new-cycle in several keys-eventually all keys
Originally Posted by emanresu
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If I’m focused on classical, I need at least an hour daily. Jazz not as much.
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It takes me around 2 hours to get back where I was the day before.
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If you can practice in your head, away from the instrument, it will take you very little time. In fact, the weaker your ability to do that, the more time you'll need on the instrument to maintain your skills. Once you've internalized an ability, it requires little effort to retain it, it becomes a habit, easier to keep than lose.
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It's not about me or us. It is about You! Originally Posted by Mick-7
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I did answer your question: the stuff I know takes no time to keep, the amount of time it will take me to relocate and keep stuff I don't know because I have not internalized it, will vary. The stuff that takes me the most time to "recover" is the stuff I don't know well enough and need to practice. How much time each day do you need to devote to learning how to tune your guitar? - it's kind of like that. Originally Posted by emanresu
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No you didn't answer. Nothing here is required but don't say you answered when you didn't.
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Thing is. In this place. People start to teach other people. There's a good convo going and someone becomes a teacher all of a sudden.
This happens constantly here. So annoying. Ok. The topic died now I guess.
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emanresu
You asked a complex question and are getting some complex answers.
The operative phrase is "just KEEP the stuff that he had". In the Jazz world, that stuff may be:
How you know (mental)
1] how you know how a tune goes
2] how you know to play by ear / read a sheet for a tune you don't know how it goes
3] how you know your band's arrangement of a tune
How you play (physical)
1] ...
long list of how you maintain the dynamic mechanics of left and right hands
I think most here that have performed regularly for decades will have found that the physical side becomes easier to maintain with less attention, and the mental side is increasingly more rewarding in its response to attention.
These days I don't practice to maintain physical technique, but to discover new ideas, explore their relationships, and examine their integration application into tunes.
To answer your question directly, I start practice by just playing through parts of tunes until I am warmed up (about 30 minutes). Then I explore until I discover something new and play with that for a while. I always practice until I learn something new, total time is usually about 60-90 minutes almost daily.
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My teacher made a very clear distinction between practicing and playing. I practice at least 2hrs a day trying to maintain and expand my chops. I'll try to get in a couple of more just for pleasure.
I'm fortunate at 70 to have a regular gig hosting a weekly open mic and play an opening set . Occasionaly I'll sit in on the weekends with the booked artists.
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When I used a standard classical guitar technique, I would say at least an hour a day minimum. I found by adopting a technique that sparingly used the unnatural "a" finger and learning to play without nails, my technique needs basically no upkeep.
This is important for someone like me who will take years long breaks. I've been playing for over twenty years, but maybe actually playing half that time.
Keeping pieces or my arrangements ready to play requires playing it probably 3 times a week. I never do that because I don't need to. I like to keep moving on to new things. All I have to do is stay interested fortunately.
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I have a guitar lying next to me in my office which I pick up various times during the day, sometimes between meetings. I mostly just go through my own stuff, sometimes hear something new. Other than that, I just throw it a seitan burger from time to time. LOL
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I'm going to call BS on this one, Mick. Originally Posted by Mick-7
You can go over sequences and plays and watch game tape all day, but your body still needs to remember how to make a jump shot.
Music is not something you know; it's something you do. Got to do it.
To answer the question for myself: maybe 45 minutes for chops. More time for tunes, which really is stuff that I could practice away from my instrument. It still requires some attention a lot of the time though. To be effective it should be fairly active practice. So I'm not sure practicing away from the instrument would really reduce the amount of time it took me. So I don't think a listener would notice if I'd only gotten 45-60 minutes for a couple weeks. I definitely notice though, unless I'm getting maybe 90 minutes.
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I have no idea, I've forgotten so much that I thought was going to be game changing. Originally Posted by emanresu
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One day missed you notice. Two days your friends notice, three days everybody notices :-)
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Mine would be simply that: I start to get the groove feel going, fly through a few chords + scales with keeping the groove. Originally Posted by pauln
Try to make some sense when inventing something on the fly whilst trying to keep the groove.
Then some ear training - those "skills" never die when even doing it a few minutes - enough to wake up the proper braincells.
Then the tunes. It would probably take way more time if I had more tunes though
Thats 40 minutes.
If wanting to get better at anything, that would take way way more, of course.
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The more tunes you learn, the easier they all get. Rote memorization of Em7 Am7 Dm7 G7 turns into iii vi ii V turns into turnaround to I. Originally Posted by emanresu
Mine would be simply that: I start to get the groove feel going, fly through a few chords + scales with keeping the groove.
Try to make some sense when inventing something on the fly whilst trying to keep the groove.
Then some ear training - those "skills" never die when even doing it a few minutes - enough to wake up the proper braincells.
Then the tunes. It would probably take way more time if I had more tunes though
Thats 40 minutes.
If wanting to get better at anything, that would take way way more, of course.
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I don’t get it
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Your original question was about retaining skills. That's the question I replied to, but you and others here have answered a different question. That is to say, all the things you just mentioned are not technical skills (i.e., chord, scales, remembering tunes, and ear training), they are types of knowledge that can reinforced away from the instrument. PaulN seemed to be the only the thread participant who understood what I was saying. Originally Posted by emanresu
Mine would be simply that: I start to get the groove feel going, fly through a few chords + scales with keeping the groove.
Try to make some sense when inventing something on the fly whilst trying to keep the groove.
Then some ear training - those "skills" never die when even doing it a few minutes - enough to wake up the proper braincells.
Then the tunes. It would probably take way more time if I had more tunes though Thats 40 minutes.
If wanting to get better at anything, that would take way way more, of course.
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2-3 hrs 4-5 times a week. Specifically doing technical exercises to maintain physical ability. I went on a week vacation earlier this month and I still feel like I'm not back after a week of practice.
There's intellectual knowledge that you can practice in your head, maybe even visualizing the fretboard. But the act of playing the guitar must be practiced on the guitar. Especially improvising. You need to hear the music, react and conceptualize what you're going to play, and physically perform it on the instrument. That doesn't happen in your head.
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That doesn’t bode well. Originally Posted by Mick-7
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Yeah agree with that. Originally Posted by BreckerFan
Though I said it takes me about 45 minutes to keep my chops up, and that’s because I have 1/3 to 1/4 the chops you do.
I say it in jest … but …
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That can be done in your head (the sentence in bold type), I certainly haven't mastered it but I've met people who have. I think Howard Roberts mastered it, I took a workshop from him and he talked about how he'd been doing it since he was very young. In fact he discusses and recommends it in his Praxis System books. Originally Posted by BreckerFan
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