Optimum unit of time for most productive guitar practice?

[blackcat]

I feel sure that I will be told that this varies from player to player, but I have a firm belief that for me a one hour unit comprising all the usual suspects - warm ups, scales/arps and current tune ( eg ) etc. is the most productive. No science here of course, but one hour just feels right. What do others do/think?

Just reading this again makes it sound like I only ever do one hour (!). What I meant was that no matter how many hours I do in a given day, the distribution is in one hour chunks. Hope that is a little clearer.

Did I make a non-point??????

[whiskey02]

If your concentration slips, you've been at it too long. An hour is nothing but a unit of measure based on a division of the speed at which our planet spins, there's no magic in it. I'm guilty of banging away for too long at a sitting even though I know it's not a smart thing to do. Taking frequent, short breaks is much better for you. So if you only have a one hour slot of time, you're better off practicing 20 on, 5 off, 15 on, 5 off 15 on, if not even smaller increments. I have also found that breaking practice up this way makes it more likely that you'll come back for more later in the day. BTW, if you use a tube amp, just leave it on for the hour; that's one reason I like SS for a practice amp. I have read, maybe on this forum(?) that Andres Segovia advocated short practice sessions multiple times through out the day. Your body had much more endurance than your brain.

[NoReply]

What HR told us at GIT and seems to work is practice 45-50 minutes and take a ten minute break. On the break put down the guitar get away from it and have a drink of water or some beverage, smoke if that's your thing. Then go back to practice. There was a lot or reasons for those instruction I won't go into, but in long run it will help you keep your focus to actually get things accomplished and not noodling and calling it practice.

[vintagelove]

All day?

One hour isn't enough in my opinion. Day one of music school (a ways back) they pretty much let everyone know if you're not practicing 3-4 hours a day, you should find something else to do.

You need several years of this before you can back off. Even then an hour a day is just enough to not get worse at a certain point.

My 2 cents...

[joe2758]

you're right vintagelove, if you're in music school you're wasting your time if not practicing 3-4 hrs a day. I'm pretty sure NoReply meant practice 45-50 mins and 10 min break and do that multiple times

[MarkRhodes]

Well, one may practice several hours a day without doing it all at once.

[smokinguit]

HR's advice on practice time is great, but personally I don't go by time (that's if I have time, that is), I go by how my brain and my body feels. I know when I've had enough. Sometimes I'm able to go longer than his suggested time and get a lot done because I felt really energized and inspired at that moment.

[emanresu]

For me it's a bit vague with practice because the fingers can always carry on and the brain just might let them do it. Some things doesn't require brain too much anyway so.. there's that. When I was trying to compose, then after a certain period in 2 hours, the brain just shut down. "No more today" it said very clearly. Somewhere between 1-2 hours.

With practice hm. Once I did some 5 hours of finger exercises and in the evening I played like Yepes or something like that. But the brain.. it just watched. Didn't catch up with fingers at all anymore. It was so surreal.

I guess the key would be finding what doesn't exhaust the brain. Find a lot of different things to do to keep it on the toes.
And when that ends, I do a chill ear training or just noodle with backing tracks for hours.

[NoReply]

All day?

One hour isn't enough in my opinion. Day one of music school (a ways back) they pretty much let everyone know if you're not practicing 3-4 hours a day, you should find something else to do.

You need several years of this before you can back off. Even then an hour a day is just enough to not get worse at a certain point.

My 2 cents...

If you're referring to my post I was talk about the how long a sitting should be, not total number of hours. Dave Liebman in his video talking to beginning Jazz players he talks about a minimum of 3 hours a day and should practice more of you plan to make a career in Jazz.

[christianm77]

Bulletproof Musician suggests 3-5m for a practice activity with each revisited a few times with variations over the practice session. So in 1 hour session you could do maybe 8-10 activities with breaks (if you do without it's truly knackering.)

I tend to do a minimum around 2 hours of practice, sometimes split into two chunks.

[christianm77]

If you're referring to my post I was talk about the how long a sitting should be, not total number of hours. Dave Liebman in his video talking to beginning Jazz players he talks about a minimum of 3 hours a day and should practice more of you plan to make a career in Jazz.

I think it depends what stage you are at with your playing. 3+ hours is good for a music student because that's the time in you life when you can do all of that work. Later on, not so easy, especially if you are a busy pro! I think Peter Bernstein said something about slotting in 15 minutes here and there....

So the better you get, practice falls off naturally, because people keep interrupting it by giving you work.

I do think it's important not to become a prisoner of practice - not to practice out of guilt, fear or a sense of obligation. You should practice because you like it.

There are also many things - the most important things IMO - that you can't learn in the practice room. To paraphrase Hal Galper 'you practice so that you are good enough to get on the band stand.'

Once there, you will have ample material to practice just from getting roasted on gigs.

Another thing - I find it easy to do lots of practice. Problem is that it's not always the best way of getting work. If you are serious about making a career, you need to spend some serious hours sending emails and phoning people, setting up projects and so on. And then the invoices! Oh, the invoices... Basically, I do my practice after I do my 2 hours of admin as a prize.

I also like slotting bits and pieces in all day rather than having it as one lump.

[NoReply]

I think it depends what stage you are at with your playing. 3+ hours is good for a music student because that's the time in you life when you can do all of that work. Later on, not so easy, especially if you are a busy pro! I think Peter Bernstein said something about slotting in 15 minutes here and there....

So the better you get, practice falls off naturally, because people keep interrupting it by giving you work.

I do think it's important not to become a prisoner of practice - not to practice out of guilt, fear or a sense of obligation. You should practice because you like it.

There are also many things - the most important things IMO - that you can't learn in the practice room. To paraphrase Hal Galper 'you practice so that you are good enough to get on the band stand.'

Once there, you will have ample material to practice just from getting roasted on gigs.

Another thing - I find it easy to do lots of practice. Problem is that it's not always the best way of getting work. If you are serious about making a career, you need to spend some serious hours sending emails and phoning people, setting up projects and so on. And then the invoices! Oh, the invoices... Basically, I do my practice after I do my 2 hours of admin as a prize.

I also like slotting bits and pieces in all day rather than having it as one lump.

Multiple working pro teachers of mine have said their daily practice target is three plus hours, depending other work or if on the the road. One their "warmup" is typically three hours and then break and work on improv and composition, etc.
The other says he view being a musician is like any job and you work forty hours a week. The forty is combination of gigs and practice. Now at that level of musician practice is a general term from musical task like composition, study, improv, and similar musical activities.

Dave Liebman in his DVD also say that in young years Jazz musicians typically go through a period for six month to a year of practicing eight or more hours per day. Everyone knows of Bird and his eighteen hours a day practicing for years and others, but that goes hand in hand with the obsession to play music that is a common part of many greats. So I don't think three hours is that unusual for someone whose life is music.

[christianm77]

Multiple working pro teachers of mine have said their daily practice target is three plus hours, depending other work or if on the the road. One their "warmup" is typically three hours and then break and work on improv and composition, etc.
The other says he view being a musician is like any job and you work forty hours a week. The forty is combination of gigs and practice. Now at that level of musician practice is a general term from musical task like composition, study, improv, and similar musical activities.

Dave Liebman in his DVD also say that in young years Jazz musicians typically go through a period for six month to a year of practicing eight or more hours per day. Everyone knows of Bird and his eighteen hours a day practicing for years and others, but that goes hand in hand with the obsession to play music that is a common part of many greats. So I don't think three hours is that unusual for someone whose life is music.

The impression I get talking to busy high-level pros (guys I would consider a few notches above me) is that the 8 hours a day thing is something they've gone through at some point, and now don't really need to do any more - if they are gigging a lot (that is most of their 40 hours a week is playing gigs and sessions)... The gigging keeps their playing ticking over. Practice can then be targeted towards difficult bits and pieces they can't just do on the gig.

I think Leibs idea rings true to me - I probably work at least 40 hours a week on music, although the hours are obviously all over the place. I don't count up my hours of playing and practice though. It would be interesting to keep a diary of it...

EDIT: one difference I notice with US musicians is that unlike Brits they warm up - seriously warm up. I would say the work ethic is somewhat more advanced in the states. Brits do tend to like to wing it a bit more...

[christianm77]

(The other thing is that I can go through 3 hours of practice as if it's nothing.)

[emanresu]

The impression I get talking to busy high-level pros (guys I would consider a few notches above me) is that the 8 hours a day thing is something they've gone through at some point, and now don't really need to do any more - if they are gigging a lot (that is most of their 40 hours a week is playing gigs and sessions)... The gigging keeps their playing ticking over. Practice can then be targeted towards difficult bits and pieces they can't just do on the gig.

Metheny said somewhere that he watches TV-shows in the tour bus.

[whiskey02]

"EDIT: one difference I notice with US musicians is that unlike Brits they warm up - seriously warm up. I would say the work ethic is somewhat more advanced in the states. Brits do tend to like to wing it a bit more…"

I've read several times Metheny say that he warms up at least 2 hours before a show.

[ronjazz]

I favor the "pomodoro" technique: 25-minute sections, usually with short breaks in between, anywhere from 3-10 minutes. A good day for me is an 8-pomodoro (Italian for tomato) day, generally 5 tomatoes in the morning, then another 2 or three throughout the remainder of the day. Depending on what you're looking to achieve, one can keep a list of tomatoes (several different types of scales, intervals, triads, slurring, string-skipping, hybrid picking, chromatic studies, etc.) and cycle them around over the course of two or three days.

As far as warming up goes, I feel that a short warmup is all that's necessary for a practice session, while a longer one is needed before gigs, especially as one gets older. When practicing, one probably should start each set of exercises at a comfortable tempo, allowing the first pass or two to be the warmup.

The pomodoro technique works well if you have a clock timer and metronome in your computer, iPad or phone, since you can start the clock, then activate the metronome, which you can then advance as the clock runs in the background.

[targuit]

Formulas. Dictates. Suggestions. Frankly, I think a lot this is essentially idle speculation. For one thing how long you practice and the productivity of your time spent - what you accomplish per unit of time - varies substantially according to where you are in your arc of development as a musician. Simply, practice for an accomplished player is a different matter than what might be the case for a beginner or intermediate player.

I very rarely spend time on "exercises". Most of my practice time is devoted to repertoire, because that is my ultimate goal. To play songs effectively. I don't feel a need to practice scales as a warmup anymore, though once in a while I might spend some practice time as a 'tune up'. The vast majority of my practice time is directed to concrete songs.

I make no excuse or apology - my goal is to play songs and fine tune my repertoire. Why spend time on 'exercises' if people would prefer to hear songs? I do agree that warming up is an essential thing, but I can do that playing songs as well as exercises. Of course, if I perceived a specific area needed addressing that might be another issue.

Just my 2 cents.

[JazzinNY]

Well, Pimsleur language learning states 30 mins is the optimal time. So that's pretty close to the tomato.

For me, I like an hour for most things, but for some 30 mins is fine.

When I'm working on a project song, developing a solo, that can last for hours -- and you pretty much have to give it that, in order to break through to the interesting stuff.

[jazzguy100]

30 min blocks are good, when i was younger I did 6 hour practice sessions divided up into 12 30 minute blocks with a break after 3 hrs. i got that routine burned into me

[christianm77]

Why the Progress You Make in the Practice Room Seems to Disappear Overnight - The Bulletproof Musician

[destinytot]

Why the Progress You Make in the Practice Room Seems to Disappear Overnight - The Bulletproof Musician

Thank you!

[princeplanet]

I think changing things to work on is more important to me than taking breaks. Taking breaks wastes precious time!
Let's say you had 5 "things" you wanted to work on in 5 hours. If you did a solid hour on each thing before moving to the next, it's said to be less efficient compared with rotating each 5 things within each hour.

Every time you re-remember something you are reinforcing it. So create-forget-remember-forget-remember-forget etc etc will "burn in" more material than doing the same thing over and over. However, if you try to burn in a technical thing, like picking, or a tricky left hand problem, then I sometimes feel long periods of repetition is what it takes to burn in the muscle memory. I feel like there are 2 kinds of learning, the cognitive (brain) and the autonomic (central nervous system). I also think that we all respond differently to different methods, so my advice is always to try everything and make a note of what seems to work for you...

[pingu]

have listen to the latest Guitarwank podcast
an interesting dispute on this very topic ....
and a really funny quote from Zawinul too
made me laugh out-loud !

[PaulD]

I recently retired from a job which took up a huge amount of my time. I used to get less than an hour of practice on a good day, usually 25-30 minutes in the morning and whatever time I could squeeze at night, if any. Now that I’m retired and have all the time in the world to practice, I noticed that the sense of urgency I used to have due to my limited time was no longer there, and my practice did not feel as focused. I found that besides being very specific in what I work on, practicing in time-bound increments has helped. Now I get about 3 good hours in, typically in 15-20 minute spurts (depending on what I’m working on) multiple time per day.