When I was much younger, I distinctly remember the conversations with my guitar teacher surrounding practice duration. My parents wanted to know how long I should practice for, so they could ensure I was putting in the required effort. As I became a better guitarist, the necessary practice time increased; 30 minutes per day, then 45 minutes per day, until eventually I was being asked to practice for a minimum of one hour every day.

Admittedly, I was not the world’s greatest ‘practicer’ when I was younger. Truth be told, I didn’t much enjoy lengthy practice sessions and would do almost anything to avoid it at times. The stale routine felt a lot like hard work, and how many children do you know who enjoy the prospect of hard work in lieu of playtime?

However I was generally quite an obedient child, so when practice time came along I would generally submit to expectations and sit for the ‘required duration’ most days (with multiple breaks, of course). Some days practice was enjoyable, and I didn’t think about the clock. These were the good days.

Other days I felt far more reluctant to practice and the whole activity of practicing the guitar became a clock watching exercise. The focus was not so much improvement but how to kill time. How long does it take to repeat this passage of music (disregarding whether it has been played well or not)? How long can I pause for between playing before my parents wonder why they can’t hear anything? Tuning! Let’s tune again to kill another 15 seconds…

These were the bad days.

These practice sessions did not feel engaging. I did not enjoy doing it. I did not feel compelled or inspired to engage in any specific task. There was no focus, no target, no joy and crucially, very little by way of progress.

The goal was to move my fingers and make enough sound for long enough to be able to put the guitar back in the case and forget about it for another day.

This emphasis on practice duration became the sole focus of my practice sessions more often than not. It stole focus from what I should have been doing, which is searching out ways to improve my playing; troubleshooting issues when they arise, becoming curious about why things were not working (or doubling down on the positive things that were working). In other words, it stopped me from thinking about what I was actually attempting to do by ‘practicing’ the guitar.

Believe it or not, this attitude towards the length of your practice session continued into my university days. Conversations on the topic of practice time were seemingly omnipresent and added unwanted pressure to an already gruelling environment.

Fast forward several years and for my sins I’m now a guitar teacher myself. Life is cruel like that.

I now find my own pupils (and parents of my younger pupils) asking the same question; how long should I practice guitar for?

Rather than regurgitate the same guide timings based on age, standard or aspirations (although these have their merits), I always suggest the focus should be to practice for however long it takes to make some form of improvement.

Rather than practicing for a set duration, practicing for improvement puts the emphasis solely on making progress. You can count as many minutes as you like, but unless you’ve made a tangible improvement, your practice session is not yet finished.

What do tangible improvements look like? Simply put, you should be able to describe the change in your playing and understand why you consider this to be an improvement.

The improvement might be a change in hand shape or a reorganisation of fingers. It might be a noticeable change in your rhythm or time keeping or a step closer to the desired metronome marking.

Sometimes these changes cannot be quantified but are no less important. The change may be as simple as feeling more at ease with a passage of music, or feeling as though you can anticipate what’s coming up next with more clarity.

If you’ve made an improvement in your playing, you will sense it. As far as I’m concerned, this is what we should be focussing on far above any timed practice duration goals.

Let’s flesh out some of those examples above…

The more positive changes you make in a practice session, the more successful it can be considered. Taking the emphasis off practice duration and placing it on specific improvements encourages you to actively seek out ways to improve.

It’s amazing what happens when you reframe your practice in this way. For best results, try keeping a practice diary so you can log your improvements in one place. Not only is this a great motivator to see all the things you’ve achieved, it also acts as a helpful reminder for those little nuggets of practice gold you may have forgotten about.

I don’t want to disregard guide practice durations completely. For some pupils, particularly younger ones, it can help to have some sense of how long it may take to make good progress. Afterall, if we make an improvement after 2 minutes and put the guitar down, we may be leaving a lot of ‘would be’ improvement on the table for that day. If you still have energy and focus, it would be advisable to continue to see how far you can get within a rough time frame.

I would say my practice sessions these days tend to fall between 15-30 minutes, depending on the type of practice I’m engaged with. For a professional musician, that might strike you as far too little, however it’s worth noting that I may manage to sneak in a few of these sessions each day between lessons and other tasks. It all adds up and I find the shorter sessions allow me greater focus than one long, gruelling session. There are no medals for practicing for 2-3 hours non-stop.

How long you practice for is a very subjective topic and will vary wildly from one musician to another. My advice is to focus on improvements and continue practicing for as long as you have the motivation to do so. Don’t hold yourself to absolute minimum durations. If you don’t feel the energy right now, take a break. You can always come back to it later.

Give practicing for improvement a go and see how it can benefit your playing!