Not sure what to practice? Six areas to guide your guitar practice

If you often pick up your guitar and have no idea what to practice, these six areas can help you review your practice routine.

1. Technique: Practice to solve a specific problem

Technique practice is a lot like athletic training. It includes finger dexterity and stretching, coordination between your hands, picking speed and accuracy, bend intonation, hammer-ons and pull-offs, and more.

Everyone has different physical strengths. Some people find it easier to play fast, while others have a wide finger stretch. The amount of technique practice you need will vary too.

Technique may be the area that’s easiest to overpractice. Some people feel they have to bring an exercise up to a certain speed, but the further you advance, the more time each improvement tends to take. Consider whether that time will help you play the music you want to play.

For example, picking accuracy is worth checking regularly. If a song includes bends, pay attention to their intonation. You can adjust other technique exercises to match the songs you’re working on, too.

Before starting a technique exercise, ask yourself: what problem will this help me solve? If you’re not sure, first find out what the exercise is for, then decide how much time to spend on it.

2. Knowledge: Bring theory into your playing

Theory matters too. It includes basic music theory, chord construction, scales, and more.

In the age of AI, it’s getting easier to learn about something. But actually being able to do it still takes practice. You can learn the pattern of a major scale in five minutes, but playing it fluently in different positions on the fretboard takes time.

After learning a concept, try finding it in a song you’re practicing. That helps connect theory with the way you actually play.

3. Songs: Balance familiar, developing, and challenging material

Learning guitar means having a few songs you can play for others. If someone handed you a guitar at a get-together, what would you play?

You can divide the songs you practice into three groups:

• Easy songs: you can play them comfortably with almost no mistakes
• Almost-there songs: you can mostly play them, but some parts feel uneven or need work, so practice those parts on their own
• Dream songs: songs that have moved you and that you’d love to play, but that are beyond your current level for now

Set aside some time for each group to keep practice enjoyable and sustainable. Focusing only on difficult songs can be discouraging; repeating songs you’ve already mastered can also start to feel stale.

With easy songs, you can work on playing more comfortably and polishing the details. Almost-there songs are good for tackling specific problems. For a dream song, you can start by trying a short section.

4. Ear training: Connect your ears, mind, and hands

Ear training is one of the areas that’s easiest to overlook.

Playing guitar—or any instrument—depends on listening: hearing the sound you’re making, and trying to express through your instrument what you hear or imagine.

That involves a connection between your ears, mind, and hands. If you focus only on fingerings and sheet music while practicing, and ignore the sound you’re making, it’s easy to end up with your hands able to play something while your ears can’t tell how it sounds.

Try starting with a simple melody: listen to it, hum it, then try to find it on the guitar. Learning songs by ear and identifying intervals are other ways to practice. Over time, the guitar can become a tool for expressing the music in your mind.

5. Rhythm: Build steadiness before speed

It’s hard to overstate the importance of rhythm.

Even a complex phrase can be hard to listen to when the timing is off. Simple notes, on the other hand, can sound pleasing with just the right rhythm and feel.

Start at a tempo where you can play steadily and comfortably. Follow a metronome and gradually increase the speed until you reach your target. Don’t just check whether you’re keeping the beat; listen to whether the note lengths, accents, and pauses feel right too.

Recording yourself is a great way to spot rhythm problems. If you know how to use a DAW, you can also check whether your notes land consistently. But you don’t need to line up every note exactly with the grid—judge it in the context of the musical style and the feel you want.

6. Improvisation: Build phrases from a few notes

Improvisation can be thought of as composing in real time. It brings together the five areas above.

If your current goal is simply to play songs you like well, you can leave improvisation off your practice schedule for now. If you want to try improvising Blues or Jazz solos, set aside time to work on it.

You don’t need to start with lots of notes. Begin with a few familiar ones, then try changing the rhythm, repeating notes, and adding pauses. Listen for the phrases you can shape.

Set your practice plan

Everyone has different goals for learning guitar, so there’s no practice plan that works for everyone. Use these six areas as a guide, and adjust what you practice to suit your current level and goals.

For example, if you keep getting stuck when changing chords in a song you want to play, isolate that section to work on technique and rhythm, then put it back into the song to see how it goes. If you want to work out the melody by ear, add some ear training.

Once you’ve planned your practice, check in from time to time: are you actually spending your practice time on the things you most want to improve?

References

This article draws on practical reflections about guitar practice. The framework of six practice areas and three types of songs is based on the following JustinGuitar lessons:

• 6 Guitar Areas You Should Practice — JustinGuitar
• 3 Types of Songs You Should Practice — JustinGuitar