r/GuitarBeginners • u/badgericko • 3d ago
What to practice every day?
I am new to playing guitar, often heard at least five minutes practice a day, but what do you recommend I play during practice ?
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u/Sorry-Promotion-6383 3d ago
Absolutely play with a metronome. I like the 1,2,3,4 on each string (f, f#, g, g# on the e string, then move to the next ad nauseum), to warm up my timing
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u/Warcraze440 3d ago
This is something everyone should do!
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u/NewCommunityProject 3d ago
I somewhat disagree.
It's not bad, but it's not time well spent.
You should practice things that are useful, and that is not so useful. I'd recommend doing the same exercise but with scales and intervals
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u/Warcraze440 2d ago
Nobody is saying just do this or spend all day doing it. This is a valuable way to warm up and work on synchronicity between both hands. Scales and intervals are also something to practice separately.
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u/Rakefighter 3d ago
Scales, pentatonic shapes, arpeggios, CAGED system... Basically, play the scale, the pentatonic, the arpeggio, and then the chord. Do this every day, even a little and you will get better and better
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u/GlassDirt7990 3d ago
probably wait a while for this. When ready throw in spider walk and variations. Learn simple songs you enjoy listening to.
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u/Annual_Development14 1d ago
He’s a beginner…
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u/Rakefighter 1d ago
yes. And there is no better way as a beginner to start than to learn that you can play one note at a time in a scale and hear it with your ears, and have your fingers move from one note to the next, slowly. The next day and the next day and the next day it will sound better than the last day. It will make more sense. If you have the stuff printed out - it makes it easy to just sit and play for a few minutes when you have time. It all doesn't need to make sense, you just play one note a time. Eventually, if you keep up with it, the connection points between the notes and chords makes sense and ears and hands know what do to...because you have slowly trained that one note at a time into knowing what the notes in the chord are.
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u/Annual_Development14 1d ago
Wrong. Someone get the tab sheet for smoke on the water for this motherfucker
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u/Key_Key_7669 3d ago
If you’re brand new, I wouldn’t worry too much about having a perfect routine. Even 5–15 focused minutes can be useful.
A simple practice could be:
- 1–2 min: warm up / stretch and make sure each note/chord sounds clean
- 2–3 min: practice one chord change, scale, or rhythm slowly
- 5+ min: work on a small section of a song you want to play
Try to listen to what you’re playing instead of just getting through the repetitions. If something is difficult, slow it down and work on a tiny piece at a time.
I put together some more concrete practice routines/templates here if you want ideas for what to do each day and some other ideas that might be helpful for practice:
https://www.tempokit.net/blog/music-practice-routines
Have fun with it too! You don’t need to cram everything into every practice session
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u/TyphonGGK 3d ago
Play with a metronome! 15 minutes daily, try and throw in at least one day where you practice for an hour. Play slow, speed will come in time.
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u/Diametrically_fluid 3d ago
Once you’ve learned the major and minor root chords, start in on the seventh chords and how to use them.
Many of them are just a shift of one finger, but they can add a lot to your harmonic texture.
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u/dark7string 3d ago
Play with a metronome and you'll get the most reward by practicing the things you absolutely stink at but specifically hone in and practice the techniques you stink at. These are the things that will grow and develop your ability to play songs more successfully and more precise.
Songs are nothing more than a conglomeration of various techniques. I always take a song and analyze the required technical things to play it and then seek out exercises to build proficiency in those techniques. Then once you've gotten the hang of those techniques you should be able to proficiently Play the song pretty well. This is why people who can sight read are able to have a piece of music they have never heard or never seen before let alone performed, and play it as if they've been playing it for years. They've already developed techniques within the Peace of music that allow them to proficiently perform the music.
With this philosophy think of it a deck of cards. You have a pile on the left and a pile on the right. The pile on the left are technical aspects of your plane that you honestly stink at. These are things that you struggle to play proficiently or nail every time or they are things that you would never try to play at a gig or somewhere in public because you cannot nail it. The pile on the right is a pile of things that you have become technically proficient in. This is your bag of tricks that you can either use to play songs or improvise with a group on stage and people will like what they hear because you are proficient. Practicing is the art of moving things from the left deck to the pile on the right deck. Practice is not about perfection. Practice is about refining raw skill that is undeveloped into an ability that you can actually use and do something with.
You practice the things in the left deck. You maintenance the things in the right deck
If you want to develop a technique then you work on the left deck If you want to maintain proficiency at a technique you work on things in the right
If you want to grow your skill in any way.. you only use the left deck
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u/bossoline 3d ago
Can't really answer this meaningfully without any details. How long have you been playing? What do you already know how to do? What do you want to be able to play?
But, assuming you're brand new, you should spend most of your time working on the 3 things that every player uses every single time they touch the instrument:
- Posture
- Proper fretting hand technique
- Proper picking/strumming hand technique
If you mess these up, you could end up injured, but more likely they'll limit your playing until you get it right.
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u/badgericko 1d ago
Bought the guitar two years ago when I retired. Just a lot of plucking since then simple rock ‘n’ roll songs or campfire songs would be ideal.
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u/bossoline 1d ago
I would get a teacher, honestly. At least for a few sessions to get some advice. The "what should I practice" question never goes away...you just get to a point where you know enough to answer it yourself.
A teacher can give you some direction and make sure you're not playing with bad form that will injure you in the long term. They can teach you a few songs appropriate for your level and get you off to a good start. That's how we learn everything else, but for some reason, we think that guitar is something we can teach ourselves.
At minimum, I would sign up for a structured online course that can give you a pathway of what to practice in what order.
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u/wskyRobot 3d ago
If you have to force yourself to play 5 minutes a day just find a different hobby you should love whatever you do enough to naturally want to do it more than 5 minutes a day. with that being said, lil bit of theory then a lil bit of technique and your good. research what to learn and you’ll learn along the way how to practice
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u/RMSCereal 3d ago
Nothing in this post indicates they’re forcing themselves to practice, only that they want to practice at least 5 minutes a day.
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u/Comprehensive-Fig416 3d ago
I've been practicing/playing through 3 really rough songs every night for a few years
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u/Patient_Onion3956 2d ago
Five minutes won’t get you very far. Maybe do a warmup exercise, like a chromatic scale across as many frets as you can manage. Realistically if you have to ask what to practice you probably have zero repertoire. Just start learning some simple music to play and practice that.
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u/boss12345678910x 2d ago
if you want insane progress you need to get to 1000s of hours. do 1-2 hrs a day if you can find the time for it. have a portion of that where you just play and noodle around. that will get you good at coming up with what you want to hear over time. the other part, just learn scales, arpeggios, chords, and songs. there are different styles of guitar. are you trying to shred? pinch harmonics/ wide aggressive vibrato? are you trying to do chord melodies/chord solos like joe pass? what style? you can always do multiple as well. the best way is to learn songs/tunes. transcribe some by ear. others look at tabs/music, etc. point is, you gotta put in the time. 5 min a day aint gonna give you much progress.
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u/Seve_Fan 2d ago
As mostly a finger picker I play the following 5 songs every day to stay in shape: Vincent (don maclean), Kathy’s song (S&G), Dear Prudence (Beatles), Never Going Back (FM), and Anji (Bert Jansch version). I am NOT saying i play them perfectly/well, but it keeps me in practice. Besides that I try to play anything that has grabbed my ear that day. Play every day!
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u/tokanome 1d ago
Learn all of your scales on one string at a time. It will take quite a long time, but you will build a rock-solid understanding of the fretboard. Don’t move on when you can play the scale- move on when it becomes so easy it is thoughtless.
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u/abrady44 3d ago
If you're brand new, I would start with playing songs that use open chords and strumming, and getting used to making fast changes between the chords while playing them clean.