Creating a Guitar Practise Routine

I recently realized that, although I’ve talked a lot about guitar practice routine, I haven’t actually given you a chart or set structure to follow. The difficulty is that you are a unique musician- every musician is unique, and so everyone will require a slightly different practice routine. Your personalised routine will depend on where you are with the instrument at the moment, and your specific musical goals.

So when I say I’m going to provide you with a set practice routine (which I will do in spreadsheet/chart form), I’m going to also explain to you how you can (and should) adapt the routine to your own specific needs. Why is this so important? Well, the quality of practice directly impacts the quality of your guitar or bass playing. I still get tonnes of questions along the lines of: “What should I practice?” or “What songs should I learn to get better?”, or even “is this a good practice routine?”. If you’ve ever asked these questions then this just might help!

If you haven’t already, I suggest you start off by reading “The Three Point Practice Plan”, where I talk about my ideas on what makes a good practice routine and how to practice technical exercises efficiently. Once you understand where I’m coming from with this it’ll all start to make more sense.

There are three steps to practice routine creation:

Diagnosing the Issues

The first step in creating a practice routine is finding out the level you’re currently playing at, and then comparing that to where you want to be (sounds simple, eh?). I want you to really take a look at your own playing and identify your weaker areas. Where could you improve?

Applying the Method

This is after you’ve decided what needs improving. This is where you’ll get to design a practice routine that fits your own needs (having decided what those precise needs were previously).

Evaluating Progress

Finally, probably the most important stage: evaluating how well you’ve progressed. If you haven’t met your targets you’ll need to either adjust them or change your routine, and if you have met your goals then you’ll need to set more.

Hopefully these pages will address any issues that you might have surrounding your practice routine.

If you would like to know more, you can sign up for my FREE ebook on starting your own effective practise routine: