Playing VS Practicing the Guitar – What’s the Difference?
The terms ‘playing the guitar’ and ‘practicing the guitar’ are often used interchangeably. However, by making a distinction between focussed, intentional practice and its result (playing) early on it may be possible to avoid some of the discouraging plateaus in progress that lead so many new players to get discouraged on their learning journey. The Oxford English dictionary defined the verb ‘to play’, in the context of a musical instrument as: “to perform music on a musical instrument.” The first definition that appears in the dictionary is also worth noting: “to do things for pleasure, as children do; to enjoy yourself, rather than work”. Essentially, ‘playing’ the instrument is the end goal, the performance, the joy and not the work. Practice is time spent working, allowing that end goal to be met.
Particularly as beginners, we players tend to make significant progress from simply spending time with the guitar and playing whatever comes to mind. In the early days, we’re building the strength in our hands and forearms, working on those trusty callouses and getting used to contorting our hands into these, at first, very alien shapes. Once those first few chords are under our fingers and we’re comfortable with a lick or two, it can be easy to feel like progress has jarred. Simply playing through things we know just doesn’t make as much of a clear and instantaneous impact on the quality of our playing after the initial beginner’s phase has come to an end. This is when fully connecting with the idea of practicing versus playing can be a revelation.
How Often Should I Practice and For How Long?
You may have heard the story that it takes ten thousand hours of practice to become a virtuoso or have seen interviews with your favourite players describing practicing for eight or more hours a day – but don’t worry, you can still make huge amounts of progress even if your time is more limited. Of course, to become one of the greats, you are going to need to put some serious hours in, but it’s the quality rather than quantity of practice that is most worth focussing on. Whether you have hours each day or just half an hour, figuring out a routine based on your goals is ideal. If you have limited time, it may be worth spreading the work over the week, for example focussing on developing picking a couple of days a week, repertoire some days, and theory on others. However, if you have the luxury of a longer practice time then making sure you hit as many of the areas you want to develop as you can is helpful. There’s no correct answer other than practice as much as you can to see as much improvement as you can.
The caveat here is that feeling you have to practice absolutely everything there is to know can be equally unhelpful as practicing nothing at all. It can become overwhelming trying to take on too much at once, so check in with which techniques you most aspire to master or which songs you would most like to play and focus on those. No two guitar players are the same and it is more than okay to have certain strengths within your playing and areas you are less familiar with. It is also advisable not to end up neglecting your playing time, after all, that is what it’s all about.
You can also benefit from doing a bit of practice multi-tasking and watching some TV whilst you play through scales or speed building on a lick. It might seem counter intuitive, but it can work wonders for the attention span and muscle memory if the part of our mind that likes to wander is distracted. It’s not advisable to watch anything you’re going to be too deeply interested or challenged by, but your favourite sitcom, cartoon, or light reality show can do just the trick. Put a show on and before you know it you can have put in a solid couple of hours of sweep picking, scales practice, or whatever it is you are working on!
How Do I Practice?
Practice doesn’t have to be entirely monotonous however the reality is that embracing a degree of monotony during practice time can help to erase it from playing time. Practice is the time to get forensic, to focus on the minutiae of technique and theory – to figure out why that note in that chord keeps buzzing even though you’re sure your hands should be strong enough by now. Of course, there are multiple ways to approach a practice session, but a structure, plan, or goal is fairly crucial. For example, a thirty-minute practice session may look a little something like this for a rock influenced, electric guitar player who wants to generally improve:
Warm-up - 5 mins
Play through some simple warm up exercises to get your fingers moving and help avoid injury. This often involves playing up and down a scale or chromatic pattern, using trills or ‘finger twister’ type exercises that are designed solely to target dexterity.
Speed building/picking exercises with a metronome - 10 mins
Set your metronome (there are plenty of free, online metronomes!) and play through exercises that target picking techniques you are particularly interested in developing. You’ll find that many of these ‘exercises’ make good licks too!
Playing repertoire with a metronome - 10 mins
This is time to improve the songs you are working on learning, take passages you are struggling with and play them slowly with a metronome, gradually building up to the correct tempo. Try to notice any untidy moments in your performance and work them out. Repetition is key, but so is fixing mistakes, so be sure to keep adjusting your approach until you find a solution. If you do have a note that’s buzzing in a chord for example, it may not just be down to hand strength, adjust your hand position and even posture to check if something else is getting in the way.
CAGED exercises- 5 mins
If you know your basic open chords and feel ready to become confident with other chord voices. Spending five minutes going up and down different shapes of your basic chords using the CAGED system is a brilliant way to build fretboard knowledge.
The degree of progress you can achieve with a short and simple routine like this is significant and the pay off in your playing will be highly encouraging. It’s definitely worth noting that the metronome is almost always involved in good quality practice time. Think of it as your secret weapon, it is a must for building speed and control. Solos that at one point seem too fast or complex to ever achieve become suddenly manageable when approached slowly with the help of a metronome and built up over time.
Fundamentally, practicing and playing the guitar are different experiences of equal importance. Having a clear vision of the guitar player you want to become and devising a plan can be an empowering move, so don’t be afraid that getting out the metronome and playing picking exercises will make your time with the guitar feel any less fun or creative. Tend to your practice and your playing will become better, freer and, as a result, more joyful.
If you aren’t yet confident in creating your own practice routine, or you’d just like a structure to follow then it is worth exploring the guided practice routines available on Lick Library:
