Should you practice 10 hours every day?

[@beneunson]

Go into even more depth with my PRACTICE essay at my blog: ⚡beneunson.com/blogs/news/5-practice-steps 💥THE BGC BUNDLE (All Masterclasses): www.bensguitarclub.com/p/the-bgc-bundle

[@Paul_Lenard_Ewing]

I practice 4 hours a day but that time includes study of theory which I put immediately into my practice routines. I started this in 2019 and I have easily improved tenfold over the 'old me'. I now find anything I take on anything new within a few weeks it becomes something I can use at will. Best of all it is now more fun than a challenge so It never frustrates or depresses me like my pre-2019 days. Ironically I am 77 so I only do the odd gig. Yes ...if only I started this decades ago I may have had a serious career. Even so I hope to leave this planet with perhaps some recorded work sharing.

[@beneunson]

Thanks so much for sharing this, Paul! Fantastic to hear about your improvements since 2019 - I hope you record one day soon and let the world hear it!

[@jakevarner9886]

Thanks for sharing your experiences. I've been playing for just over a year now, and I find a huge hurtle to increasing my practice time is actually amount of time it takes to actually make routines. Blocking out anything more than 2 hours for me gets just to be too much which shows how many topics there are to cover.

[@Mike_Elliott]

Love the wise words of advice!

[@beneunson]

Thanks for watching, Mike!

[@erlendjulieb1760]

I am jazz oriented and have found this works out for me, I am in jazz studies so keep in mind this also allows me to to it this way: 3 hours in the morning, lunch break, 2-3 hours of playing music/jazz with other people, dinner/relax, then 1-3 hours on the evening, depending on how tired I am. No playing after 22:00 cus then you wont get the stuff you´re practising out of your head when you´re gonna sleep. hehe. 4-6 Hours of solitary practise everyday, and then 2-3 Hours of ensemble playing every day. I do my technical practise in the morning, and work on repertoire/tunes or compose music in the evening.

[@Prayer_warrior]

Well I'm a drummer and for sure put in 12 hour days early on, which eventually rounded out to 8 hour days. Actual practice as in disciplined reading dots with a metronome would distil to 3-6 hours a day over time. Playing a lot of gigs - say 3-5 nights a week with 3 hour sets and sometimes more, also improved my drumming a lot I noticed. Fortunately, the guitar was/is a second instrument for me and therefore has always been a joy to play, as it gave me a rest from all the drumming. I do find it challenging to practice 6 hours a day on guitar. I find 3 hours the 'most productive' sessions, but if in holiday mode, really relax off to 1-3 hours a day where some of that is just playing along to backing tracks to sort my lead out. So what have I learnt over all these years about what works and what doesn't? A few things really. At some stage of your music journey, you are going to have to put in a mountain of work if you want to become a great musician. Secondly, what you put into your first instrument will exponentially benefit your second instrument (i.e. Hendrix and Zappa were also drummers - even McCartney could hold his own on a drum kit! - sorry, my guitar focus is a little left of jazz). Thirdly, is that you need to do whatever it takes to keep the Fire 🔥 going as in The Passion. Be that working out your favourite music, could be classical, blues, rock, jazz, play what you love as you will play it a lot. Get great gear that is so addictive that you cannot put it down. That means insane guitars, amps that are addictive and if drums, old 50's and 60's Zildjians and high end kits. There is no benefit in imagining that you are so good that you can play any old gear. I tried this and it failed... badly. Then all the usual plays; keep diaries for those seasons when you are on a mission from God, take a balanced diet as far as genres go and finally listen as much as you can. One of the reasons us old hippies can knock it out the park, is because we really did LISTEN to Hendrix, Santana, Zeppelin, Zappa, Jaco Pastorius, Miles Davis, Chic Corea, Parker, Coltrane, Buddy Rich, Billy Cobham etc. for thousands of hours not just 20 minutes. Hope this helps someone. Jesus Christ ❣️ is Lord and King 👑. Make Him your Saviour today. God Bless 🕊️

[@beneunson]

Brilliant breakdown of what it takes to practice and become a great musician! Thank you so much for sharing this, I really appreciate it!

[@jarituomainen1723]

I simply love this. Great school !!

[@beneunson]

Thanks for watching!

[@Magik1369]

The important thing is to practice regularly...every day if you can. Even if it is 1/2 hour a day, every day, it is better than picking it up once a week or once a month. Personally, I practice 1 hour just about every day of the week. Segovia is said to have practiced 4 hours every day...even on days when he performed. Segovia never deviated from his practice regimen. It depends on how good you want to be like everything else.

[@beneunson]

Great suggestions!

[@DangeroudDaisyDillinger-qm6on]

Good vid, if you ensure every time you pick it up your improving you can move quick, it is easier to fall sometimes into practice habits where you dont necesserily improve, thats why you get so many player who get stuck at stage which is fine if that floats your boat,.

[@victormahtapene2573]

A lot of the times I try to practice specific techniques or soloing. Or my own music and make more music. Also do you still play your blue strat every now and then? Love the tone!

[@beneunson]

I play it sometimes! Thanks for watching!

[@song4night]

Back in the day, with no technology, computers,even tuners, we practised about 6 hours a day, mainly working off records and cassettes. If there was a good guitarist in our town, you simply took your guitar, showed up at his house and asked him to show you something, and he did. Today guitarists have all kinds of resources to quickly progress.

[@beneunson]

Fantastic insight! Thank you so much for sharing this!

[@song4night]

@@beneunson this was late 1970's/ early 1980's South Africa.

[@beneunson]

@@song4night That was an incredible time for music in the world, I would love to hear more about it!

[@song4night]

@@beneunson oh yes! and my town, Durban, we did give the world Trevor Rabin, of YES fame.

[@beneunson]

@@song4night Brilliant! Trevor is one of the greatest ever

[@igorperic5232]

Hey :) Executing chord changes - I can do around 90 changes in a minute between open and barre chords because I have used them my entire life. Now I am trying to expand into jazz chord vocabulary and wonder how would you organize chord learning process? Pick two chords and try to get up to 90 changes in a minute?

[@beneunson]

Fantastic! I'm going to make a video disucssing this soon. A good place to start is by looking up Drop voicings (drop 2 voicings, specifically). Thanks for watching!

[@igorperic5232]

@@beneunson Thank you very much! :) And please don't forget the mechanical aspect of chord changes.. Theory is 'easy' and it can be learned from a book

[@tonepoet]

I used to practice 10 hours a day when I was in my starving musician days. About 4 of 5 hours were optimal and balancing that with getting out to meet musicians and play gigs paid off bigger dividends by far. Now, I gig constantly and practice about 30 minutes to 1 hour per day (due to having a family and a full time job, I'm no longer touring). If I'm not going to use it at a gig I don't bother.

[@beneunson]

Fantastic! Perhaps that's a natural progression, practicing a lot early on and creating a great foundation in your playing which lasts throughout life. Thanks for sharing!

[@tonepoet]

@@beneunson Agreed. Ideally, I would like to have 1 1/2 to 2 hours a day of practice. I have a bit of arthritis due to overuse, so that amount would keep me loose and limber. I definitely know what I'd like to accomplish and I'd like to spend more time transcribing so the duration mentioned would be optimal. Most of my gigs have required a lot of chart reading, so my sight reading has gotten a lot better.

[@tdang9528]

Usually 4hrs studying and 4hrs practice

[@heidegger101]

what role does the keyboard play in your journey?

[@beneunson]

I use it mostly for composing or adding layers of orchestration to my music. You can hear it all throughout this piece of music: kzbin.info/www/bejne/g4a9fIeChMRjqJY

[@heidegger101]

@@beneunson Thanks !