How to Make a Guitar Practice Schedule

Practice makes perfect.

Becoming good at playing the guitar is a matter of consistent, productive practice. A practice schedule can help you determine what you need to practice and when. The practice schedule should center around your goals for how many hours you want to practice in a week and what you want to learn. An electronic spreadsheet, such as Microsoft Excel, Google Document Spreadsheet or Open Office Calc, can help.

Things You'll Need

• Electronic spreadsheet

Instructions

1. Open the electronic spreadsheet program. A new/blank spreadsheet should open for you to work on.

2. Type the days of the week (Monday through Sunday) into the first row, skipping the first space.

3. Type the skills you want to practice into the first column, skipping the first space. Skills may be broken down similar to the following: warm-up finger exercises, scales, chords, songs you want to learn.

4. Skip a space below the last skill and type "Total:." In the Total row and under each day, add up the totals for how long you practiced each skill. You use enter "=SUM(B2:B8)" as an equation, where B2 is the cell representing the first skill under that day, and B8 is the last skill under that day.

5. Type in "Goals" in the column next to "Sunday." For each skill, type in a goal for how long you want to practice each skill for the week. For example, if you want to practice for one hour a day, five days out of the week, and out of that one hour you want to practice 15 minutes of scales, you would type in 75 minutes (15 X 5) as your goal.

6. Print out the schedule or electronically keep track of your practice daily.

Tips & Warnings

• Start with skills and songs that are easy to learn, such as basic major scales, before moving into more difficult techniques and songs.

References

• GuitarNoise: A Guide to Developing a Practice Session