by Ian Loft

Created on: October 10, 2010

Playing a stringed musical instrument with fluency requires instinctive hand and finger movements leaving the eyes and mind free to interpret a score, listen to others and work with them, or to simply become immersed in delivery of musical expression. As a guitar tutor of more than ten years experience in working with adults and children the challenge of encouraging practice is central to success. Attending a 40 minute session once or twice each week is not sufficient to become fluent without learners spending time in practice between lessons. Fluent play requires many repetitions of what can sometimes be complex patterns combined with difficult reach and positioning of fingers and the only way to achieve this is with effective practice.

Starting out can be difficult in two ways.  The first is that expectations more often than not exceed ability and discovering this sometimes can result in the instrument left in a corner to collect dust after a few lessons.  Nobody becomes an instant musical superstar; it takes time and practice but this brings us to the second difficulty.  Whether strings are steel or nylon is irrelevant; fingers soon become very tender and sore until tips are conditioned.  Those learning bass guitar will find this applies to both hands which means during the early days practice time is going to be somewhat limited.

Too much practice when finger tips are tender is counterproductive because if blisters form, effective practice is not possible should this happen because it takesa few days to recover.  What might be gained by extra time will be quickly lost in time spent recovering however, there are plenty who fail to pay attention when this is explained and they learn the hard way.  Fortunately the pain is severe enough that very few make this mistake twice!  My recommendation for new players is 15 to 20 minutes per session. Even this long will result in tender finger tips but immersion cold water after practice helps a little. There are several products on the market for sore fingers but they are essentially fast-evaporating alcohol-based fluids that achieve much the same result as cold water.

 15 to 20 minutes daily can be gradually wound out to 30 minutes and more but practice requires mastering proficiencies, in other words: objectives. Setting weekly goals at each tuition session is as important as the practice itself in that learners and players need to see progress and results. Your fingers become conditioned with hardened tips gradually, and practice time can then start to increase in duration and frequency. For performances I sometimes do an hour each morning followed by up to two hours or more in the evenings whereas for routine practice the average would be ten to fifteen hours each week.

Unlike a piano on which the keys are arrayed in a symmetrical pattern across octaves the guitar is asymmetrical and can be tuned to many different pitches.  Standard six string 19 fret guitars have an almost infinite combination of note pitches change by placement of fingers on the instrument up and down the fret board.  Most players erroneously interpret this finger placement as chords when in fact they are nothing more than shapes that produce different chords depending on where the shape is placed on the fret board, and depending on how the guitar is tuned.  Given such a dynamic range of sound options, a guitar is an instrument that offers a life-time of learning, and even then a player soon begins to understand the more they learn the more they find they do not know!

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