Originally Posted by: john of MTA while back, I decided to simultaneously tackle both Country and Blues style in the Core Learning System. I'm not sure that was a wise choice but I've stuck with it. My morning practice session, therefore, starts off with a few minutes of warm up (a previous Country lesson that I never played well) and then it's on the current Country and Blues lessons. The blues part has it's own warm up period playing one form or another of the 12-bar blues and 30 minutes of improv incorporating the current and recent blues lessons. From there it's on to 30 minutes of song practice; whichever new song I'm working on is practiced every day, the ones I 'know' ;) alternated every other day.

The afternoon session is all drill...thirty minutes of scales, about 20 minutes on a flexibility/stretch/strength exercise http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xex90siLkXg , and a little over 20 minutes on chord progressions. That too is all timed and all played with a metronome the speed of which I increase monthly or so.

Recently that all has been adding up to more than three hours a day, six days a week (I hit 21+ hours each of the last three weeks). Needless to say that's a big chunk of my day but there's a lot more I don't get to. I expect that this summer, as other activities claim my time, my weekly practice time will drop. But there's so much more to get to, not to mention continuing on with the style lessons, that I keep a notebook of 'what's next.'

Here's what I think is most important...the time is fingers-on-strings time. It's actually timed playing. Further, what I do each session and how much time I expect to spend on it is written down beforehand. In other words, I use a written lesson plan, log the times, and keep the records. Overkill? Perhaps. Obsessive? Quite likely. Efficient...you bet! Noodling is allowed but it don't count. :)

For me the key is keeping practice *efficient*. I spend a lot of time on it but I still don't have enough time for everything I'd like to learn/practice. I've got to get the most bang for the buck.[/QUOTE]
Sounds like an effective practice Schedule, but I'm not 100% sure how well it translates to the Rock Course, since it doesn't really have any "warm-up" lessons in it. The closest thing to such would be the Power Chord exercises in the first few lessons of the rock course, since they're pretty easy (although I tend to just use the Rhythm Guitar part of a song I'm practicing, which is 100% Power Chords and it's pretty simple too). I also usually completely forget to practice different things (songs, techniques and improvisation) in the same session, so I might want to consider that.

[QUOTE=Neal Walter]Here is Tom Morello's practice routing from Rage Against the Machine:
"2hrs theory, 2hrs technique, 2hrs jamming, 2hrs experimenting w/sounds/songwriting"

Of course not everybody has 8hrs/day to devote to guitar but you could make each segment whatever number you want.

I think the key is to identify where you want to improve and work that into a regular schedule.

The biggest problem at the moment is that I don't exactly have a training schedule. I usually just practice whatever I feel like, which usually ends up leading to lots of practicing songs but no theory and technique-practice.

I currently don't really feel that I'm getting the most out of my practice-sessions. I usually start at a certain level, and only rarely see that level rise drastically. Yes, I know that learning to play the guitar will take years (I've already been trying for almost a Whole year now, only one month from the 1-year-mark), and I'm willing to dedicate my time and money to learning to play the guitar properly and reach my musical goals, but to get there, I still evidentally need to re-think my approach to practicing (starting with making a schedule...). Right now it's more or less 30min practicing stuff like scales and chords (the basic stuff), 30min watching tutorials on random techniques, 30min practicing those techniques and 30min watching more tutorials, but a schedule might help me get something more out of my practice sessions. If nothing else, I've read that it's a good idea to have a schedule anyway...