Many adult guitarists believe that they’ll never be as good as they might have been if they’d started younger. However, I’m convinced that adults can improve at guitar just as quickly as children learners, if not much quicker.

In my opinion, the key to fast and reliable improvement is to have an excellent method. Regardless of your level of natural ability, a proper approach to learning guitar will always yield good results. You’ll find my most helpful tips on how to make swift progress below!

If you’re not committed to a certain genre of music and want to be a strong all-around guitarist, I highly recommend you get yourself some classical training.

You may have bad memories of high school band growing up and associate concert music with boredom and difficulty, but if you listen to some famous classical guitar pieces, I’m sure you’ll see the appeal of learning to play them.
 

But Isn’t Classical Guitar Really Hard?

Yes, but one of the reasons classical guitar is so great to learn is precisely because of its technical difficulty. Don’t let that scare you off! Rather, take it as an exciting challenge.

Remember that you don’t need to become a master classical guitarist to get the benefits of a classical education. You can improve at guitar in a major way, then take your skills to any genre of music you like.

If you don’t already listen to classical music, be assured that it’s never too late to start. You can hit the ground running by checking out some classical players on the web. My personal favorites are Ana Vidovic, Alexandra Whittingham, John Williams, and Xuefei Yang.

These players are unbelievably talented, but what they can do is by no means impossible. Take your time, and trust that every thousand-mile journey begins with a single step.

Another big advantage of classical guitar is that you’ll learn music theory, giving you a big leg-up on other guitarists.

You’ll be reading standard musical notation, which is a skill many players are too intimidated to learn. You might even give up on tabs entirely, since standard notation, once learned, is actually much easier to read than tabs.
 

How to Start with Classical

The key to becoming a great classical guitarist is to learn to love classical music. So if you’re willing to try your hand at classical guitar, be sure to start listening to famous pieces to get inspired.

One awesome feature of classical in general is that you’ll be studying music that’s hundreds of years old! You have a cool opportunity to recreate musical history each time you perform.

Most players would do well to find a good teacher. There are probably some local teachers in your area, but you can also find amazing teachers online.

If you want to learn online without spending money, I urge you to visit This is Classical Guitar. Bradford Werner offers a ton of free lessons online and is a wonderful teacher. I use his resources all the time, and I think we’re lucky to have his site.
 

Do You Need a Classical Guitar?

No, you don’t need a nylon-string instrument to get started. I myself played classical music on a cheap steel-string for six months before buying a classical guitar.

The steel-string won’t hold you back until you begin to take on advanced pieces, by which time you might consider switching to softer strings.

Once you get your feet wet with classical, I guarantee that every other genre of guitar will become more approachable by comparison.

Plus, classical guitar instruction will give you a valuable primer on fingerstyle. This technique is becoming more and more popular with steel-string players, so you’ll be ahead of the curve.

One edge that kids often have over adults when it comes to learning music is hard-core determination. They’re more willing to do the offbeat things that it takes to get a step ahead.

Adults tend to be more concerned with being seen as normal, almost always choosing what’s socially appropriate over what gets results. That’s too bad, because normal behavior isn’t going to get fast results. And what gets fast results isn’t normal in the least.

To really improve at guitar, you’ll need to push your limits.
 

Step Outside of Your Comfort Zone

I’ll tell you right now that listening to the same song over and over again, and then a hundred more times, is not socially acceptable. Unless the people you live with are unbelievably enthusiastic about the same pieces of music, you’ll have to do this work alone.

Many guitarists listen to the song they’re learning a few times and then think they get the idea. Unfortunately, that’s not good enough! You need to become one with the music, so to speak, and that takes a lot of time and effort.

Try to devote multiple sessions per day just to listening, and do this for weeks on end. You should be able to hear each part of the piece clearly in your mind.

It may be hard to believe, but actively listening to the music you want to learn is an excellent mode of practice. Working instrument-in-hand isn’t the only way to improve at guitar.

The more you can internalize your music, the better off you’ll be when you pick up your instrument. Once the right notes are in your mind, your fingers will find the best way to play them.

You should always insist on the right sound, and never compromise. Everything that sounds slightly off in practice will sound just as wrong in performance.

All told, the more you listen to what you’re hoping to play, the sooner you’ll be able to play it.

I used to be preoccupied with the amount of time I put in every day. If I didn’t quite rack up one, two, or even three or four hours, I’d feel like a failure.

However, I soon discovered that frequency, by which I mean the sheer number of sessions, rather than the length of any given session, is much more important a metric than total practice time.

Let’s imagine two guitarists at the same approximate level: Guitarist A and Guitarist B.

Guitarist A can devote two hours a day to the guitar, whereas Guitarist B can only spare one.

The key thing is that these guitarists differ in how they practice. Guitarist A jams for two hours straight, while Guitarist B breaks their hour into three 20-minute sessions, practicing morning, afternoon, and evening.

I would bet almost anything that Guitarist B would improve faster than Guitarist A, even while playing half as much.

Why? By dividing up their practice time, Guitarist B is training to play more often, to make the guitar a regular part of their routine all throughout the day, not just in one long session.
 

Aim for Consistency and Quality

You’ll find that the more frequently you practice, the higher the quality of your practices will be. It’s pretty formidable to play scales for an entire hour, but sitting down and focusing on them for twenty minutes or so will seem doable.

In fact, any “difficult” kind of practice (changing chords, sight-reading, scales, challenging new material, etc.) will be made more approachable if you shorten the length of your sessions.

Another bonus of short, frequent sessions has to do with natural playing fatigue. If you’re playing for an entire hour at once, the last twenty minutes is bound to include some sloppy playing simply because you’re getting tired.

Unfortunately, every instance of sloppy playing builds sloppy habits. If you adopt short, intense sessions, your focus will be sharper, and you’ll only be reinforcing good habits. This is truly the fastest way to improve at guitar.

Finally, a new player trying to train for extended periods each day without taking breaks risks injuring themselves. Injuries are fairly common among musicians, and guitar-players are no exception. Frequent sessions correspond with frequent breaks, which give your fingers, hands, and wrists time to recover.

If you’re looking for more tips on how often you should practice, you’ll find this post super helpful.

We all know this one is easier said than done. Yet I do think that, much like we can improve at guitar, our discipline can be improved with practice.

I used to believe I had different amounts of discipline for different things. For instance, I always made time for my schoolwork, even if I rarely had the motivation to hit the gym. I “had discipline” for the former, but was missing it for the latter.

However, I increasingly see discipline in a holistic way. That is, you either have it in everything you do, or you don’t have much of it at all.

This means that every time you reach for carrot cake when you meant to grab a carrot, you’re actually taking something away from your guitar-playing. On the flip-side, every disciplined moment in your life will have a positive effect on your study of music.
 

Why Discipline Matters for Learning Guitar

Discipline is essential when it comes to learning guitar for a few reasons. For one, you’ll be much better off sticking to a practice schedule (which takes discipline, of course) than playing whenever the mood strikes you.

Of course, spontaneous playing can certainly work for advanced guitarists. For them, scheduling practice time would be like scheduling breathing time. They’re not necessarily looking to improve at guitar in the same way as student players. Rather, they’re polishing what’s already been built over the course of their experience.

But for beginners, whose early sessions can feel challenging, frustrating, and discouraging, they should make a plan and stick to it.

A second reason discipline can play a critical role has to do with the quality of your practice. I’ve heard it said by a health nut that with regards to diet, “If it tastes good, spit it out.” Obviously this logic only goes so far, but the principle can usefully be applied to practicing guitar.

In general, what you want to do when you sit down to play is rarely what you should do, assuming your goal is to improve at guitar rapidly. This being the case, you’ll need to muster up some discipline to practice hammer-ons when you really wanted to play through “Wagon Wheel.”
 

How to Build Discipline

I would start by focusing on areas of your life that have nothing to do with guitar. If you order take-out too often, try setting aside one day each week for a home-cooked meal.

Always take a smaller step in the right direction than you think is necessary. If you attempt too big a step, you’ll find yourself failing and giving up, which means you make zero progress in the long run.

For example, if you normally sleep in until 9 and would like to eventually be waking up at the crack of dawn, don’t just set a 5:30 alarm and expect success. Realistically, you’re going to snooze that alarm and wake up no earlier than before.

A better discipline-building strategy would be to set your alarm for 8:30, go to bed slightly earlier than normal, and do your best to honor that alarm. Once 8:30 becomes comfortable, keep scaling back in half-hour increments until you’re a regular early riser.

Once you address various discipline-related issues in your life that seem unrelated to guitar, you’ll find that you have more control over your guitar habits.

Trust that your entire life is connected; everything from making your bed in the morning, treating the people in your life with kindness, and eating wholesome meals will come through in your guitar playing.

You may think you already know how to practice, but the reality is that not all types of practice are created equal. Total practice time is a poor indicator of any given guitarist’s ability.

The sad truth of the matter is that you could practice for 1,000 hours and be a significantly worse player than someone with only 500 hours under their belt. It all depends on how you practice.
 

What’s the Best Way to Practice?

I call it the “art” of effective practice for a reason: there’s no objectively “best” way to go about it. If you want the quick answer to how I’d have you practice, I suggest you check out my practice method.

That said, what works for me might not work for you, so I encourage you to develop your own unique approach. The best way to do this is to study how established musicians (not just guitarists) practice and adopt their methods.

I can spend all day urging you to practice slowly, to do a lot of sight-reading, and to incorporate technical exercises (a guitarist’s version of “working out”), but ultimately you have to find your own path to progress.

Seek out wisdom from any musician you admire on how they practice. Definitely look to well-known guitarists, but also branch out to other instruments.

I’ve personally learned a lot from violinists, pianists, and vocalists on how to improve at guitar. Remember that everyone’s learning music at the end of the day, so we can all learn from each other.

You can find a lot of great advice online, but don’t be afraid to pick up books from your local library. I’m a blogger, so you know I believe that the internet can be a terrific resource, but frankly there’s still no piece of technology that rivals the depth and density of information as a good old book.

If you’re curious about the books I highly recommend (or any of the gear I use), head to my recommendations page.