If you play guitar, you’re probably always looking for ways to improve. You’ve probably gone through some periods where you made a lot of progress and others where you stalled out. You might even have considered quitting at some point. Fortunately, there’s a cure: a daily guitar practice routine that might just work wonders for you.

Now, I’m a big believer in routine. I think our routines are extremely powerful. They shape us profoundly, for better and for worse. Fortunately, we can shape our routines to work for us, rather than against us. We can use them as tools to transform our guitar playing.

The guitar practice routine I’ll discuss in this post can work for any type of guitarist. You might play jazz, blues, folk, pop, classical, rock, or flamenco; it really doesn’t make a difference. The key is to apply the central principles to your specific niche.

I’ll point out that this practice routine is fairly demanding. I don’t ask you to put a ton of time in, but the time you do put in should be quality time, especially if you’re only playing 30 minutes a day or less.

One thing to keep in mind is that you have to be your own teacher. In order for any method to be successful, you need to be driven to put it into action.

Every time you sit down to practice, be sure to play the role of both student and teacher. Stay relaxed and think positive, but also hold yourself to a high standard. Always think, “What would I have a guitar student do?” and strive to do that yourself.

Of course, you might already have a guitar teacher, or you might be considering getting one. (If you’re on the fence about it, I’d say go ahead and get a teacher if you can afford it.)

However, unless your teacher is living with you and monitoring you every time you practice, you’ll have to be your own teacher most of the time! The sooner you embrace the dual roles of master and student, the better.

In my view, the best guitar practice routine consists of three types of practice: sight-reading, technique, and repertoire.

I’ll go over each of these in turn. All three types of practice are essential, but they’re not all equally important. To give you a sense of how I’d weigh them against one another, check out the graph below:
 

As you can see, I consider sight-reading to be the most valuable kind of practice. Even if you take absolutely nothing else from this post, if you can sneak sight-reading into your guitar practice routine, then you’ll be in good shape. If you’re totally new to sight-reading, check out this post to get started.

Technique work is second only to sight-reading. The margin between the two is small; honestly, they’re both excellent modes of practice.

Least important by far, but still necessary, is repertoire work. Unfortunately, most guitarists spend nearly all their time on repertoire work, which is often fairly loose and undisciplined.

The repertoire practice I rated in the chart above as 20/100 assumes a productive sort of session. Unproductive repertoire sessions (playing familiar songs on autopilot) would be rated more like 1/100 on my scale.

I believe that at the beginning stages especially, guitar players shouldn’t be too worried about building their repertoire just yet. They should be developing a set of skills that, once acquired, will make any repertoire piece they’re working on infinitely easier.

That noted, let’s go into each practice type in more detail.

For anyone who doesn’t know, sight-reading is the art of playing new music from scratch—that is, without practicing it beforehand. The idea is to find a piece you’ve never played and play it on the spot, just from looking at the chords, tabs, or notation.

As you may have noticed, I’m a major advocate of sight-reading. If I had a beginner student under my control, I’d have them reading pieces right from the start. I really do believe that exposure to lots of new music is the fastest way to improve on an instrument.

Good sight-readers have an almost magical ability on the guitar: they can play virtually any piece of music right away, with no practice. As you can imagine, this really cuts down on the amount of time it takes to learn new songs.

Plus, guitarists who sight-read regularly can explore a whole lot of music, covering much more ground than the average player, and they quickly gain a command of the entire fretboard as well.

But as with anything difficult, you should start slow. The key to getting started with sight-reading is to find really easy pieces (relative to your level) and play through them, one by one. Make sure the music you find is well below the technical level of the pieces in your repertoire.

Total beginner? You can still work on sight-reading! Find yourself a very easy method book and play through it, exercise by exercise. Before long, you’ll be able to read through increasingly difficult pieces. The key is to keep your sessions short; even 5 minutes will do just fine.

For a more detailed discussion of sight-reading, definitely check out this post, which is a thorough beginner’s guide that should get you reading right away.

You should think of technique-focused sessions as a guitarist’s version of working out. If you exercise regularly, then you already have a good sense of what we’re talking about here.

Basically, you want to do exercises that isolate each hand individually. Over time, you’ll build strength in your arms, hands, and fingers. At that point, every piece you play on the guitar will feel easier, all due to your elevated technical ability.
 

Left-Hand Work

For your left hand, I recommend you focus on hammer-ons and pull-offs. You can do a simple exercise where you put yourself in first position (index finger on the first fret, middle on the second, ring on the third, pinky on the fourth) and practice hammer-ons one finger at a time.

You can do index, middle, ring, pinky, or start with the pinky and work backwards. Practice on every string, and feel free to move up and down the fretboard as well. Now practice that same exercise, but with pull-offs instead of hammer-ons. If you’re not sure how to do any type of slur on the guitar, check out this page for a detailed lesson (and bonus exercises!).
 

Right-Hand Work

Technical work for your right hand will largely depend on whether you play fingerstyle or with a pick. If you’re unsure what to learn, remember that it will only help to learn a bit of both and see what you like.

For fingerstyle players, one great exercise I do every single day is to simply pluck each string 5 times with my index finger (i), then do the same with my middle finger (m), then finish with my ring finger (a). Be sure to push down on each string before you pluck for a nice, full sound.

I would repeat this exercise daily. Soon, you’ll have much stronger right-hand fingers and an improved sound.

Once you feel really comfortable with the basics, you should seek out other right-hand exercises to compliment your technical routine. Or create your own! The main thing is to isolate your right hand and improve its facility.

If you play with a pick, then I suggest you practice getting a good sound out of each string. Work on moving from string to string, all the way up and down, and then begin skipping strings. You can also focus on various strumming patterns that are giving you trouble.

Basically, you should bring any right-hand technique that feels difficult into the practice room, isolate it, and drill it until it feels easy. That’s what technique work is all about.

This is the type of practice you’re probably most familiar with. The idea is to get better at a song you’ve been working on. Unfortunately, repertoire work can quickly turn into wasted practice time if not done carefully.

What most of us want to do when we sit down to play is to simply perform the music we already know. We want to have fun, and we often let that fun-loving impulse get the better of us.

The key to successful repertoire work is to be disciplined. Rather than playing through what you know (and repeating the same mistakes), you should be problem-solving.

Make note of each section of the piece that gives you trouble, and polish up those areas alone. If you’re spending a lot of time practicing what you’re already good at, you’re neglecting the real work that needs to be done.

Often, it helps to go into repertoire sessions with a specific goal in mind. You might say, “I’m going to master this chord change,” for instance. Ideally, you then spend the entire session on that single change, rather than losing control of yourself and playing through the entire piece.

Even if you lose sight of your goal for a moment, be sure to steer your attention back in the right direction. Lost time doesn’t have to turn into a lost practice.

I do stand by my belief that repertoire practice for developing players is the least important type of practice. My view is that sight-reading and technique work supply a much better bang for your buck. That said, obviously repertoire work is still irreplaceable and essential; it just shouldn’t take up the majority of your practice time.

Here are a few practice routines you might adopt based on the amount of time you can devote to the guitar. I recommend you time these sessions to the minute. Better to leave a session wanting more than to get sick of playing.
 

If you have 30 minutes/day to practice:

• Aim for 3 sessions, each 10 minutes long, ideally morning, afternoon, and evening
• Spend two sessions on sight-reading and one on technique
• Your repertoire work will come naturally; you’ll find a way to squeeze it in, don’t worry

If you have 1 hour/day to practice:

• Aim for 4 sessions, each 15 minutes, with at least one morning session
• Spend two sessions on sight-reading, one on technique, and one on your repertoire
• You may substitute your repertoire session for more sight-reading or technique work if you wish

If you have 2 hours/day to practice:

• Follow the 1 hour routine above and then repeat it for the second hour
• You may include more repertoire sessions if you have some kind of upcoming performance
• As a rule: always observe four sight-reading sessions/day and two technical sessions.