The key to practicing guitar without a guitar is to practice mentally. Your mind is surprisingly powerful, and you can get a lot done by unleashing its potential as a guitarist.

Like physical practice, mental work is scalable in terms of difficulty. You’ll want to start on the easy side of things, then gradually take on more advanced techniques as you gain confidence.

If you stay consistent with mental work, I guarantee you’ll be pleased with the results.
 

Let’s start with listening, since it’s the easiest and most obvious form of mental practice.

Arguably, engaged listening is the root of all musicianship. That means, as musicians first and guitarists second, we should spend a lot of time listening to the songs we’re learning.

Find your favorite recording of any piece you’re working on and listen to it multiple times a day. This sort of practice is highly time efficient—I mean, you could easily listen to a 2-minute song 10 times in half an hour.

But is such an exercise even useful?

Yes! The more you listen to a song you want to play, the sooner you become, well, opinionated about it. This means you’ll start to care about wrong notes, dynamics, phrasing, and the like. And the more you care, the higher quality your practice time will become.

But you should also listen widely, beyond your repertoire, beyond even your favorite styles of music. Even the natural sounds of your environment (keyboard tapping, bird calls, etc.) can provide musical inspiration.
 

Rhythm is a core, if not the core, element of music. Yet many of us have difficulty with it, and justly so. I mean, rhythms can be hard to wrap your head and/or ears around.

Mental practice can really help here. I’d have you practice tapping the rhythms you’re trying to learn. You’ll find it’s easier to focus on this without a guitar in hand.

But you should also work on your rhythmic ability more generally. Get the hang of tapping out each subdivision of note to a beat (2 notes/beat, 3 notes/beat, 4 notes/beat, etc.).

If your problem isn’t so much timing as understanding, you may want to check out Books on Music Theory. Nothing can really replace a logical overview of musical structure.

Finally, you can learn a lot about rhythms by watching score videos such as the one below:



Music is a language, and a great way to learn a language is to “read” it while hearing it aloud. Score videos allow us to do just that, and they’re also a fun way to explore new music!
 

Learning guitar isn’t just about developing your physical chops. In fact, one of the fastest ways to improve is to study music directly. You’ll find that the more you know about harmony, melody, and rhythm, the more you’ll be able to figure out with the guitar.

But you might be wondering why you should tackle theory when many great guitarists don’t seem to know it. The way I see it, theory is a helpful tool at your disposal. You can ignore it, sure, but why not make use of all your resources to ensure steady progress?

The good news is that the basics of music theory 1) are easy to learn, and 2) will take you very far. Most music out there is relatively simple in structure, which means you don’t need to hit the books too hard to really benefit.

But there’s so much to learn beyond theory as well. I urge you to read biographies of famous musicians and histories of your favorite styles. Even forays into other fields, such as philosophy or literature, can build your musicianship.
 

Memorization is a crucial yet often-neglected aspect of guitar playing. Most of us come to a point when we’ve played a song enough that it’s basically memorized, but it’s not quite perfect.

This is almost the ideal situation to practice guitar without a guitar. Having your instrument in hand for memory work is more of a distraction than a benefit.

My recommendation is to read through your notation a few times, especially going over problem spots, and then return to the guitar and try to play through. Make note of spotty sections, then leave the guitar again and repeat.

You might be surprised at how quickly you can memorize music if that’s your main intention. Issues normally happen because of us doing multiple things at once (technical problems + memory problems), making both harder to address.
 

Perhaps the hardest type of practice on this list, visualizing is about using your imagination to replace physical practice.

For instance, you could mentally go through a scale you know by heart. Try to focus on the sound of each note and the feeling of your fingers on the guitar.

It may help beginners to concentrate on one thing at once. In that case, you would want to simply imagine the feeling of the fretting action of a scale. (As you can imagine this is easier the better you know the scale).

Especially for experienced players, visualization practice can increasingly replace normal practice. This can really save your hands and fingers, allowing you to practice long hours without straining yourself.
 

Practicing guitar without a guitar seems counterintuitive, but it’s an important kind of work. I think too many players underestimate the power of their minds, so there are definitely some edges to be gained.

If you want to learn even more, check out my post on Mental Practice for Guitarists.

Happy playing!