Busting Excuses for Not Practicing Guitar

By: Jim E. James

Learning guitar is mostly a matter of practice. And, when we’re honest with ourselves, most of us really need to be practicing more. Even those of us who practice regularly will go through periods when our electric guitar just sits in the corner for days or maybe even weeks at a time.

Buddy Guy Layin' his mojo down on the crowd

I don’t have time

You have 168 hours a week, the same as everybody else. When you say you “don’t have the time,” what you really mean is that practicing the guitar is less important than everything else you that you do with your week. Now I’m willing to bet that a lot of what you actually is as important, or more so, than your guitar practice.

You need to eat and sleep, and most of us need to work to survive as well – those of us who don’t, probably have some sort of study commitments to attend to, even those of us who are lucky enough to earn our income with our instruments. In our free time there’s always family commitments, and basic household chores lest you end up living in squalor. These things are at least as important as getting regular practice time in.

However, for 98% of you reading this, I’m willing to bet that there is time in your week where you do things that are less important. TV is an easy thing to cut back on to make time for guitar practice. Now, I’m not one of those dudes who has a problem with television. There are a few shows I just love. But is it a higher priority than getting in my regular guitar practice? No way.

You should be especially aware of anything you might be watching on TV just out of habit, rather than because you really enjoy it. News and current affairs programs can easily eat up 20 minutes to an hour of solid practice time in and of themselves. How many times have you been absorbed in a news story that you have completely forgotten about just 2 or 3 days later? Be honest with yourself.

Internet use is also something that can eat up your time without you even being aware of it. The fact that you’re reading this now means that I know you do spend at least some spare time on the net. Blogs, online forums, and social networking sites can very easily detract from your guitar practice. Like with TV, using and enjoying these things can be a great thing.

But if using them becomes such a habit that you end up logging into facebook and looking at your news feed, waiting for something interesting to happen, it might be time to walk away and pick up the guitar. Again, just be honest with yourself. Is reading about a friend of a friend making a grilled sandwich or remarking on the weather a higher priority than getting in some decent guitar practice?

I don’t have the right equipment

This is a depressingly common complaint. Guitarists say they don’t practice because they don’t like their guitar anymore, or their amp “is a POS.” When it comes to getting good practice in, your amplifiers and effects don’t actually matter. Acoustic and electric guitars both work fine unplugged, and are loud enough for practice just as they are. If anything, your practice will be improved, as there will be no distortion or effects to hide your mistakes, and no knobs or settings to distract you.

Your guitar does matter, but a poorly setup guitar can usually still be played. Dead spots on the neck, action and intonation problems, or tuning instability are not a lot of fun, but if that’s all you have to work with you shouldn’t let it keep you from practicing. It’s also worth remembering that the worst of these problems can often be easily fixed.

These things can make instrument more frustrating to play, but even cheap and cheerful guitars can usually be made to play well with a proper setup. If you don’t have the money to get a tech to go over your guitar, it’s easy enough to learn the basics of it yourself.

The other thing to remember is that once you start playing guitar you will probably always be wanting new toys. This is part of the fun of being a guitarist, but don’t use it as an excuse to avoid practice. You might never get your rig “just right”. If you want to take a look at how crazy a guitar rig can get, check out this run down of Joe Perry’s current touring rig.

Just how much stuff do you need before you’re ready to focus on your playing?

I’m no good at music, it’s not as easy for me as it is for you

In the book Outliers: The Story of Success, Malcolm Gladwell studied the most successful people in the world, not only musicians but scientists, businesspeople and athletes, and found that the key determinant of “natural talent” was actually how much time they’d put in to their chosen field.

About 10,000 hours of practice is what it takes to become the next Jimi Hendrix or John Lennon. Most of us have more modest goals than that, but no matter, being good at music is largely a matter of work. Or as Thomas Edison put it far more succinctly: “Genius is 1% inspiration and 99% perspiration.”