The Ultimate Guitar Practice Guide for Kids and Parents

Your child’s guitar skills are a result of the quantity and quality of their practice routines. For that reason, we put together the ultimate practice guide for kids & parents to help you and your child establish a rock-solid guitar practice routine!

QUALITY OF GUITAR PRACTICE

Let’s begin with deliberate practice. According to James Clear, author of Atomic Habits, deliberate practice refers “to a special type of practice that is purposeful and systematic. While regular practice might include mindless repetitions, deliberate practice requires focused attention and is conducted with the specific goal of improving performance.”

What does deliberate practice look like in action?

Imagine your child is learning to play the E minor pentatonic scale in the open position, which is the most common scale in all of rock music. A deliberate practice plan would involve multiple practice sessions of 5-10 minutes each whereby your child focuses exclusively on mastering the E minor pentatonic scale in the open position. During that time, your child would practice only that scale on the guitar with the aid of a metronome, a foot stomp, and a focus on clean & even notes.

Quantity of Guitar Practice

If you’ve never played the guitar before, then you might not realize just how challenging it can be. That’s why musicians practise a lot. In fact, most professional guitarists have logged more than 4,800-hours of practice over the course of their lives. The best of the best have usually practiced for more than 10,000-hours. Then there is Steve Vai, who practiced 10-hours per day for years!

For that reason, we put together an easy-to-read guide providing you with clear expectations and benefits of a 10-year practice program.

Daily	Monthly	10-Years	Benefits
No practice	___	___	Your child can have fun and gain valuable social skills, but will not experience technical results on the guitar.
5 mins	150 mins	___	Same as above.
15 mins	450 mins	900 hrs	Can play some songs, take some solos, & enjoy making music.
30 mins	900 mins	1,800 hrs	Can play in a band and perform at clubs.
45 mins	1,350 mins	2,700 hrs	Can teach guitar for a living.
90 mins	2,700 mins	5,400 hrs	Earns the respect & recognition of professional musicians.
190 mins	5,700 mins	10,800 hrs	Master guitarist.

DOWNLOADABLE PRACTICE CHARTS

Click Here to Download Guitar Practice Charts for Kids

Practice charts are a great tool for helping kids to build their practice habits, log their total number of hours practiced, and to track their guitar goals.

Step One: Download & print the FREE Rock Dojo guitar practice chart.

Step Two: Establish a regularly scheduled practice routine.

Step Three: Set three practice goals. For example, playing Iron Man at least two-times through with a count-in & foot stomp would make an excellent guitar goal for a third-grader!

Step Four: Fill out the total minutes practiced after each deliberate practice session.

Your Kid Can Get a Black Belt in Rock!

GET A BLACK BELT IN ROCK!

The Rock Dojo offers award-winning, introductory-level guitar lessons for kids after-school in Portland, Beaverton, Hillsboro, and Lake Oswego. You can check out the Rock Dojo FAQs to learn how our colored-belt systems works (hint: it’s like karate. As your students improve on the guitar, they graduate belt levels just like the martial arts). Do you have a specific question about our guitar lessons for kids? Drop us a line at (503) 484-6417 or contact us on the Rock Dojo Facebook page.