Guitar practice is sometimes fun and rewarding, sometimes slow and ultimately rewarding, and sometimes frustrating. Recent research into musical and other types of mastery has shown that many, many hours of practice is the secret to mastery--not innate talent. And practice isn't necessarily fun.
Without a certain amount of reward coming often enough, practicing isn't worthwhile for hobbyists like me. This is what caused me to restart and give up the guitar over and over again between age 18 and about three years ago, with three years being the length of time I'd spend on it before dropping it yet again. So, these days, I've tried to figure out what rewards I require and what I can do to get there. Random practicing and strumming casually through songs I already know won't work, as I learned a long time ago.
I take a class that meets every two weeks. It's inspiring, fun, and social, but doesn't demand persistence on learning any one thing and doesn't hold us very accountable from one session to the next. I have to find these incentives elsewhere. So, through the guitar teacher, I met two other women students, and I meet with each of them about once a week to practice whatever songs we decide on. I'm not satisfied with our level of commitment because we move on too quickly to new songs. I'm always thinking about how to change this, and trying to dance away from the knowledge that we should start playing at open mikes if we really want to grow.
The thing that made me seek out these two guitar partners was seeing Alison Krauss and Robert Plant in concert last October 1. They were so electrifying, in spite of mostly tranquil song stylings, that I got obsessed with learning to sing harmony. I have a fair ear and voice, not great, but again the main thing is going to be PRACTICE, so I've decided to quit wondering if I'm "talented enough" to let anyone hear me singing. I'll just practice!! My two partners feel the same way, so we bump and weave our way through melody lines, declaring it not a crime to wander on and off key. Off-key singing and mistaken melody never killed anyone.
I've also slowly developed a guitar practice session agenda for myself. I naturally and compulsively document stuff, so in my Word-file songbook (where I paste song lyrics and fill in the chords as I figure them out), my first page is "Stuff to practice every day." Going through it all takes about 90 minutes of guitar time. This is what I have on the practice list now:
Warm up:
The root shape
"Running on Faith" (slow arpeggios)
Babe I'm Gonna Leave You intro (more varied arpeggios)
Triplet rhythm strums
Technique:
"I'm On Fire" palm-mute arpeggios; or non-ringing barre arpeggios on 3 and 4 strings; or "House of the Rising Sun"
"While My Guitar Gently Weeps" including whole (originally piano) intro
"Over the Hills and Far Away" entire intro
Artistic:
Everything Is Free (soloing on break) or other soloing over music
or
Harmony singing (at the moment, for the chorus of "Leaving on a Jet Plane")
or
Songwriting
Lead playing and harmony singing are tons harder than learning to strum and sing casually. When I practice those, I take breaks. It's key to have the chord changes memorized like the back of my hand in order to do either. That's a great excuse to listen to great songs over and over again. If I can learn to find good lead notes over chord changes, and learn to sing harmony a bit more easily and confidently, I think that's what will finally make me feel like a musician after 30 years of on and off guitar playing. Playing publicly is going to have to figure into that somewhere too. Yikes.