What Should I Practice on Guitar? Start With What You Actually Want to Play

What should I practice on guitar?

You’re asking the wrong person.

I can give you a list: scales, arpeggios, chords, ear training, alternate picking, rhythm, theory, fretboard knowledge, sight reading and repertoire. We could even divide everything into neat little time blocks and call it the perfect guitar practice routine.

There's just one problem.

I don't know what you actually want to play.

And until we answer that question, I don't think anyone can tell you exactly what deserves your practice time.

So here's the short answer: Start with music you genuinely want to play, figure out what's preventing you from playing it, then practice the things that help close those gaps.

Start With the End in Mind

Before deciding what to practice, think about what you'd actually like to be able to play.

If you're not sure what that looks like yet, start with What Kind of Guitarist Are You? Build a Practice Plan Around Your Guitar Identity . That exercise will help you think through the genres, guitarists and music that point toward the guitarist you want to become.

Don't start with what someone says you should be able to play. Don't start with what appeared in your YouTube feed this morning or the MUST KNOW scale system some guy on Instagram promised would finally unlock the fretboard.

Some of that may be useful, but I'm making a bigger point here.

What do you want to play?

This is where I think a lot of guitar practice gets backward. We start by collecting skills and exercises, then hope they'll eventually turn us into the guitarist we want to become.

Try reversing the process.

Let the music write your curriculum.

Start with the end result and work backward from there:

Genres → Artists → Tunes → Riffs / Licks → Techniques / Knowledge / Exercises

Genres and artists can give you direction. But keep moving down the chain until you get to something you can actually play.

If there's a tune you desperately want to learn, that's a much better starting point than deciding you should practice three-note-per-string scales because somebody told you they're important.

They might be important. But first we need to know why.

Go Back Through the Music You Already Love

You probably don't need another list of tunes from me. You've already been building one for years.

Open Spotify, Pandora, YouTube Music, Apple Music, or whatever you've been listening to. Look through your listening history. Dig through old playlists and liked tunes. Look at the artists you've listened to over and over again.

I take screenshots on my phone when a good tune comes on that I want to go back and listen to or download.

Don't just look for what's impressive.

Look for what gets a reaction out of you.

Maybe it's the tune or artist that made you want to play guitar in the first place. Maybe it reminds you of being 17. Maybe it takes you back to a concert, a road trip, a relationship, a particular summer, or another period of your life.

Maybe it reminds you of someone you miss. Maybe you've heard it 500 times and it still gives you chills.

Those reactions are clues.

Start with genres and artists if you need to. Then keep drilling down until you find actual tunes you'd love to be able to play.

Pick 3–5 Tunes You Actually Care About

Try this:

If you could snap your fingers tonight and wake up tomorrow able to beautifully play five tunes, what would they be?

Don't overthink it. You're not committing to learning all five this month. We're trying to discover where you actually want the guitar to take you.

And don't be afraid to get emotional about it. What tune gives you chills? What's the solo you've listened to a hundred times? What riff makes you want to grab the nearest guitar every time you hear it? Is there a tune tied to a person, place or particular period of your life?

Has a piece of music ever actually made you cry?

Maybe that's worth paying attention to. Give yourself a musical destination you genuinely care about first. We can figure out what you need to learn to get there afterward.

But don't feel like all five choices need to be thesis projects, either. Throw a low-hanging fruit or two on the list. Maybe there's a simple acoustic singer-songwriter tune you've always liked. You already know most of the chords, the rhythm is within reach, and you could probably learn the entire thing without turning it into a six-month project.

There's value in that too. Your practice slate can include a tune you might finish this week alongside something that could challenge you for months. Learning a complete tune and being able to sit down and play it from beginning to end is a win. You don't need five musical Mount Everests staring back at you every time you pick up the guitar.

There's a practical reason for choosing music you care about, too. Compare these two motivations:

I should practice alternate picking because alternate picking is important.

Versus:

I can't play this part of a tune I love because my picking falls apart.

Same technique. Completely different reason for practicing it.

The tune gives the technique a reason to exist.

Can't Pick Five? Pick One.

Don't let this become another source of paralysis. If five tunes immediately come to mind, great. If you can only think of three, use three. If you can only think of one, pick one. That's enough to get started.

And if you can't think of an entire tune you want to learn, move down the hierarchy. Pick a riff you've wanted to play for years, a lick, a solo phrase, or even a particular sound that made you think, I want to be able to do THAT.

Now we have somewhere to go.

Consider Where You Are Right Now

Knowing the destination isn't quite enough. We also need to know where we're starting.

Two guitarists could choose the exact same tune and discover that they need to practice completely different things. Maybe you understand the tune but can't physically play one of the faster passages. Maybe your technique is fine, but you're completely lost when you try to understand the harmony.

You might be able to play every section while staring at the tab but fall apart the moment you try to play it from memory. Or maybe you're 40 BPM short of the recorded tempo.

You could also be completely new to a genre and have no idea where to begin. As I write this, that's exactly where I am with jazz chord melody.

Those are different problems. They should produce different practice priorities.

So we're really asking two questions:

Where do I want to go?

Where am I right now?

The gap between those two answers is where your practice material starts to emerge.

Your Skill Level Should Affect the Route, Not Necessarily the Destination

Considering your current ability doesn't mean you should abandon music that excites you because it's "too hard."

If the tune that made you want to play is wildly beyond your current ability, keep the destination. Just change the route.

Maybe learning the whole tune isn't realistic yet. Can you learn the main riff? If even that riff is currently out of reach, can you learn the first four measures? Maybe those four measures expose a technique you haven't developed yet.

Now we have something worth practicing.

Your current skill level should affect the route, not necessarily the destination. I'd much rather see someone working toward music they desperately want to play in manageable pieces than practicing something they don't care about simply because it's labeled "beginner."

Ask WHY Before You Add Something to Your Practice List

Before adding a technique, exercise, or concept to your practice time, ask a simple question:

Why am I practicing this?

Three-note-per-string scales, sweep picking, chord inversions, ear training and theory can all be worthwhile. But that doesn't mean they're all worthwhile for you right now.

If you're trying to play fast leads and your picking can't keep up, focused picking work might make perfect sense. If you're trying to play acoustic reggae tunes and struggling to make them feel right, your rhythm, muting and groove probably deserve more attention.

None of those skills are good or bad practice material on their own.

The WHY determines the value of the WHAT.

Stop Letting YouTube Decide What You Practice

YouTube and Instagram are incredible resources for guitarists. There has probably never been a better time to learn guitar for free.

There's also probably never been a better time to get distracted while learning guitar.

Open your feed and here it comes:

• Five licks every guitarist NEEDS to know.
• The picking exercise that changed EVERYTHING.
• The scale every intermediate guitarist MUST learn.

Some of that material is excellent. That's what makes this difficult.

Something can be incredibly cool, incredibly useful and taught by an incredible guitarist, and still not deserve your practice time today.

Use YouTube to discover music, find guitarists, get inspired, learn techniques and solve problems. Go down a rabbit hole once in a while just because it's fun. Just don't automatically let the algorithm decide what kind of guitarist you're going to become.

When something catches your attention, come back to our question:

Why would learning this help me play the music I actually want to play?

If you've got a good answer, fantastic. If your only answer is because that guy sounded awesome, you don't have to throw the idea away.

You just don't need to practice it today.

"Not Now" Doesn't Mean "Never"

There is more cool guitar stuff out there than any of us could learn in a lifetime. Choosing what to practice also means choosing what not to practice right now.

That doesn't mean abandoning those ideas forever. Keep them somewhere and come back when they fit what you're trying to do.

Keep your musical curiosity huge. Keep your current practice focus small.

Your priorities should be allowed to change, too. A performance, a new musical obsession or a weakness exposed by a tune can completely rearrange what deserves your attention.

Your practice priorities are supposed to serve your music, not become another set of rules you're afraid to break.

Let the Music Write Your Curriculum

Now put the idea into practice. Choose a tune and try to play it.

When something falls apart, pay attention. Maybe your picking-hand synchronization breaks down as the tempo increases. Maybe a chord change isn't clean. Maybe you don't understand what's happening harmonically.

Whatever the problem is, you've discovered something valuable: a reason to practice something.

Another guitarist could choose a completely different tune and expose completely different problems. Same six strings. Different destinations. Different practice priorities.

That's why I can't give both guitarists the same universal list of what they should practice. But I can teach them how to start generating that list for themselves.

So, What Should I Practice on Guitar?

Start with music you actually want to play.

Pick three to five tunes that mean something to you. Mix in a low-hanging fruit if you want. If that's too many, pick one. If you don't have a complete tune in mind, start with a riff or lick that makes you want to grab the guitar.

Then consider where you are right now. Try to play the music and pay attention to what stops you. Only then start asking which techniques, exercises, or bits of knowledge might help close the gap.

Whenever something new fights for your practice time, ask why.

Does this help me play something I actually want to play?

If it does, you've probably found something worth investigating. If it doesn't, that doesn't make it worthless.

It just might not be time for it yet.

Next: Turn the Music Into Something You Can Practice

We still haven't built a guitar practice routine.

That's intentional.

First, we needed a reason for the things that will eventually go into it. We know where we want to go, we've chosen music we care about, and we've started looking for the gaps between our current playing and that music.

The next step is to take those tunes apart into sections, riffs, licks and specific problems we can actually work on.

Then we'll have the raw material for a real practice plan.