Touche’! I admit I may have been a bit smart-assy in the above post 
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Nah, I thought it was funny. We needed the comedic break in this thread lol.
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I love this flow-chart! 
That’s basically how I look at it too.
I guess what I’d be curious to know, if we had the time and ability to study this properly, is whether it’s the time spent, or the consistency, that makes hardcore practice regimes like these effective. In other words, is it the fact that you’re putting in say 4-8 hours a day the important part, or is it the fact that you’re playing every single day the part that really reaps dividends?
My gut-level guess, and literally this is no more than a guess, is that the extra time helps, but you’d going to get a sizable portion of the benefit if you just manage to get a solid one hour of practice a day, day after day after day. Essentially, that it’s allowing no more than 24 hours to go by before you go back to trying to burn a series of movements back into your muscle memory is the part that really helps you build ability. That’s no more than a guess, though, though it’s in part supported by the fact that I’ve made a lot of progress in the past 6 months where predominantly I haven’t had time for more than the occasional practice/playing session stretching more than 1-2 hours.
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“Tommo is empowering guitar players…” 
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A lot of this discussion is ignoring the role of teaching/coaching. Whether the OP intended it or not, discussions of practice time often have a subtext of “if you aren’t getting results, it’s because you just aren’t putting in enough work”. I suspect there are many guitarists who fail to get the results they want despite putting in ridiculous amounts of work.
I think there are a lot of parallels between developing picking ability, and developing golf ability. Tiger Woods famously put in tons of hours of practice from an early age, but it wasn’t self directed. He’s had multiple coaches over the years (including his father), and importantly: he still uses coaches. As the revised saying goes: “It’s not ‘practice makes perfect’, it’s 'practice makes permanent”. There are thousands of amateur golfers who suck pretty badly despite putting in a whole lot of hours, and it’s largely because they refuse to pay for expert instruction. Maybe there have been a few “naturals” over the years, but as with guitar, it’s conceivable that some folks have the combination of athletic intuition and luck that will have them fall into solid technique by chance. In particular, I think many “self-directed” learners fall into the trap of narrowing their range of experimentation as a result of well-meaning but flawed advice, or naive attempts to mimic experts from observation, i.e. “George Benson holds the pick this way, so that’s the way I have to do it if I ever want to be able to play similar lines.”
Even if we accept that some form of intensive practice stage is necessary at some point in a guitarist’s development, anecdotal evidence from guys like Carl Miner suggest that that kind of effort doesn’t need to be sustained for 5 years or longer in order to make a breakthrough. Miner and several others have described periods of a year or two, or even a single summer, where they hunkered down and came out the other side with a technique that hasn’t changed much since then.
Another analogy is performing memorization feats. Someone can spend 8 hours a day for a year trying to “brute force” their way into getting good at memorizing 50 digit numbers, but their performance will be inferior to someone who spends 15 minutes per day practicing the “mnemonic major system” for memorizing sequences of numbers (either because they heard/read about it, or had the good fortune to re-invent a similar system for themselves). Maybe a small percentage of “brute force practicers” would stumble into re-inventing the mnemonic major system somewhere along the way, but that falls more into the “intuitive genius who stumbles into the solution” category rather than the “putting in big hours is the only way forward” category.
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And yet there’s still no reason to believe that 8-hour practice sessions are the cause of this sort of ability, since a mutual cause of the two is completely plausible (that is to say, if you love guitar enough you’re probably going to lose track of time while playing, and teenagers often have a lot of free time on their hands anyway). No amount of vociferous longposting will demonstrate conclusively that the causal relationship works the way you want it to.
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This actually held me up as a kid a lot. I read somewhere that in order to alternate pick fast you had to hold your pick like SO and only pick with wrist deviation, etc., etc., and put in 8-hour marathon metronome sessions for months trying to make this work. It sorta-kinda did, but… it hurt and it didn’t sound good, nor did it work particularly well for rhythm lines.
Contrast this to this past month of me doing unfocused exploration (often while watching TV) when I have time and making significant, noticeable gains without really trying all that hard.
Thanks, @Acecrusher. This thread has definitely gone its own direction. 
I do appreciate all the responses, though.
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Glad to see that I’m not the only one here who thinks too much
this is actually the crux of the matter and this is a valid point but it DOESNT diminish the importance of overall time spent
2hr > 1hr
1hr in a morning session + 1hr in an evening session > 2hrs at once
1hr 2x per day > 30min 2x per day
It has been amply proven in sports training that multiple sessions are better than one big session. But again that doesnt take away from TOTAL time having an effect
its not hard to picture young Eddie and young Yngwie days as kids and teens. Play a while, go play football, play more, go play soccer, play a while, eat dinner, play more etc
Its all about leaving “traces” on the central nervous system.
Easy way to implement this on guitar, even with only a little time? Easy. Do your playing at night. Next morning upon waking (set clock back 15-20 minutes if needed) pick that one pattern you are focusing on and do it for about 10 minutes. IMO this is a good time to do it slow and perfectly, since u will only be half awake anyway hehe
but you get the idea. instead of your “consistent once every 24 hr” imprint, make that once every 12 hrs of at least SOME playing
its like pumping up a tire. dont let it go all the way flat before putting some air back in
Yeah, but that’s exactly the question here, for me. If 2 1-hour sessions in one day is better than 1 2-hour session… Then at what point does that become an equivalency? is it 2.5 hours? 3 hours? And is that relationship linear? I.e - for those of us crunched for time, is four 15 minute sessions spread out across the day more effective thann one 2 hour session, even though it’s only half the total time? Or are 4 15 minute sessions better than 1.5 hours unbroken, but not 2?
This is what I basically have to do by necessity - practice at night after work before or after dinner, andf then pick up the guitar for a couple minutes before I leave for work. 
Overthinking is one of my favorite past-times!
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I can definitely spend 10+ hours a day practicing (not playing) guitar. But only maybe 2 - 2.5 hours would be pure technique, diminished returns mostly due to mental and physical tiredness.
I can do 2 hours in the morning and 2 hours in the evening, but there is rarely need for this - and time 
This is probably what I seem to do. Generally I spend ~2 hours on average practicing about 4-6x per week. That’s not all picking technique (obviously) but also includes Chords, Comping over tunes, reading lead sheets, on top of the scale/arpeggio practice and then some random noodling throughout.
Recently I’ve been working more on using passing diminished chords for comping and then trying to create movement within each chord during the progression ala Barry Harris.
Edit: also I think worrying about the total amount of practice time you’re spending is a bit of paralysis by analysis. Just practice- if you end up spending 3 hours doing 1 thing but if you were entirely focused, having fun, and lost track of time then I say that is practice well spent. Music is also about enjoying what you play (and this includes the process that you go through). If you only practiced 15 minutes and can’t seem to get your head into it then move onto something else and come back later (possibly a later day).
Can you play what you want to play?
Is it a theoretical issue? then learn the theory: be able to analyze the chord progression, know what Scales go over the Progression (what a major/harmonic minor/melodic Minor scale do I need), what are the notes and the arpeggios of those scales, how do those notes and arpeggios relate to the chord and which ones would make sense to use in order to outline the changes.
Is it a technical issue? keep practicing and see if you can figure it out. If you still can’t get it then record your technique and post a clip to see if something is wrong. Experiment with grip, arm position and picking mechanics until something clicks. Once it clicks can you consistently recreate that feeling?
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I don’t know if it’s been mentioned in the thread, which I haven’t read in its entirety, but Daniel Coyle wrote a great book about skill acquisition and uncommon/accelerated learning, The Talent Code. It is an investiagation of “talent hotbeds” throughout the world - places that have churned out world-class talents at rates inconsistent with statistical probability, like the Dynamo tennis club near Moscow, a baseball training center on a small Caribbean island, or Meadowlands (Meadow Mount?) in Vermont (IIRC) for classical musicians, and the learning methods of coaches or teachers in those talent hotbeds, then goes to some scientists who have investigated the role of “white matter”, or myelin, in the brain in recent years. I don’t remember a single instance of any student putting in 8 hours a day purely on technique. I seem to remember that the most that the brain physiology could handle of that regime on any given day is 2-3 hours and we’re talking about people training to world-class levels.
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Thanks, sounds interesting! I listed a bunch of other books here I’ve come across related to learning, practice, pedagogy, and assorted other musical topics:
I’ve heard of The Talent Code but not read / discussed here yet…may have to pick it up at some point Not sure how deep it gets on practical applications but definitely seems like some engaging case studies! Linking here for reference:
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Thanks a lot, just bought it.
One of my nerdy hobbies is aim training for FPS games on mouse and keyboard. There is an entire community built around training this skill, with standardized rankings and training scenarios to evaluate your level. The top 0.1% of aimers all trained a minimum of 1 hour per day, with some going up to 3 hours per day or more. The best aimer in the world currently grinded particular training scenarios 6 hours per day in order to win a championship. Generally it takes around 1500 hours to get to the 0.1%, with some taking as little as 500 hours (but many of those had thousands of hours in FPS games before training) and some taking up to 2500 hours. At my current rate of progress I will probably be one of those that takes 2500 hours.
If this is applicable to guitar, I’d say it would take between 500 to 2500 hours to become a guitar god, depending on how quickly your brain learns motor skills. But it is just one anecdote so take it for what it’s worth.
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Honestly, the question of how much practice time is optimal is a moot point for most players who ask about this. Because the askers usually aren’t observing their techniques to see what is actually happening.
Simply filming your technique and looking at it can put a stop to a lot of the wasted time. Most people are not likely to sit there for hours repeating the Paul Gilbert lick if the joint motions look identical on every attempt. Instead, the camera can hopefully make the choices more obvious:
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If you see technique that is not the one you’re trying to learn, I think you’d be likely to either try something different, or if that fails, to seek out some advice as to what you’re missing.
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On the flip side, if the technique looks and sounds correct on every attempt, that’s a clear signal it’s time to move on.
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The third option is “do more repetitions”. When faced with very clear video of your hands that looks the same as the last time, I’d have to think you’d be less likely to choose this option — which is a good thing.
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So many players with great technical skills, stress playing at a slower pace at least initially, it’s impossible to overlook… playing something incorrectly-slowly accomplishes nothing… but if you have technique you’re trying to master, let’s say economy picking, how can you develop that level of control unless you invest hours into repetitious practice?
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If every time you play a sample phrase and you film it, you can do it slow, but the motion is no longer the same when you speed up, then zero learning is happening.
How will you fix that? You have no choice but to try at the faster speed and film it. If the motion is still not correct at the faster speed, then the slower speed attempts did not help the faster ones. You just have to keep trying.
In general, escape is the thing you want to look at, because the escape “is” the motion, not the pitches. This is true for alternate, economy — any picking motion. Economy is just a combination of alternate and sweeping, and they each are a type of joint motion you are trying to mimic. So the evaluation is the same.
I don’t know what else to tell you about this other than to film yourself. The point of my previous post is that the camera is the equalizer. It will cut through all the BS about practice, because it will tell you immediately whether the motion is actually the one you are trying to learn. And that’s the whole point of practice, learning to mimic a specific type of joint motion.
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