What I’m learning from this thread is that if you challenge the idea that you need a full-time’s job worth of hard practice to get good at guitar, people lose their minds and decide to spend thousands of hours longposting about it instead. 
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furthermore, if we want breakthrough level gains, focus is a huge key IMO.
in olympic weightlifting, if I do 6 exercises in a session, or even split across 2 sessions, my nervous system will sum all of that up. No one exercise will get the max improvement. That would strictly be an off season type workout. As a competitive meet approaches, they start dropping off assistance exercises. Closer to a meet they might be doing 3-4 exercises with the vast majority of reps being the main 2 competitive lifts.
How do we bring that over into our guitar practice strategy. If you do 30 mins of various alt picking, 30 minutes of various arpeggios, then 30 minutes of jamming…what do you get? you get a lot of different impulses for your nervous system to sort out. You will get a “general” level of skill increase. it wont be deep though.
What if you really wanted to have a massive breakthrough on alt picking? Then hyper focus on alt picking, at least for a certain period of time. go DEEP, not wide. Take a solid month, focus on, say, outside picking. Pick 3-4 basic loopable exercises that hit outside picking. many thousands of reps over the course of that month. fast, slow, in between, whatever…thats for another thread.
A month like that and you will have gained some much deeper skills. Now you can go to some other focus for a while and with very little effort maintain the outside picking chops. once you cut those grooves DEEP, they are there. The grand canyon aint gonna go away anytime soon. The 90 minutes per day all over the map approach is more like a small stream…a couple of weeks without rain and the stream might not even be there anymore
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One could get really depressed after reading this quote. I couldn’t help but really admire both of them in reading the whole piece as I have had my issues with JM as a mentor at a vast distance. That is gone he is genuine and his playing is what kept me interested in guitar when the keyboard was calling. The juxtaposition of the two was a blessing as they both became non fixed and so it became much more stream of consciousness and truly inspiring and makes me want to practice patterns with even more intensity(just to feel the sound of the pick against the strings and my fingers on the frets). Take that Yngwie.
I saw this documentary years ago about these virtuoso Mozart kids that were like 12-14 and already virtuosos on cello, violin, conductin orchestras n stuff. Snd the all made the same starement. -if you practice more than 3 hours a day. You’re doing something wrong. Thats 3 hes of tecnique and studying pieces. Not general playing or noodeling for fun.
this is stated as though you are saying “see, you dont need that much practice to be great”
but 3 hours per day is pretty huge.
3 hours is 300% of 1 hour. Huge difference
Its way less than 8 hours a day. AND 3 hours with focus is realy enough by far.
The point of my reply was to say that 8 hrs is sort of a myth. Playing 8 hrs? Shure but very few could do efficent focused practice for that long. The human brain is not capable of that focus for that long
the “8 hours per day” is a pure strawman in this case. So peeps can then feel good by telling themselves they will get great on 1 hr per day
good luck with that (in any endeavor)
Oh, I straight up owned that in an earlier post in this thread. 
We’re all debating based on incomplete and anecdotal evidence here.
All I’m really saying, though, is we don’t KNOW marathon practice sessions work. There’s a high corerlation between successful guitarists and a prior period of marathon practicing, but one we’re talking about a huge selection bias (technically accomplished players, vs a random selection of guitarists who have been playing X number of years), and two there’s no guarantee we’re not putting the cart before the horse, and that the fact these guys were very focused and dedicated is what made them successful rather than the raw time spent, but because they were so focused and dedicated they were more likely to try things like practicing 8 hours a day.
I think what we DO know from CtC is that picking is probably more about raw technique than it is about time spent - once you develop the basic mechanics, certain things become pretty easy. That’s not to say OTHER aspects of guitar don’t have improvements driven more by raw time spent on them rather than technical refinements.
My personal thoughts, for whatever its worth, is that while I’m sure there is a point of diminishing returns and it probably falls well below 8 hours, that all else equal the more time you spend practicing something and doing something, the better you’re likely to become. But, importantly, I can’t prove that. If I practiced 4 hours a day, I can’t know that I will improve twice as fast as if I practiced 2 hours, or four times as fast as I practiced one, so all I’m really saying here is I don’t think we can take it for granted that the best way to improve is to just practice for longer periods of time. It very well may work… but it may not be the most efficient way to improve.
Falling back on anecdotal evidence here - all I can say for sure is that my picking as gotten a LOT better in the past year, and while there have been occasional days where I’ve had a guitar in hand for 2-6 hours, I’d be surprised if I’ve averaged as much as an hour a day. In fact, really, I’d say most of the improvement has been in the last three months or so, and during that time I’ve probably been playing quite a bit less than that, maybe a half hour a day, but I have a better idea of what i’m doing mechanically while picking, and I’ve been practicing different things based on that knowledge.
All that said - I’m of course on board with playing as much as I can, simply because I ENJOY it. 
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Last comment from me on this thread… The more we comment here, the less guitar practice we are actually going to do! Haha!
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oh its not just you and its not just this thread…and its not just this forum of course. It is a bit dissappointing though because here we try to pass ourselves off as being sort of elite in our thinking and playing but then you see how info is thrown around sort of randomly. I wont even get into unsourced quotes lol.
The way the question was phrased (8+ hours marathon sessions) was a total strawman whether it was meant to be or not
most of us have played for years so we have a certain amount of skill. some have quite a bit. So maybe we have or had a few pieces missing due to our incomplete knowledge of picking mechanics. Well now we have a better understanding. So FOR US, one hour per day can yield big benefits because thats on TOP of 20000 other hours.
our 1 hour doesnt = a newbs 1 hour
of course there is this too: if I offered to pay you $1million a month from now if u could play some difficult piece. Would you practice 1 hr per day or 3-4? Ill just leave that there lol
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In that hypothetical, I would absolutely want to know if there was an optimal practice strategy, which is kind of what we’re getting at here.
but thats the trick brah, you DONT get that option. Today will come and go and WE have to decide what is best. life is passing by.
I dont believe the answer is out there somewhere or coming from someone else. I believe its inside of me. I listen to what others say and stuff like CTC is huge. But so are Claus Levin’s ideas. So is anedcotal advice. I take it all in
there is no “big brother” out there who will give us the certain answer so we can then proceed. We have to proceed now lol
look at what Intense Rock did to me. Hey, Paul is one of the greatest. He put the Paul Gilbert lick out front as a starting point on his vid. Nice. But he didnt explain 2 way slanting. He didnt say he played 8 years before doing that lick. He didnt say anything about spending a summer getting the Yngwie 6 note lick down with a metronome. I couldnt do the lick so I just figured it wasnt in me etc
something like “ideal practice strategies” is WAAAAAAYYYYY more complicated than 2 way slanting. Do you seriously think there will ever be a tightly controlled year long study comparing 1hr vs 2hr vs 4 per day?? Even then there are 9 million other variables and even then the results would have to be interpreted.
what does your gut say though? will you get farther on 2 hrs vs 1? 3hrs versus 1? yeah youll hit diminishing returns at some point but Im pretty sure its a ways past 1 hr per day
Seek and you WILL find. Knock and the door WILL be opened.
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Well, I mean, my go to approach in questions like this is the scientific method, but I don’t think anyone is going to fund me to do a number of double blind studies testing the efficacy of various practice philosophies, alas.
For now I just play as much as I can because I like doing it, but it’s absolutely possible I’m leaving some aptitude on the table because there’s another way I could be getting faster improvements, but I’m having fun so I’m not losing much sleep over it.
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“science” is ok as far as it goes. leaving out political and corporate money bias, assuming “science” something pure, it still often lags many years behind what people already know by the seat of the pants and basic empirical observations and, gasp, common sense
That is not my experience at ALL - the scientific method is still the most effective way of formally trying to explain how or why things happen, and historically “trusting your gut” has led humanity to do a lot of extremely stupid things.
In fact, if there’s any one theme in my contributions to this discussion, I think it’s been that there’s a lot of value in NOT taking for granted things that are “common knowledge,” and instead only accepting what we can prove. That’s a pretty good attitude to have in life, I think.
Neither here nor there, though.
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haha, off topic so we wont get into all the dumb stuff humanity has done in the NAME of “science”
are eggs good for us or bad for us this year? i cant keep track
This point’s to the observation that “common facts” are in themselves shortcuts containing (all our assumed and perhaps biased knowledge?). There are other possibilities such as paying more attention to what the other fingers are doing or not doing, certain so called silences are actually allowing for what we are calling articulations to take place.
But what is the noise and what is the music. I did this thing the other day by turning the guitar(classical E/A) around so it was facing towards me with very strong flexible strap. Using the palm and the Elbow I was able to get a really good pulse going between the two because the swing of the strapped guitar would snap back at me and I could time it perfectly and later I added the other hand hitting the back of the body for 6/8 feel. This was amazing all of a sudden I was john bonham it was a new experience the distinction of the beat was so firm in a few minutes or perhaps seconds the speed was tremendous and I stopped because I was worried about the stability of the instrument.
The point is how do we know that we know what is relevant to real improvement, without constant experimentation and re experimentation we after all pioneers here. Talent is good but the ability to be aware in the process of our realizing potential that is really really special. Not everyone who picks up an instrument is the least bit interested in this.
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Maybe “8 hours per day” is a just a “strawman.” I’ve never heard that expression so i can’t say. However, the question posed by gman0101 in the OP is not: Is 8 hours per day of practice necessary to become an elite level player? That’s not what he asked.
The question in the OP is: “Troy, just curious since you’ve interviewed so many world class players. Have you interviewed anyone who has not put in 8+ hours a day practice at some point in their career?”
In reply, neither Troy nor anyone else could name anyone who is generally acknowledged to be a “guitar hero”, a “guitar god”, or in other words, any rock guitarist who has become legendary at least in part because of his state of the art technique without putting in 8 hour practice days at some point in his development as a musician.
A lot of people don’t seem to want to accept the fact that virtuoso rock stars of the legendary stature of guys like
Eddie Van Halen
Randy Rhoads
Yngwie Malmsteen
Steve Vai
Joe Satriani
Paul Gllbert
Darrell Abbott
Zakk Wylde
all got there by putting in the long types of hours per day on the guitar that for some reason tend to intimidate some people.
It’s not surprising to me that the way this thread has gone is the same way the thread titled “Is there An Optimum Number Of Hours Of Practice Hours A Day” went. That was just two and a half months ago and contains over a hundred replies - none of which were able to provide a list of comparable legendary guitarists whose success stories were based on only playing 2 or 3 hours a day.
You’d think that such a recent and long discussion with that many replies would satisfy people, wouldn’t you? Yet here we are 10 weeks later seeing the same thing, seeing people desperately looking for the great success stories of comparable rock or jazz guitar legends who got there by putting in just a small fraction of the amount of work as the guitarists listed above. Does to really surprise anyone that this thread also failed to provide any of the wonderful success stories of guys who just practiced an hour or two a day?
It says a lot about human nature and the denial of reality which has become so ubiquitous in our society that since that thread didn’t give people who want a shortcut to success the answer they wanted, they just repeated the same discussion hoping for a different answer. It seems ingrained in human nature for there to be some people who will always persist in looking for shortcuts, for a way of attaining the same glory without paying the same dues.
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yeah I generally agree with you.
a ‘strawman’ is a false argument.
I dont think that was the OPs intention but thats sort of how it got argued against. 8 hrs is sort of out on the extreme so in arguing against it we also throw out the more probable case that most of these top pros probably did avg 3-4 hrs on many many days in their development
Seems I remember Greg Howe saying he’d spend most of a day just slowing down records with his finger trying to learn 1 VanHalen lick.
Eddie said he practiced so much that people thought he was weird and antisocial etc
This is why I simply said “how good do you want to be”?
an hour per day in most any field might get you fair to middlin’ but thats about it IMO
hmm, 8 hrs per day?? out of the horses mouth
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The question is "If I practice 8 hours a day will I be great?
So what motivates development? Because when motivation is at work time ceases to be an issue. How does one get motivated? Through results. But what are results? No wants to waste there time. I wasted my time, to much of it practicing many, many hours a day and improving very, very little eventually causing physical issues that forced me to re-asses everything about music about everything really.
Finally I saw a new way to asses progress that was honest about what was possible and why even if I did work many hours to accomplish it. Unfortunately most of this was finding out what didn’t work not what did. That is the issue for most, in other words are there going to be tangible results for my efforts and if not why.
This is totally understandable and in the long run can benefit everyone trying to improve. A lot of the problems are incomplete technique works for the majority of playing situations, except where it doesn’t. This seems like a catch 22 but it’s not, it is the essence of true mastery.
The better you get, the better you get. A big part of the problem is calluses, but getting the right calluses mean putting the right emphasis in the right place and that takes time and some patience. Good bandaids and black tape can help but at least for me the index finger callus took years to really get good, was there a better solution than I took there?, probably so but it does manage ones time because you do have to wait for them to form and get solid.
The other thing very, very important is that we are not wind up dolls and that articulation means stress so that playing something meant to be played twice as slow and working it up almost always is a misunderstanding about time and space itself.
This is what is at hand here. Motivation breeds movement and articulation. The wave we want to catch and ride is ourselves. I hope this can be talked about more in the future.