Practising Guitar as an Adult

With the cost of living crisis cutting budgets and forcing people to spend more time chasing economically sensible pastimes, playing guitar is a pretty worthwhile hobby to either take up or rekindle. However, finding the time and a quiet place to practise can be a challenge. There are some easy ways to make that all important practise that bit easier on both you and your family.

How?

If you are new or haven’t played in a while spending an hour trying to tune by ear, although entirely good practise in of itself, can be a of putting and annoying to anyone within the vicinity. Get yourself a clip-on tuner! Clip-on tuners are discrete, don’t require any extra leads and the battery lasts. Clip-on tuners work both on electric and acoustic guitars will save you all that time for learning chords and scales. Playing loud but quiet! Every guitar widow can recount tales of double stacked cabs and 100w heads roaring pentatonic scales while just waiting for the anti-social behaviour notice to come through the door. Hooray then for headphones and more importantly the incredible array of options available to the modern guitarist. Of course, there has been the option to plug-in a set of headphones into your trusty guitar amp and that hasn’t changed, just expanded, some amps can now connect via Bluetooth so you aren’t tethered to the amp. You can also use micro amps such as the Mustang Mini and IRig. You can with the aid of an interface play through your computer or laptop via a DAW or standalone plugin such as Guitar Rig. Even playing through your tablet via IRig or OEM interface is possible with a range of tablet-based applications.

When? How Often?

In many ways once you have solved the how, the big question is what your long and short term targets are. If you work full time and have a family but want to shred like Tim Henson then settle down and strap in because it’s going to be a relatively long ride compared to say wanting to learn how to play some Indie Rock tunes. Also if you are learning acoustic guitar there is a slight ramp in the physical demands in terms of calluses and stamina. Often new acoustic players will find their fingertips feel hot at the end of a practise session and some demanding songs with plenty of barre chords and changes can leave you hands fatigued. Sadly for calluses the only real answer is more practises, getting the fingertips used to the application of pressure. For fatigue, hand exercise before and after can help massively, particularly before playing, exactly as a sprinter or distance runner would do prior to running.

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