The Importance Of Taking Breaks While Learning Guitar

Compared to all the other instruments I’ve picked up in the past (viola, clarinet, keyboard, drums), guitar has definitely been the hardest.

Why? Because guitar requires a lot of physical skill and muscle memory to play well. Anyone can sit behind a keyboard and play twinkle twinkle on one hand in a few minutes. A new student could pick up clarinet or saxophone and be able to play a few songs in the same week. Guitar? Good luck.

This could probably go for most stringed instruments, but since guitar is the most popular, and that’s what I’m currently learning, I’ll be focused on my experience with this.

Guitar is not something you can just pick up and start playing songs in a few days or weeks. You need a few weeks just to build calluses. You need a lot of time for your left and right hand to play in time together. Need time for your hands to get get used to contourting into these unusual shapes for chords, and more time to switch chords quickly. Then you got strumming patterns, and slides, bends, hammer ons and offs….it’s a lot to process.

So if anyone wants to get good at guitar, it does require a lot of patience and a lot of regular practice, especially when you’re new. If you take a couple weeks off in your first few months, you’ll have to relearn some things because the muscle memory hasn’t kicked in yet.

Even if you’re great at another instrument, even if you have all the music theory knowledge in the world, you’re not going to be able to just pick up guitar and be good at it. Guitar is like half music and half technique. Without technique, no music, or nothing good-sounding, is coming out of that instrument.

So knowing this, I get that it’s tempting to just play as long and as much as you can. You want to make the most of your practice time, and practice makes progress or perfect, right?

Yes, and no.

There are times I may be learning a piece, and while it may be hard at first, in a few tries, I can get it down. But quite often, I make the most progress on a technique or piece when I take a break and come back to it tomorrow.

Sometimes, it’s good to get familiar with a piece with your hands, but then allow your brain some time to also process and remember it. Go over the timing, remember where your hands are on the fretboard, and getting familiar with a new chord. When I come back, it suddenly feels a lot easier, even though I haven’t physically practice it since then.

If a piece felt like too much to remember at the moment, that’s even more reason to take a break instead of trying to learn and recall it all at the same time.

The last thing you want to do when learning is overwhelm or frustrate yourself by trying to take in too much, too soon. Breaks and rests can be an amazing thing, even if it feels counterproductive.

Another thing to make note of, it’s better to practice songs over a long period of time instead of cramming. Sure, you could learn a song in 2 days and play it well, but if you don’t review it, you will forget it sooner or later. Thus, you didn’t really ‘learn’ that song.

I highly recommend adding new songs you learn to a playlist, and going over all them weekly, or at least a few times a month. Kick your mental and muscle memory in to gear and work on recalling things at a later time. This will be better off long term as opposed to cramming and moving on.

Guitar techniques will always come back later, so work on them, and improve them.

Ciao~