A One-Hour Guitar Practice Routine (and a 20-Minute Version)

The one-hour plan

• 0 to 5 min: warm-up. Slow chromatic finger exercise, then each chord you know once.
• 5 to 20 min: chord changes. Your three hardest pairs, one minute each, twice.
• 20 to 30 min: one technique: barre, strumming pattern or picking.
• 30 to 45 min: a song, in sections, slowly first.
• 45 to 55 min: new material: one new chord or one new song section.
• 55 to 60 min: a game round or free playing to end on a high.

Adjust it as you improve

When a chord change stops being hard, replace it with the next hardest. Every two weeks, look at the plan again: the blocks stay, the content moves forward. Write what you practised; a short log shows progress that you do not feel day to day.

The levels in ChordRunner

• Beginner: major, minor, augmented and diminished chords.
• Intermediate: adds sus2 and sus4.
• Advanced: adds 6th, 7th and 9th chords.
• Pro: adds 11th, 13th and altered chords; an adaptive mode adds the next family when you are ready.