Want to know how long it takes to get good at guitar?
This is something I’m asked a lot by students.
The answer depends a lot on what you want to get good at, how much consistent, quality practice you can realistically put in and (dare I say it) how good your guitar teacher is.
Some styles of guitar playing are going to take a bit longer to get good at than others.
Someone who only wants to play basic rock rhythm is probably going to achieve the playing ability they want quicker than someone who wants to play fast and technical lead guitar.
What seems to be the determining factor to how quickly someone improves is how much quality practice they put in.
Everyone’s different and there are a lot of different factors outside of practice that determine how quickly you can improve, but here’s a simple timeline to give you a bit of an idea of realistic growth and how it’s affected by quality practice.
Timeline to Achieve Reasonably Competent Lead Guitar Playing Ability.
3 hours of quality practice 5-6 days a week: 3-4 years.
6 hours of quality practice 5-6 days a week: 2-3 years.
12 hours of quality practice 5-6 days a week: 1-2 year.
There are a lot of guitar teachers online who claim they can shave years of practice off your playing improvement with their special “formulas”, “lessons” and “information.”
This is bullshit.
It doesn’t matter how good your teacher is or how good the information is – you still need to train the muscles in your hands to play fast and technically.
Just like building muscles at the gym, this process takes time.