How Long Per Module

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Caveat: I KNOW you will say “it depends on the person” and what not, so if you’re going to reply with that, just back out of this page on the browser and don’t bother. :smiley:

Ok, so there must be SOME kind of guidance on what would be too little to spend on one module. When I wrote a post about finishing Grade 1 in about a month, a bunch of experienced people said that was way too fast. So there logically HAS to be some minimum number of practices that would satisfy them, right? How many is that?

On the other side, is there any number of practice sessions for a module at which you are starting to get diminishing returns? How many is that?

My guess would be something like minimum 6 and maximum 18, but I am curious what people think!

Thanks!
Chris

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There is a whole field of neuroscience that has looked at this question. It’s not as simple as saying x number of times. If you really want to delve into the science you could check out the book Learn Faster, Perform Better: A Musician’s Guide to the Neuroscience of Practicing by Molly Gebrian.

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if you can check all the boxes on this page you can move on.
https://www.justinguitar.com/guitar-lessons/how-to-pass-grade-1-b1-710
how long depends on how many hours you put in. Someone who puts in 1 hour a day of true practice time will progress a lot faster than someone who noodles around for 10 or 15 minutes a day.

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Hi Chris, trying to quantify this from my personal experience is not really applicable, even though being a highly logical being I personally would like to.

From my own guitar journey I realised that some aspects of playing a guitar I get reasonably quickly and others I do not. For example on the BLIM course I was able to pick up individual Blues licks reasonably quickly in isolation, but when put together in a sort 12 bar it took a long time to achieve to any level of confidence and accuracy, the reason being my rhythm and feel for timing is not that great and each lick often changed this and would throw me. Also on the course I realised when it came to strumming rhythms and keeping time it was not great. I concluded I had not done enough practice through grades 1-3 on this topic as I was too keen to moved on, as well as picking up knew rhythms is unnatural to me. I went back to some of the songs ‘I learnt’ in grades 1-3 to practice more and found I had forgotten them, so I had gone through the process at the time but not really learnt them.

If you feel you have truly worked through each module and can tick off Justin’s check list and are happy with how you play then move on. But the reality is you may need to revisit some things later on as you try to progress, there is nothing wrong with that, as your playing improves you will become more critical of aspects that could be better and go back to basics to improve them.

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That’s an interesting question Chris. There are various numbers flying around in the coaching world: X1000 hits to become competent at a particular tennis shot etc.

Depending on how patient, inquisitive, disciplined, self critical etc. you are , you could test it yourself.

Start a module. See how many sessions it takes for you to get to the stage where you think you should move on. Do the same for the next one, and the next etc. Record the info and plot it. You may be able to sensibly average it, or you may find it’s an ever increasing number but a usable correlation, or that there isn’t any useful correlation.

If you decide to do it, and get an answer (usable or not for prediction purposes), I’d be interested to know the outcome.

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If I can do a practice exercise 5 times in a row at a desired speed without making a mistake then I drop it off the practice routine.

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I did that, I checked off the boxes quickly probably because I have some experience messing around with acoustic ages ago, but yet people still criticized me for advancing too quickly even knowing that. :stuck_out_tongue:

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I’ll check that out, that sounds interesting!

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Then I’d move on the grade 2. You can always go back and review lessons if you feel you’ve missed something or need more practice later.
You need to evaluate your own playing and it’s not a race, there is no finishing first. It’s a learning journey and you’re only hurting yourself if you move on to quickly.
You can start a learning log and post videos of your progress if you want to and people can help you by watching then. You need to know that most members are beginners aswell and will be overly kind when evaluating you playing.

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Great question. I don’t have the answer either, but I feel like time is a key factor. In other words, I mean spreading out the practice sessions.

In my opinion, 6 practice sessions over 2 weeks will yield better results than 6 sessions over 1 week. If we are talking about 12-18 practice sessions, 3-4 weeks then. Spacing them out helps with long-term memory retention, so we don’t forget the skills as soon as we start working on something new. Plus, developing strength in our fingers and muscles takes a while.

When I was working on Grade 3, I scheduled one month per module with three focused practice sessions per week. On the other days, I simply had fun playing songs that incorporated that material. I don’t remember how I did it in Grade 1, but it was most likely a little shorter per module, but I was focusing on applying the skills with songs in the app.

Conversely, I’m on vacation right now and did a bunch of practice sessions on one song this week. It worked well—I can almost play it well—but I know that if I don’t keep practicing it for a few more weeks, I’ll forget it very quickly. In contrast, songs I learned over a longer period in small bursts are ones I can still play, even after not touching them for weeks.

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Your situation, IMO, is one you should be especially careful of. You have some background to draw upon. It was awhile ago, though (how long? you say “ages” but what does that mean? 1yr? 10yrs? 20yrs? recency is relevant). You should be especially reflective about each lesson to make sure you’re not skipping over some detail that might be important later. Someone who spends several sessions on a single lesson repeating it many times is less likely to miss things like that. But for you getting to a lesson, feeling like a lot of it is familiar, and you blaze through it saying you can still do it, it’s going to be a lot easier to miss stuff.

Obviously, these are self-guided lessons and ultimately you are the one who makes the decision regarding when to move on.

But keep this in mind - going too fast risks harming your progress by missing things that you’ll have to go back and address. When it comes to some techniques, there’s a good chance that you’ll even have to UN-learn some things before you can really learn the “correct” way that you can then build upon for later skills. unlearning things can be harder than learning something from scratch. I am a skills coach in a different activity and these are truths that are essentially universal.

If that’s the risk of going too fast, you do also need to be aware of the risks of going too slow. Mainly the risk of getting bored and/or growing stagnant in your development. They both have their traps, so you need to find balance between the two.

For playing guitar, Justin makes a good point when it comes to “consolidation” at the end of each grade. That’s your opportunity to take the material from the lessons within that grade and to apply them to different songs in different contexts to ensure that you’ve got them all pretty well dialed. IMO, this is where the meat of the lessons really lies.

Now, if you STILL think you’re ready to move on, then go ahead. It IS a self-guided course and there’s nobody actually standing there ensuring you can do certain skills well enough before you are given the materials for Grade 2. If you went too fast, you’ll realize it.

Everybody’s path is a bit different. I stopped at the end of Grade 1 for a long time working on songs. Mostly so I could develop my ability to hear and find the rhythm in a song while playing in a group setting. I definitely didn’t stop learning new things. On the contrary. I reached a point with my own playing where I had immediate goals outside of Justin’s grades. Maybe some of those were things Justin covers later. But they were priorities for me. Along the way I started picking up other things, too. New chords (my chord library is WAY beyond where I am in Justin’s grades at this point), rhythms, riffs, etc. I only just started Grade 2 recently. But I’ve absolutely learned quite a few bits and pieces within (and beyond) it. That said, I’m still working my way through it so I can make sure that I’m not skipping over some skill/technique.

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With my previous 2 year’s experience, I already had many skills from grade’s 1 and 2, just all over the place. When I started, some of the content I already knew, I watched those videos once, took notes, and practiced the practices. Some of those lessons I marked completed very quickly, even in one day. Other content I had to spend more time on. I figured that is the best way to consolidate my existing skill with the skills taught by Justin. I completed Grade 1 in one month, and spent the next 5 months consolidating those skills and memorizing my 5 songs.

Then I decided I am not in a box. I am still memorizing my 5th song for grade 1, I completed module 8 except I still need to work on Free Fallin some more and 2 of the recommended chord changes a bit (personal goal is 60bpm), and I am halfway through module 9. I also spot checked some of the 10-14 lessons and completed a couple of those that I already have good experience with.

So, your path, like mine, may not be so cut and dried like a “true beginner”. And that is okay. But, like others have said, consolidation is the main driver. I spent 5 months consolidating grade 1. My mind map has me completing grade 2 in December and consolidating until June '27. I recommend you consider doing something similar to my path.

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Thanks Mustela, I wasn’t asking for myself specifically, I was more curious what the general expectations/guidance was. But of course people’s answers might inform my practice. :slight_smile:

For me, my experience was like 20 years ago, but then I played a little bass maybe 10 years ago (took some lessons etc.). I have a weird knack for some of the techniques - like within a few sessions I can lay down the F barre chord and have every note ring out. On the other hand, chord changing can cause me to miss some notes, so I’m spending time really trying to get down some of the chord changes in particular songs. For example, on Free Fallin by Tom Petty, the pattern is D G G D A, but the G D A part is much faster changing, so I miss the low string on the D and the A is inconsistent. So there’s a great thing for me to focus on during my practices. So for me, the beginning of Grade 2 turned out to be a natural place to slow down and start nailing things down more because the songs got harder to play. (Something like Sing by Ed Sheeran was great fun and really easy for me during Grade 1.) So I’ve kind of figured out a sensible answer for myself for the time being at least. I’ve done 6 practice sessions on Module 9 and the C major scale and pinky workout are easy for me: I can play them at 80 bpm with a metronome and make mistakes very rarely, but I like the songs I’m working on now a lot more and want to really get them down. (I had another post I’m going to make about questions I have about practicing songs etc.) The Californication riff is another thing that I can do, but really want to keep working on to get closer to nailing before moving on. I kind of have a vague notion of spending a longer time consolidating and learning songs that I want to learn after I finish the Beginner course.

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Freewheelin, thanks for all your replies, you are clearly a premier community contributor!!! :smiley:

I think I’ve naturally come into my slow down moment in the beginning parts of Grade 2. Like I said to Mustela, some parts are easy like getting the F barre played, the C Major scale, the pinky workout in Module 9, but others are harder but I feel motivated to get down like Californication riff and some of the songs. I’m intellectually curious how long the average Justin course student takes on this stuff. :slight_smile:

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barre chords are an interesting one for me.

I’ve been able to “make” them pretty well for quite some time. Even during one of my earlier attempts at learning guitar (over 20yrs ago now), I could form the chord and have it ring out clearly pretty early. Problem was actually making use of it. It takes me awhile to work my way into a barre chord shape when I’ve been playing open chords previously.

This time around (which I’m about 2.5yrs into), I had a private instructor for a spell from about 7mo to 13mo into it and he started to get me working on barre chords. Now, after another year and a half, I’m still working on including barre chords in songs. I’m getting better with including F (and I can play a few songs with it) and I’ve introduced B (and Bb) and Bm (and Bbm and Cm) and I’m making progress. But they’re still shaky so I still have to do lots of slow practice at home. And I’m going to be working with them for quite awhile still I think. And I honestly haven’t even reached Justin’s lesson on the F barre chord yet.

I did just do Justin’s lesson on the Em pentatonic scale. I’ll probably be checking that one off pretty quickly. My instructor got me onto a couple scales awhile ago and I’ve been playing misc riffs (and I’ve also started the solo Blues course) so it wasn’t hard to play. The only thing keeping me from checking that one off already is making sure I’ve got the shape memorized solidly. I’ll probably give it a week or so before I move on and I’ll be working on the string muting stuff at the same time.

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Yeah it totally makes sense when Justin says he’s introducing it early so we can start it now because it’s going to take a long time to use it!