The total amount of time each of us is able to spend practicing guitar each week probably varies considerably depending on competing activities. However, for the purpose of the questions I am about to pose assume that someone is able to budget seven hours a week for guitar practice.

1. With a seven hour per week time budget, will they make more progress over many months of practice if they spend their seven-hour weekly time allocation in a single session once per week, for example, seven hours each Saturday, or if they practice one hour a day each day of the week?
   
   
2. If you think they will make more progress practicing one hour each day, how would those results compare to practicing six times each day for ten-minutes?
   
   
3. If you think they will make more progress practicing six times a day for ten-minutes, how would those results compare to practicing twelve times a day for five minutes?
   
   
4. If you think they will make more progress practicing twelve times a day for five minutes, do you think there is a limit to the extent to which practice session time can be divided and distributed with improved results? If so, what is that limit and why?

Competing obligations obviously make it impractical for most people to practice many times per day. In those cases the questions above become progressively more academic as practice session times become shorter. Even so, it is valuable to know what is best and to follow that plan to the extent possible.

I conducted a practical experiment related to these questions years ago while teaching college physics and math classes. I will explain the experiment and the result in another post, but it will be interesting to first learn the practice schedule you think will be best.

-Bob

First we must factor in that guitar practice has a physical element as well as mental so we must schedule practice using guidelines suggested for any physical exercise.

Physical
Each session must be long enough to build strength and train fingers, but avoid fatigue or injury from overdoing practice.

Mental
Each session must be long enough to accomplish learning something even if it is a short falseta or improving dynamics on already memorized falseta, but short enough so one does not get mentally fatigued or distracted and play aimlessly developing bad habits.

I propose that 5 days a week is best. With the 7 hour quota that would be 1.4 hours a day and should meet both the physical and mental guidelines.

I think there is more benefit in practising one hour each day rather than seven hours once a week. My own practise regime is based around playing five days each week for at least one hour. I did go through a time when I was playing only on Sunday mornings for some six weeks, and although I usually played through my whole repertoire that's all it was, a play-through not a practise session.

One hour or six ten minute sessions - I think the jury is still out, but I don't think you can do enough in six ten-minute sessions to equal what you could do in one solid hour.

Twelve five-minutes sessions - I think this would be a waste of time. You would hardly be warmed up to work and your session would be over.

To be perfectly honest, I think 20 minutes is the minimum time where you could realistically claim to have done something in your practise session. I like to think that I've "done something" when I put my guitar down after a practise session.


Alan

I personally think "length" is irrelevant. Quality of practice is what I tend to achieve. I practice everyday and set a goal for each day. Once I feel that it's enough and I feel I achieved so, I stop or If I feel tension and pain I stop. On sluggish days, I'll just do a few rasgueos and put the guitar down.

In a sense, I practice with my conscience. When I feel i did well, I can sleep better at night. Sometimes I can stay all night, sometimes just a few minutes.

I asked the questions at the beginning of this discussion thread a long time ago and then became busy and never explained the experiment.

College math and physics students are expected to learn huge amounts of complicated new information over relatively short periods of time. It may be less true today than years ago when I was teaching, but many of my students were married, paying their own expenses, and had to work evenings or weekends to be able to afford college. Full-time students taking rigorous courses with the handicaps of family and employment obligations had to make the most of available study-times.

Teachers soon learn the importance of frequent reviews. If students learn something new and a lot of time passes before reviewing what they learned, it often is necessary to re-teach previously-learned information almost as though it had never been presented before, because most of it will have been forgotten.

Knowing that, I proposed a home-study-efficiency experiment to students in my classes. Some of them worked evenings, but were able to study several hours on weekends. Some worked weekends, but could study short periods each evening. Others were neither married nor employed and could study whenever they weren't partying. It was agreed that everyone would keep careful records of home study times. I agreed that grades would not be influenced in any way by reported home study, but only by test scores and other indicators of learning.

The results were dramatic. On average, students who studied short periods each evening fared far better than those who studied similar total amounts of time on weekends. That was true in most cases even where nightly study times totaled significantly less than weekend study times. Students who studied nightly were able to rehearse what they had learned earlier in the day before it was forgotten. That reinforced the information in their memories and made it much more likely that they would be able to remember it in the future. Those who studied only on weekends had forgotten much of what had been covered days earlier and had to spend large portions of their study times just getting back to where the nightly-study-group started.

Though they were learning mathematics and physics, rather than to play guitar, I think the same principles apply and that the results from a similar guitar-practice experiment would be similar. If you learn a new falseta, play it again from memory a short time later before you have forgotten it, and then repeatedly play it again from memory over short time intervals after that, you will be much more apt to still be able to play it weeks later than if you learn it today, relearn it a week from now, and then relearn it again a week after that. Exposure frequency is very important to memory reinforcement. Total practice time is not nearly as important as practice frequency.

The past couple-years I have kept a guitar on a stand next to my desk while I am writing computer code. Whenever I am temporarily stumped by a programming bug, undecided about the best way to proceed, waiting for someone to call with information needed to proceed, or simply needing a break, I pick up the guitar and play something I am learning. I rarely play very long, but I play frequently. My rate of improvement has been much greater playing frequently like that than it was before when practicing longer periods of time, but much less frequently.

As to the issue of having to spend practice time "warming up" before being able to play very well and benefitting much from practice, I find that frequent playing eliminates the need to "warm up." I am already "warmed up," because I was playing a short time ago. Whether guitar playing is a break from work, or work is a break from guitar playing, is simply a matter of perspective. When professional performers take breaks, they generally don't need to "warm up" when they start playing again, because they are already "warmed up." The breaks serve to refresh and make them able to play better again, much as coffee breaks refresh workers and help restore their productivities.

It generally wouldn't be acceptable for most people to take frequent guitar-playing breaks at their places of work, but I think those who telecommute or run their own businesses from home should consider it as way to both greatly accelerate playing improvement and to refresh themselves from the boredom of work and make their work-times more productive. The "bottom-line" message is simple. If someone wants to become good at something, they should practice it frequently.

-Bob

I support myself giving piano lessons, know little about flamenco, and hope you won't mind my intrusion to make a comment. I registered to say that while I don't know much about flamenco, I concur with the previous poster about the importance of frequent musical instrument practice. Some of my piano students are children, but most are adults. The children practice regularly, because their parents tell them they have to. They progress rapidly, but the adults generally don't. They seem to think they can learn to play piano just by paying for lessons, but I teach them something, they forget it because they don't practice, and next week I teach it to them again. They would progress like the children if they would go home, immediately practice what they just learned, and then play it again a few times each day until their next lesson, but few adults will do that. Most take a few lessons, become discouraged, and quit, because they aren't willing to practice.