How Long Does It Take to Learn Guitar?

It's the question I get asked more than any other in trial lessons. Usually it comes out a bit sheepishly, somewhere between tuning up and the first chord: "So… how long does this actually take?"

It's a fair question. Here's my honest answer, with a bit of research and a few stories from my own playing and from our students.

The 10,000 hour rule

You've probably heard that it takes 10,000 hours to become an expert at anything. The idea was made famous by Malcolm Gladwell in his book Outliers, and it was based on research by psychologist Anders Ericsson, who studied violinists at a music academy in Berlin. (Interestingly, when researchers repeated that violin study in 2019, the link between practice and skill came out much weaker.)

The catch? Ericsson himself said Gladwell had oversimplified his work. There's nothing magic about 10,000 hours, and later research backs that up. A large review of studies in 2014 found that practice accounted for only around a fifth of the differences in musical skill between people.

So hours on the clock aren't the whole story. As Don says in his post on how to practice classical guitar, it's not how much you practise, but how you practise.

20 hours

At the opposite end, author Josh Kaufman argues it takes about 20 hours of focused practice to go from knowing nothing to being reasonably decent at a new skill. He tested the idea himself by learning the ukulele, and played the result live in his TEDx talk, The First 20 Hours.

Twenty hours won't make you Hendrix, but it's a lovely reminder that getting started doesn't take forever.

So: 20 hours to get going, 10,000 to master it. The truth for most of us is somewhere in the middle.

How long did it take me?

I decided I wanted to play guitar after watching Wayne's World. I was 10.

My first lesson at school was… not quite what I'd pictured. Instead of a Stratocaster and a stack of amps, I was sat with a classical guitar, a page of sheet music and my foot on a little stool. But I loved it. I enjoyed learning to read music, I enjoyed the melodies, and I had a really lovely teacher called Debbie Cracknell. Many young classical players will know her name: she wrote the Enjoy Playing Guitar books for Oxford University Press. I don't regret a minute of it. I've recently turned 40 so that's 30 years so far!

What to realistically expect

Don't expect everything to make sense overnight. Learning guitar is a bit like a spiral: you keep coming back to the same things again and again, and each time you think, "Oh, that's what they meant!" or "So that links to this… which links to this." Those moments only come with time.

If you want a target to aim for, here's mine:

Learn 8 to 10 chords, and be able to play 2 or 3 strumming patterns confidently in time with a metronome.

If you can do that, you've got around 80% of most popular music covered.

How long does that take? In my experience, a student who genuinely practises every day can be playing basic songs in time with music within three to six months. For some people it takes longer, and that's absolutely fine. A slower pace doesn't make it any less enjoyable.

Talent vs turning up

One thing teaching has shown me is that progress isn't really about talent.

Some of the students who've done best weren't even especially passionate about music. They were sloggers. They just put the work in, week after week, and got there.

Others have made slower progress but absolutely loved every minute of it. Who's to say which of them is doing it "right"?

And here's something that surprises people. The adult learners who've made the quickest progress have often been the most critical of their own playing, and the least confident. Adults in particular almost always think they're not good enough, even when they're doing brilliantly. If that sounds like you, you're in very good company.

So, how long does it take?

Honestly? A lifetime. And never.

You never really arrive with the guitar. There's always another technique, another style, another song that shows you something new. But that's the whole point, and I wouldn't want it any other way.

If you'd like some help getting those first 8 to 10 chords under your fingers, why not book a free trial lesson with one of our tutors?

Keep strumming!

Simon

Tremolo Guitar School

Tune-up, Login & Learn