How to practice?
 

To be honest, I can play most chords and have built a sense of understanding of sound for various chords and notes.

And I am stuck here.. don't know what to schedule or how to practice & enjoy that session as well. Tried picking up a song and practicing, but just not moving anywhere and so end up stopping midway and doing something else.

Is this a generic problem for a new guitar player or is it just me? Am I just not focused enough to learn?

Would love to hear how you all motivate yourself everyday and keep learning.

And apologies if this topic has been beaten to death already.

What type of music? Finger picking or strumming.

Sure... we've all gone down that road!

What helped me immeasurably was going through the menu and finding songs that interested me at Jerry's Guitar Bar'.

With every song you get the lesson, a complete play thru, the song sheet, and tab sheet!
Jerry shows you exactly how to do it.
The beauty is being able to stop, backup, forward, etc.. and Jerry really has an amazing natural talent to teach in a very easy to grasp fashion!

Give it a look. He's also a member here.
You need your computer... it won't work with a smart phone.

https://www.jerrysguitarbar.com

Thanks so much! Will surely check out Jerry's Guitar Bar.

And I much prefer finger picking, though am a novice in either form.

Find tunes you like and that require skills that are not too far in advance of where you are. Learn them, preferably note for note, if possible. Learn via tab or standard notation, video, or by ear. Learn them down cold and up to tempo. That is how you keep up your interest and how you can, in probably the least painful way, get to be a better player.

Challenge yourself to learn something new. For me, motivation has not been a problem for over 25 years: I LOVE playing guitar. But then, I know a lot of players aren't quite like that. For me, the number one motivation, if I'm honest, is hearing a beautiful sound coming from the guitar that I'm playing. When I was a beginner, the motivation was challenging myself to play something that sounded difficult.

I can only say what I did. After learning those chords you mentioned, I started learning chord progressions with a metronome. Take it slow at first and try to go a bit faster as you get the hang of it. Then from there, start tackling some bar
chords and adding them to the progressions. Then start to learn songs, again with the metronome. Best way I know of,,,,to get moving on down the road.

Can you play most of the chords in this book?


http://tedgreenebookeditions.com/ChordChemistry/12/

Can't everybody?

Ok, the 1st thing to remember is that guitar playing in it's most basic form is developing muscle memory through repetition. Just like hundreds of things we do in everyday life that we take for granted. Such as learning to write your name. At 1st it took concentration, was slow and didn't look very good. Now you blaze through it w/o a thought.
Now my particular style of practicing has always been to pick a tune that I really like. That I'm familiar with or make myself familiar with by listening to it over and over. Generally I'll get a CD of it and play it over and over while driving. Until I know every nuance of the song. So I know how it's supposed to sound. How can you replicate something you're not completely familiar with?
Next, I keep a guitar handy. In my case on a stand next to my favorite living room chair. I don't remove myself from other daily (evening) activities to practice. I practice while I watch TV etc. It's everyday life in my home that while the family is watching TV, I've got a guitar in my lap. And I practice intermittently throughout the evening. Often strumming or picking very softly using my thumb/fingers during prime parts of TV programing. Using a pick and playing louder/more aggressively during commercials or times when family interest in the TV program is low. IMO it's OK to practice using your thumb to strum. Because when you use a pick, it's still the basic principle. The pick goes where your thumb goes. And the fretting is the same.
Then just play whatever tune you're working on over and over. Again repetition is key. I can tell you that even after nearly 50 years of playing, I often work on pieces for WEEKS before I get them down to my satisfaction. Playing the same thing hundreds if not thousands of times.
3 key ingredients you need are patience, passion and dedication. You're not in a race and there's no time limit on how long it should take. Just take your time and enjoy the process. But you do need to try to play EVERY DAY. An old saying that I have is this.
"Miss one day practicing and you will know it. Miss two days and everyone will know it".
One caution that I would mention in my daily process is that you can develop some bad guitar playing posture elements if you're not careful. Take care to not get into a habit of playing too much reclined in a recliner etc.

Not a substitute for practice, but when I started going to a weekly jam with a few friends my playing improved tremendously. Simple song circle format - each person calls a tune, shows the group (best to have 10 to 15 people at the most) how it goes, then we play, passing the lead or break around. Its great for your rhythm, improvisation, harmonizing, listening to others etc. but mostly it is a lot of fun. I learned more and improved more in my first year of the weekly jam than my first 5 years of sitting at home playing alone.

One thing rarely discussed is how long to practice for. Mentally, anything past 20 minutes or so becomes lost when it comes to practicing one thing, so try breaking up your playing time. Maybe pick a technique or song, work on it for 20 minutes then go on to something else. Maybe just play something for fun, noodle around a bit, do the laundry. Then focus on something for another 20 minute session.

Brian

@fatstrat - Thanks so much all! I agree about muscle memory - I guess am jumping the gun trying to learn something really fast and being disappointed. Will gonslow at my own place and practice while not necessarily changing my routine.

@MC5C - And that 20 minutes advise is really helpful too..

@Mandobart - will need to find people who are also learning and jam up with them.

Great pointers!

Another "theory" of mine. I can't prove scientifically that it works. But I firmly believe it does for me.
Run through whatever you're working on right before you go to bed. So that it's fresh in your memory when you go to sleep. Somehow for for me, it just seems like brain kinda puts things together a bit during the night. I swear, when I get up in the morning, I can almost always play it better than I did the night before.

Learning mechanically first is fine but try to get more into listening as soon as possible. Best scenario is that only learning material is the music = no written notation.