How many hours should I practice?

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How many hours should I practice a day if I wanna develop my left hand dexterity faster ?

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As much as you like (it should be something you like to do and look forward to, and not feel tedious or boring), but not until it hurts.

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For myself, I try to practice more often and more consistently. Better 15 minutes of practice than not at all. It’s like anything else (going to the gym for instance).

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It doesn’t matter how LONG you practice. What matters is setting a goal and continuing until you’ve achieved that goal.

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And enjoying it, every step of the way.

Also, work for the short term. If your long-term goal is “to become as good as Hadrien Féraud”, try breaking that up into 65535 short-term goals, and work towards those, one at a time.

If you don’t do that, you’ll fall off before you’re halfway. When scaling a mountain, the most important goal you have is the next step, not the summit.

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How many hours should I practice?
All of them!

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If you’re following the beginner course, I suggest that you use one of the schedules that Josh lays out. The bass is quite a physically demanding instrument, and it might take a while for your body to get used to playing it.

I was very excited at first, and set out to complete the entire course as quickly as possible. I practiced for hours every day, and I wound up hurting my fretting hand. I had to cut down my playing time drastically for a week or so until my hand had healed.

There are some great suggestions for how to avoid hurting yourself in this thread: Hand Care.

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This is true. I didn’t really believe it when started, but I am convinced now. In order to play it properly, especially on the fretting hand, you gotta develop the strength and coordination. It’s not obvious, but it’s true.

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Agree completely and I would even go a little farther - if you are taking the course, I would suggest that you don’t practice much at all, just do the course lessons and slow, medium and fast workouts, with fast being optional, until you are done with the first few modules of the course at least.

This way you will build fundamental skills, have fun, and be less likely to build bad habits.

The last few lessons in the course cover what to do to move on after the course. That’s a good time to think about your ongoing practice rituals. Until then you have tons of great practice already built in to the course.

This worked great for me anyway.

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