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Creativity Quote by Michael Schenker

"I practiced for at least two hours every day for twenty years, before then I practiced maybe four to five hours a day, and before then 14 hours a day. It was all I had ever done"

About this Quote

The flex in Michael Schenker's math is the point: an escalating timeline of practice that reads less like a schedule and more like a life sentence he willingly served. He stacks hours the way guitar players stack amps, turning discipline into mythology. Two hours a day for twenty years is already intense; the earlier "four to five" and especially "14 hours a day" pushes into the realm where virtuosity stops sounding like talent and starts sounding like compulsion. It's not a humblebrag so much as a manifesto: skill is not granted, it's built, and it costs you something.

The subtext is a quiet refusal of the romantic story that rock guitar greatness is just vibe, swagger, or divine inspiration. Schenker came up in a scene that worshipped spontaneity and rebellion, but his claim smuggles in an almost classical ethic of apprenticeship. "It was all I had ever done" lands like both pride and warning. It frames practice as identity, not a means to an end. When you play that much, the guitar stops being an instrument and becomes the language you think in.

Context matters: Schenker is a bridge figure between late-60s British hard rock discipline and the shred-era obsession with technical mastery. His line reads like a corrective to anyone treating musicianship as content. Underneath, it's also about scarcity: if practice was all he had, then practice was how he made a world.

Quote Details

TopicWork Ethic
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Citation Formats

APA Style (7th ed.)
Schenker, Michael. (2026, January 16). I practiced for at least two hours every day for twenty years, before then I practiced maybe four to five hours a day, and before then 14 hours a day. It was all I had ever done. FixQuotes. https://fixquotes.com/quotes/i-practiced-for-at-least-two-hours-every-day-for-95973/

Chicago Style
Schenker, Michael. "I practiced for at least two hours every day for twenty years, before then I practiced maybe four to five hours a day, and before then 14 hours a day. It was all I had ever done." FixQuotes. January 16, 2026. https://fixquotes.com/quotes/i-practiced-for-at-least-two-hours-every-day-for-95973/.

MLA Style (9th ed.)
"I practiced for at least two hours every day for twenty years, before then I practiced maybe four to five hours a day, and before then 14 hours a day. It was all I had ever done." FixQuotes, 16 Jan. 2026, https://fixquotes.com/quotes/i-practiced-for-at-least-two-hours-every-day-for-95973/. Accessed 27 Mar. 2026.

More Quotes by Michael Add to List
Michael Schenker: Practicing Guitar up to 14 Hours a Day
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About the Author

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Michael Schenker (born January 10, 1955) is a Musician from Germany.

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