Twelve months. Whatever your level.
The Challenge is a slice of your journey with a line drawn round it. You commit to a year of picking the guitar up, you leave a trail of it as you go, and at the end you tell the story.
You can spend a year on this and still not be very good, and still have done it exactly right. What is being counted is whether you kept turning up.
What it measures
Someone might play for a whole year and make almost no progress. That is not the point and it is not being marked. A year of showing up is genuinely hard and almost nobody manages it — that is the thing worth something, not talent.
So there is no standard to clear. Nobody is judging your playing, and you are not competing with anyone here, including me.
How it works
- Start whenever you like. Day 1 of the Challenge is the day you enrol, however long you had been playing before that.
- Each month, leave some evidence. One practice video makes the month on the playing side. Nobody watches it for quality — it is proof the guitar came out of the case.
- Stay part of the place. A live session, a check-in, or helping somebody in the forum — any of them moves the community side of a month.
- Twelve qualifying months, then you submit. You write what the year was like, and I read every single one myself.
A month you miss is not a month you lose. It is a journey, not a streak — you pick it back up where you left it, and everything already banked stays banked.
What it costs
Nothing, and it never will. The Challenge is not a paid feature. Band Membership is for nice-to-haves; it is never the price of the part that matters.
Finish it as a Band Member and you become a Lifetime Band Member — you never pay for membership again, for as long as this site exists. That needs both tracks: twelve months of evidence, and twelve qualifying payments made while you were in the band. If you are not a member you can still do the whole Challenge and still finish it.
Where you learn the guitar bit
Wherever you want. We genuinely don’t mind. Pickup Music, JustinGuitar, Simply Guitar, a teacher down the road, YouTube, or working it out on your own. DayXGuitar is not a course and is not trying to become one. It is where you document it and who you do it near.
Journey or Challenge?
Your journey is yours and it never ends. Everyone here has one from the day they arrive: day-numbered notes on how the playing is going, kept in order, for as long as you keep writing them.
The Challenge is twelve months of that journey with a start, a finish and something at the end. You do not need it to use the site, and plenty of people will never do it. But if you want the year to count for something outside your own head, that is what it is for.
Start your journey — it's free
You can start the Challenge the moment you have an account, or leave it and just keep a journey. Both are completely fine.