Learn to play the guitar online

There are such a multitude of sites offering guitar lessons these days that it’s hard to know where to start. There are free sites and paid sites, sites that offer video lessons, sites that offer lesson downloads, sites that offer only tabs and textual information about modes and scales, etc. Then you have YouTube with tons of guitar lessons available to watch. Some sites are dedicated to a particular style of playing, while others offer a full spectrum of styles and teaching methods. Where to start with this somewhat daunting online set if you want to learn to play the guitar.

Well personally learning scales was never enough for me. How boring can you get? And music theory didn’t get me going either. Yawn. But I tell you what motivated me. Songs. Do you know. Music. My dad’s record collection: ELO, The Beatles, Neil Young, etc. Songs on the radio: ‘Oh, I love this song’… That’s what you want to do with the guitar, isn’t it? Play those songs you love? Who’s going to want to hear you play mixolydian (I have no idea what that is) or G minor scale around the campfire? Nobody, unless you’re some kind of twisted Joe Satriani fan. After a couple of beers, we all want to sing along to our favorite songs. Well that’s my experience anyway. We want to forget our problems and have a good singing.

So, I started with the guitar learning songs that I liked. I would just listen to records and pick the tune by ear. The songbooks are also good. The ones that give you a picture of the chords along with the words so you can look and copy without having to read music. Sometimes, I would look at the tab, but figuring it out was quite tedious. Therefore, I advise you to think about the songs you love, and start learning to play the simplest ones initially. Without a doubt, the best way to learn to play the guitar is to have a living and breathing teacher teach you. Nothing can replace a teacher who can say ‘okay play along’ or ‘change now’ or reach out and place your wrinkled spidery fingers in the right places. However, not all of us can afford a live human teacher in person. I would say the best is video guitar lessons and learning with a teacher via Skype.

In a video guitar lesson (especially if the teacher has thought through the camera angles correctly), you can see and hear what the player is doing and just copy it. You’re not just trying to figure it out from one page, which is much more difficult. You can also get a better idea of ​​time from a video lesson than from a page. On the downside, you don’t get comments on a video and you can’t ask questions about a video.

Lessons via Skype have the advantage that the teacher can hear what you play and comment, although he is hampered by the fact that he cannot reach out and put his fingers in the right places. Also, you can’t play a jam track with a teacher over Skype and sometimes the picture and sound lags a bit or the call can be dropped.

So to summarize. If you can’t afford a real live teacher, your best bet is video guitar lessons or Skype lessons. You can check out my song guitar lessons to get started.