All About Guitars

Going it alone with studying the guitar is rewarding, saves you the money you’d otherwise spend on a teacher and doesn’t tie you down to a timescale set by someone else.

As long as you can remain concentrated that is. We don’t all have the self discipline to follow a self study course all the way through and may even be better off going to a teacher who sees our progression each week and keeps us on track.

I sure enough feel it tough enough and so I’ve come up with three sure fire ways to keep up that momentum and stay driven. They work well for me and if you need to learn to play guitar and keep some money in your pocket then read on:

1. Present yourself timescales and deadlines to work to. For example order yourself that you intend to be able to play that song all the way through, or the main verse, or the chorus, or that solo by the end of the week. Don’t beat yourself up if you can’t fulfill the deadline but still give yourself a reason to exercise a particular amount every day until this goal is met – then move onto another.

2. Practice your musical scales, arpeggios, chord progressions and exercises first then play the song you’re on afterward followed by some messing about. It can get dull practicing those all fundamental exercises and very tempting to just skip them and go onto the fun part. Treat them like the green veggies you never wanted to eat up as a kid but had to if you wanted some of that nice sweet later on.

3. Follow your guitar heroes on video sites like Youtube, get day by day inspiration and also observe the song you’re exercising on being played. It can get isolated and demoralizing when you’re evolving your skills so watch your guitar idols and remember that they were where you are now and got to where they are by continuing on.

These 3 methods are what keep me focused and building up my guitar skills when I could quite easily just stop exercising those tedious musical scales and go and do something more fun. A programme and some direction will get you through the tough times and see you playing like a pro possibly even faster than if you had paid out for a teacher.

Keep your eye on the prize, set true to life goals, stay inspired and you will get there.

Peter Webber

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One of the first things you think of if you contemplate beginner guitar lessons is the cost. What is a fair price to pay for guitar lessons? If you are thinking about taking lessons from a local Guitar teacher, then the first thing you should know is that this has become the most expensive way of taking lessons on the guitar. Prices charged by guitar teachers vary widely so you are likely to be charged more in Sydney, London or New York than you are in a small town in Outer Slobovia. And we have not even started to talk about how teachers vary in quality and experience.

If you are not confident about learning guitar from a book or an online course, then you will need to make some kind of value judgement about whatever guitar teachers are available and sign up for whatever the minimum number of lessons is. Once you have gotten the basics from your teacher, try learning from books or online courses. If it does not work out, you can always go back to your teacher. The cost of guitar tutor books will depend on whether you buy new or secondhand. Chords, scales and songs are just as good in the books you pick up at the local garage sale or markets. If you find a book that has the material you want to learn, then buy it and work on it for a while.

How you choose your book or online course depends on how good your teacher has been at guiding you in your choice of musical style, and your understanding of how far you need to go as a beginner guitar student. During your first few lessons with a teacher you will probably have decided whether you are going to learn to read musical notation or guitar tablature. You will probably also have an idea about how to tune your guitar even if you are not good at it yet. If you do not know these things then you will need to go investigating online.

An ongoing concern should be keeping your guitar in tune. If your guitar is not kept in tune then your friends will not want to hear you play. In fact your playing might make them want to hurt you. You can find guitar tuners online. You can even find tuners that you can save on your computer. A metronome is also essential, so find and download yourself a free metronome and get into the habit of using it as you practice. You can set the metronome for very slow speeds to begin with and increase the speed as your technique gets better.

Warming up is as important for a beginner guitar player as it is for an athlete. You can do serious damage to yourself by holding your guitar in a way that puts too much strain on your back, plus the way you make chord shapes or use the plectrum could also be leaving you open to repetitive strain injury. If you do not know anybody who can give you advice on this subject, do an internet search. The principals are the same for typists, musicians or anybody who does fine, repetitive work, so read up on it wherever you can. This leads onto the subject of strumming patterns. Once you have learnt a few chords you will need some strumming patterns to practice. This is as much to keep your learning chord changes fresh as for learning strumming itself.

The things I have mentioned in this article are the very basic topics that a beginner guitar player should consider when thinking about lessons. As you do more research you will find many more things to learn about guitar lessons in general and your musical genre in particular.

Ricky Sharples

One of the first things you think of if you contemplate beginner Guitar lessons is the cost. What is a fair price to pay for guitar lessons? If you are thinking about taking lessons from a local guitar teacher, then the first thing you should know is that this has become the most expensive way of taking lessons on the guitar. Prices charged by guitar teachers vary widely so you are likely to be charged more in Sydney, London or New York than you are in a small town in Outer Slobovia. And we have not even started to talk about how teachers vary in quality and experience.

If you are not confident about learning guitar from a book or an online course, then you will need to make some kind of value judgement about whatever guitar teachers are available and sign up for whatever the minimum number of lessons is. Once you have gotten the basics from your teacher, try learning from books or online courses. If it does not work out, you can always go back to your teacher. The cost of guitar tutor books will depend on whether you buy new or secondhand. Chords, scales and songs are just as good in the books you pick up at the local garage sale or markets. If you find a book that has the material you want to learn, then buy it and work on it for a while.

How you choose your book or online course depends on how good your teacher has been at guiding you in your choice of musical style, and your understanding of how far you need to go as a beginner guitar student. During your first few lessons with a teacher you will probably have decided whether you are going to learn to read musical notation or guitar tablature. You will probably also have an idea about how to tune your guitar even if you are not good at it yet. If you do not know these things then you will need to go investigating online.

An ongoing concern should be keeping your guitar in tune. If your guitar is not kept in tune then your friends will not want to hear you play. In fact your playing might make them want to hurt you. You can find guitar tuners online. You can even find tuners that you can save on your computer. A metronome is also essential, so find and download yourself a free metronome and get into the habit of using it as you practice. You can set the metronome for very slow speeds to begin with and increase the speed as your technique gets better.

Warming up is as important for a beginner guitar player as it is for an athlete. You can do serious damage to yourself by holding your guitar in a way that puts too much strain on your back, plus the way you make chord shapes or use the plectrum could also be leaving you open to repetitive strain injury. If you do not know anybody who can give you advice on this subject, do an internet search. The principals are the same for typists, musicians or anybody who does fine, repetitive work, so read up on it wherever you can. This leads onto the subject of strumming patterns. Once you have learnt a few chords you will need some strumming patterns to practice. This is as much to keep your learning chord changes fresh as for learning strumming itself.

The things I have mentioned in this article are the very basic topics that a beginner guitar player should consider when thinking about lessons. As you do more research you will find many more things to learn about guitar lessons in general and your musical genre in particular.

Ricky Sharples

Maybe you have thought about Computer Guitar lessons. If you could order your own tailor-made guitar lesson course for your Computer, what would you request? It might help to think about the basic requirements of computer guitar lessons. Basically your lessons need to show you how to hold and play the guitar, how to read guitar tabs, sheet music or both, and some way of checking your progress. So let us look at some of the computer guitar lessons out there and see how they fulfill our requirements.

Learn And Master Guitar has a one-hundred page book, twenty DVDs, five CDs featuring backing tracks plus they offer free support. The structure of this course follows the basic principles of all computer guitar lessons: you have your learning material that you get from the book and from the DVDs, and you practice what you have learned using the backing tracks as a guide and reality check on your emerging guitar skills.

Another computer guitar course is called Amazing Guitar Secrets. Once again you have a book and DVDs containing your guitar lessons and backing tracks to play along with. You can track how you are progressing using a section of the book which allows you to have a visual record of what you have learnt.

If you have been looking around for computer guitar lessons you have probably come across Jamorama. Jamorama is for the guy who does not take music particularly seriously but thinks it might be cool to be able to play some songs and riffs on the guitar. Not that there’s anything wrong with that. To be fair, Jamorama does give you plenty of substantial material in the books, audio and video which you download to make you a “real” guitar player should you so desire.

The three guitar lesson courses I have mentioned are meant to be shipped to you in printed form and on discs or downloaded and kept on your computer. There is another alternative: the membership site. The most comprehensive and so far the most successful is Jamplay. With Jamplay you get access to a number of guitar teachers who are experts in their own style of music. These teachers are videoed giving lessons illustrating techniques and how to play particular songs. The lessons cover all stages of guitar learning. So with Amazing Guitar Secrets, Jamorama and Learn And Master Guitar you get to keep all the guitar lessons at your house, your Jamplay membership gets you access to any improvements, revisions and updates that occur. Jamplay also has progress reports, a forum and support through video answers to your questions. Jamplay is probably the most economical option as you can pay by the month, and your fees drop drastically if you pay by the quarter or annually.

I should mention that none of the above computer guitar lesson courses lack for quality. The printed material, downloadable audio and video, CDs and DVDs are all first class. The difference between the methods is the varying approaches to the guitar.

Ricky Sharples