Online Guitar
Courses
Online guitar courses are a great way to learn the basics of guitar or find a new
playing style. Armed with a clear understanding of what you wish to accomplish, you should be able
to find a guitar course with a little bit of research. Most of the paid sites will offer some free
introductory lessons or a limited membership and we encourage you to give them a test
drive.
Most online guitar courses offer guitar lessons for the absolute beginners.
Typical beginner guitar lessons begin with the parts of the guitar and how to tune the instrument.
Your next few lessons will get you strumming some basic chords and perhaps some single line
playing.
Many online guitar courses have programs for intermediate players as well. These
tend to focus on a particular playing style, or a particular technique like the blues or country
music. These courses will assume that you can play the open chords, perhaps barre chords as well.
You may be expected to be able to read tab and chord diagrams. For more advanced lessons,
especially if you’re interested in jazz or classical guitar, you may be expected to be able to read
traditional music notation.
The format of online guitar courses can vary quite a bit. The less expensive
guitar courses may be text only, with maybe a few midi files. The more expensive ones will have
online video lessons, supplementary books that you can download, and play-along recordings. Expect
the guitar course to provide books to complement the lessons. You may find scale and chord
anthologies as well. Software designed to work on a particular theoretical concept, like note
reading, is often offered as a bonus to registered students.
Play-along recordings are extremely useful for self-teaching methods like online
guitar courses and can be a lot of fun. They give you a sense of how a piece of music should sound.
Many of them are in a music-minus-one format, meaning you play the role of guitarist and will be
playing along with other members of the band! This gives you the experience of playing along with a
band, which is not only fun but also very important for your development of rhythm and
timing.
Another great feature of online guitar courses are the forums and chats that some
offer. These give you an opportunity to interact with other players, and in some cases even the
instructors. You can learn from other students that may be in a similar place to you, or you may be
able to work out a particularly challenging technique together. If you have access to an
instructor, it brings online lessons one step closer to being almost like private lessons, a place
where you can get the advice of a professional in real time.
The cost of online guitar courses can vary quite a bit and range from free to a
few hundred dollars. Obviously, the free lessons are limited and are typically provided to give you
a sampling of the style and teaching techniques before committing to a paid for subscription.
Guitar lessons are provided in different formats such as paid subscriptions to a website to access
online video lessons or DVD’s sent to you in the mail. Whether you choose to sign up for online
guitar courses through a monthly subscription or purchase a set of DVD’s, these types of guitar
lessons are very inexpensive compared to private lessons which will cost upwards of $25 to even $50
per hour depending on the style of guitar you wish to learn, and the
instructor.
If you’re considering the online approach to guitar lessons, you might want to
sign up for some of the free guitar lessons first. They’ll give you a good sense of the quality of
the program, as well as its strengths and focus. A few days with some free guitar lessons will
introduce you to the guitar, and give you the chance to see if an online guitar course is the right
choice for you!
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