The Guitar Players Club

How I Learned to Play Guitar

Hi, my name is John and I wanted to comment on how I learned to play the guitar. I was given a six string acoustic guitar as a gift some time ago. It set in the closet and collected dust for a while. Then one night, at a party a friend started playing

his guitar. Everyone was singing along and it was great. Later he showed me a few chords and I was hooked.

I decided I was going to learn to play the guitar. My problem is I do not have time to do much more than eat and sleep. Personal local lessons were also so expensive I would never be able to afford it. I began to research alternative methods to learn to play. Some of the ways I found were:

• Computer Software: There is a wide variety of packages available to teach you to play the guitar. You can learn to play acoustic or electric guitar this way. It is recommended you learn acoustic before trying to play an electric guitar.

• Local Lessons: For me this was too expensive and too time consuming. Lessons would take over an hour. It would also take an hour to get there and back. I just did not have this kind of time or money.

• A friend to teach you: If you are lucky enough you can get your friend to teach you. This is how I started to learn. My friend is not a professional but he has been able to teach me a few things.

I left out the way I learned; video training. I learned through a web site that had teachers who taught through video clips. My friend also sat in on some of the lessons and helped me a little on the cost. This web site had a wide variety of teachers. You could learn beginning guitar, jazz guitar, rock guitar, blues, acoustic and even classical. The amazing part was the cost. It was amazingly affordable. I could take the lessons when I wanted to, and learn at my own pace.

There are many web sites that offer video training. The other cool thing is that you can try before you buy. That saved me some money. I tried classical and found that it was too hard for me. It saved me the money of having to pay for a lesson that was too advanced, and really not my style.

The other great thing about the site I learned from, was all the free tools available. Some of them were:

• Metronome: you will need the shockwave browser plug-in to use this tool. It is great to help you keep time and stay in rhythm. A must have tool, as any instructor will tell you.

• Chord Dictionary: You will need the flash plug-in to use this tool also. This tool is awesome. It has sixty three basic chords and allows you to both see, and hear them. You could probably learn to play with just this tool.

• Fretboard Tuner: A Simple tool that helps you visualize the chords and can be used to tune your guitar.

• The Fretboard Note Chart: Great tool. It requires flash. It is great for the beginner because you can use your mouse to see all the chords available on the fretboard. It is very cool and extremely helpful.

• Minituner: A simple graphical tool that allows you to record and play back a chord or music. It's a very useful way to tune your guitar.

I believe if you search you will find these tools all over the Internet. It was nice that they were right there on the site I chose to learn from.

I learned to play the guitar over the Internet through video lessons and would recommend learning this way to anyone. It was fun, easy and very affordable. I hope my journey of learning to play the guitar via the Internet has been helpful for at least some of you.

This entry was posted on Sunday, March 30th, 2008 at 2:20 pm and is filed under User Submitted Thoughts.You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.