28
May
2009
5 Steps To Choosing The Right Guitar Lesson Course
For guitarists nowdays, there are a multitude of different books, DVDs and other courses available, which often seem to offer amazing progress in just a few days - it seems all you have to do is watch the DVD / read the book, and you’ll be a virtuoso in no time! How do you choose between all of the guitar lesson products on offer?
Step 1 - Find Your Starting Point
It may seem rather obvious, but take a few minutes to think about where you’re at with your guitar playing at the moment. If you’d really like to play guitar, but have absolutely no experience up till now, this is pretty simple, as you’re just at the beginning, but just think about what made you want to learn the guitar in the first place.
It may be that you’ve learned a few basic chords already, and want to move on from that point, but still feel you’re in the beginner category. Or maybe you’ve mastered a range of open and barre chords, can play a few songs, and consider yourself a more intermediate player, and are looking to learn more lead guitar.
Or perhaps you consider yourself a reasonably advanced player, and are quite competent playing both rhythm and lead parts.
Whatever your current level, jot down a few notes on your current playing ability, being as honest as possible, this is for your own benefit.
Step 2 - What’s Your Target?
Similar to step 1, but now think about where you want to be with your guitar playing. Think about some realistic goals that you want to achieve, and then think about the steps en-route to those goals. If you’re a total beginner starting out, you might want to have the goal of being able to play all the basic chords, so that you can play a wide range of songs. Or maybe you’ve seen chord symbols above the melody in music books, and wanted to be able to just play along on the guitar, without stopping for ages to change chords.
Intermediate players - maybe there’s a particular style you want to learn in more detail, say fingerstyle, blues or jazz, or you just want to move on past ‘the basics’, and start playing lead or advanced rhythm guitar.
Advanced players - maybe you’d like to work more on improvisation in your solos, or learn more about scale modes, and how to incorporate them in your playing.
Again, whatever your level, just put some ideas down on paper, it will probably be a mixture of short and longer term goals, but they should be your goals, motivated by where you want to get to with the guitar. Choose some long term goals that are going to inspire you (after all, plenty of practice lies ahead!), and shorter term goals that are going to help you measure your progress along the way.
Step 3 - Choose The Best Lesson Type
As mentioned above, there are a huge number and variety of different guitar courses out there. At the risk of oversimplifying things, I would say these tend to fall into 2 main categories:
- DVD / video courses with accompanying books / other written material
- Membership sites with a range of online video and downloadable content (e.g. PDF document files)
For this step, think about courses or lessons you’ve followed before, not necessarily guitar or even music related. What format has been the one you’ve found most useful?
The DVD courses tend to have a series of DVDs where you can progress through a series of lessons of increasing difficulty, and while you don’t absolutely have to stick to the schedule laid out in the lessons, I find it’s best to work through all the lessons, to ensure you get the best value from these courses. It’s great to have the physical DVD / printed book to work through, and play along with over & over again.
The membership sites usually let you tailor the lessons much more to your own ability and needs, by downloading or following a certain set of specific lessons. Often, these sites cater for a wide range of different styles and abilities, and whatever your particular interest, you can usually find a lesson related to it. The other advantage is that you usually pay on a monthly basis for membership sites, so the initial outlay is sometimes less than with complete DVD courses.
On the flip side, with DVD courses, once you’ve paid for it, the DVD is yours to keep, whereas with membership sites, once you leave the site membership, you may not have access to all the course materials.
There isn’t always such a clear distinction between these 2 types, as membership sites often have a series of lessons on a certain topic to work through, and there are DVD courses where you can just buy individual DVDs out of a series.
However, just think about what type of product you’d feel more comfortable with, or is most practical for your situation.
Step 4 - Compare Available Courses
Using your results from the first 3 steps above, do some research on the guitar lesson courses that are available, and evaluate them to see whether they meet your needs:
- Is the course suitable for your current level of ability (Step 1) ?
- From the explanation of the course content, does it seem to be able to take you to where you want to be (Step 2) ?
- Is the style of course right for you (Step 3) ?
Another thing to consider is to ensure that the course has plenty of practice material, preferably plenty of audio jam tracks for you to play along with.
Other criteria are the quality of the video instruction in the lessons, and the level of support available (both from the product’s instructor/supplier and also by way of online forums).
There are reviews of a few different courses on this site.
For example, Learn & Master Guitar is a good example of the DVD course style, and is an extremely comprehensive course aimed mostly at beginners and intermediate level players.
Jamplay is a good example of a membership site with a wide variety of different lesson series and many different instructors.
Guitar Scale Mastery is an in-depth course aimed at players wanting to really understand scales & modes, and incorporate them naturally into their solos.
Have a look, and make a shortlist of the ones that meet most of your needs.
Step 5 - Try Them Out!
Once you’ve done some research, pick the top one from your shortlist, and sign up to the membership site, or order the DVDs. Most sites have solid ’satisfaction guaranteed’ mechanisms in place, where you can get a refund if you’re really not happy with the product.
If you’ve followed the above steps, your shortlist should contain courses that are really going to help you achieve your guitar playing goals, provided you put the time and effort in.
Ultimately there’s no way around it, you’ll need to put in some decent practice time to get the most out of your chosen course. However, a good course can definitely help keep you motivated, and hopefully you’ll feel that you’re making real progress towards your guitar goals.
