Beginner Guitar Lessons - Online and Offline

[Paul Blair]

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 judgment
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.