Showing posts with label guitar lessons. Show all posts
Showing posts with label guitar lessons. Show all posts

Tuesday, May 10, 2011

Fundamentals Of Online Beginner Guitar Lessons

Are you wondering where you can find good online beginner guitar lessons? As a complete beginner, you do not know how to read music or chords and notes, and are clueless of what any of it really means. You hope to find the best self-teach book or program that has been used and proven by many people.

You would have noticed that there are plenty of online guitar lessons for beginners. So many that you do not know which one to pick as you have no idea what you should be learning to build a good foundation.

Going through all the search results can be tedious and I guess everyone of us would not want to end up buying an incomplete guide. Besides teaching you parts of the guitar, you have to make sure that the online beginner guitar lessons comprise of the following fundamentals:

  1. How To Hold The Guitar

    You may think that you do not have to learn how to hold the guitar as it is pretty straighforward.Some beginners overlooked the importance of the right playing positions. Wrong sitting or standing posture will affect your guitar playing and cause muscle strain.

  2. Hand Positions

    For right-handed individuals, your left hand will form the chords while your right hand will strike the strings. Good online beginner guitar lessons will show you the proper left hand and right hand positions clearly on books and videos.

  3. Chords

    You will be taught common chord types and chord progressions that help you to play songs. They are presented with clear diagrams and pictures of the neck of the guitar so that you can visualize and grasp each new chord easily.

  4. How To Strum

    Strumming may seems easy but it is one of the difficult areas for some beginners. They are unable to get the strum sounding right and smooth. The lessons will address this common problem and teach you techniques to great strumming so that you would not give up in frustration.

  5. How To Read Tablature

    Tablature (tabulature or TAB) is the simplest method of writing music for a guitar. This musical notation enables us to recognize notes quickly and easily. Reading tablature is an essential skill that would be covered in most beginner guitar lessons as it enables you to learn thousands of songs online.

  6. Easy Guitar Songs

    It is hard and consuming to search for easy guitar songs. Good online beginner guitar lessons would be accompanied with tracks that you can play along at the end of each lesson. It is the best way to practice the chords you had just learned.

Good online beginner guitar lessons are designed by experienced musicians to teach you the fundamental skills and lay the basis no matter which music style you eventually pursue. Each lesson is broken down into steps that are manageable for absolute beginners so that you will master each technique easily.

Are you tired of searching for the best guide? Click here to find out what are the current top three online beginner guitar lessons.

Sunday, May 8, 2011

Complete Guitar Course - What Does It Consist Of?

What is the best online guitar course for beginners? Are you worried of wasting time and money on an incomplete course?

You have probably seen some of the popular guitar courses online. However, you could not decide which is the right one for you. Depending on your budget, you should also find out if the course is complete and covers everything you need to know.

As guitar beginners, you will likely to be clueless of the contents that should be taught. So what does a complete guitar course consist of?
  1. Full Beginner to Advanced Lessons

    The course should provide a series of lessons from beginner, intermediate to advanced level. It should start off with the basics such as holding your guitar, sitting and standing positions, holding a pick and learning the frets. Next, it should cover all the major guitar techniques (like strumming, alternate picking, bending, finger picking, hammer-ons, pull-offs, slide, vibrato, legato, palm muting), common chord types (major, minor, dominant seventh, minor seventh, major seventh and suspended 4) and major styles of music (like rock, metal, blues, jazz, country). Reading tablature is also one of the important skills to be included as it enables you to learn almost any song you like.

    The lessons should be in sequence where each module is built on the previous one. A play along track should be included within each lesson so that you can practice what you had learned so far. A structured course will enable you to see the improvement and feel the satisfaction each week.

  2. Video Lessons

    The guitar lessons should be complemented with high quality video demonstrations. They will make learning new skills easy with built-in animated chords, progressions and strumming patterns. Both hands and notation are shown so that you can see clearly where to place your fingers on the fretboard as well as how to strum it.

  3. Chord Book

    A complete guitar course would come with a chord reference book. Chord changes is the most difficult skill to master for beginners. Remembering the chord shapes is not easy either. Hence, a good chord book will come in handy as and when you need reference to it. The chords should be presented with clear diagrams and accompanied with high resolution photos to help you visualize and grasp each new chord.

    There are different variations for playing each chord. Moving from one chord to another can be really hard and sometimes all you need to do is to change the way you form the chord. It will be great if the book includes different variations for each chord. You can experiment the different chord formations and find the most appropriate shape to each progression.

  4. Guitar Care and Maintenance

    A guitar course would be complete with information on setting it up and maintaining it. As guitar players, we should have basic knowledge of how to clean our guitar, protect it from moisture and heat, buy a new one to suit our style of playing, select new parts to improve its sound, change the strings, check the intonation, tuning it and cleaning it.

  5. Games

    Besides the main course materials, it will be great if effective games are added to improve your guitar playing. They will make learning fun and challenging. The ability to recognize chords simply by hearing them and reading music are essential skills of a guitar player. Games enable you to revise what you had learned and will also speed up your learning process.
A complete guitar course consists of beginner to advanced lessons in a combination of digital books, videos and games, as well as a chord book and information on care and maintenance. It is designed in an effective way of teaching yourself guitar so that any beginner can follow through the course easily.

Self Teach Guitar - Is It Really Possible?

Self-taught guitarists would tell you that it is definitely possible to self teach guitar based on their experience. They are dedicated, organized and determined to work towards their personal goals. These are some of the common traits that distinguish a guitarist from a nearly was guitarist.

So how do they learn guitar by themselves? What do you need and what should you learn next?
Find out the top 3 tips to succeed if you want to self teach guitar:
  1. Structured Plan of Lessons

    The most common mistake committed by absolute beginners is that they do not have a structured plan of guitar lessons. They picked up short tutorials from various sources such as guitar books, websites or magazines. These tutorials have no relation so beginners were unable to make sense of the guitar concepts that were being taught. They realized that they were not progressing and were disappointed with their lack of results yet thought that they had ran out of things to teach themselves. They gave up, thinking that self teaching guitar is not for them. They were not aware that they had failed to develop a strong grounding in proper techniques.

    A good beginners course is the best place to get the right order of lessons from. They should cover the basics (like sitting, standing and hand position, holding the pick and tuning), forming chords and scales, rhythm and strumming patterns, music styles to any advanced techniques. The lessons are sequential. You will understand the concepts better and improve your guitar playing if you follow the lesson plan.

    Why spend hours searching for bits and pieces of guitar lessons when you can get a comprehensive course for a low fee? These self teach guitar courses are designed by experienced musicians. Most of the current courses can be downloaded instantly so that you can start learning rightaway. You can opt for the hardcopy edition which include written lessons and DVDs if you do not have access to a computer all the time.

    A good self teach guitar course should comprise of video demonstrations; goals to accomplish and practice exercise after each lesson; play along songs to reinforce every new concept that you had learned; and live support from the tutor for assistance whenever you are stuck on any lesson.

  2. Learning Plan

    With a structured plan of lessons on hand, you need to set up a schedule for your learning and practice sessions. You need to decide the frequency and duration of self teaching guitar per week. The number of lesson(s) you wish to complete or spend more time on a particular lesson that you find difficulty in. Daily practice is necessary to improve your guitar playing. The discomfort or soreness of your fingers will wear off as you get used to playing the guitar.

  3. Self-Discipline

    Now that you have both the lesson and learning plans, the rest is up to you. Whether you will succeed in self teaching guitar will depend on how dedicated and disciplined you are in following through all the lessons and practice exercises. You need to master each lesson in sequence before moving on to the next one. Skipping the difficult one and lack of practice will not get you far.
Self teaching guitar is not as hard as you perceive it to be. The only difficult part is when you tried to figure out the mountain of different lessons you got from various sources. A good beginners course is equivalent to engaging a good tutor, you need to follow the right lesson content and plan in order to becoming a great
guitarist.