So you’ve made the plunge. You’ve opted to learn the guitar through a self-taught lesson rather than pay for private lessons with a personal instructor. You’re more than likely a self-motivated, driven individual but more than anything really enthusiastic about learning the guitar.
Congratulations! You’re perfect for the job.
Throughout the next weeks and months, your assignment, if you choose to accept, will be to learn and master everything you can about the guitar. But you cannot do that until you pick the course that is perfect for you. What is the perfect guitar lesson course you may ask? Unfortunately, it’s not that simple. To each his or her own.
So let’s look into five common yet very important features of a “good” guitar course. When researching and comparing courses you’ll likely find three to four really solid lessons but you’ll be divided between which one is the best. These five important guitar course features may convince you of the product that is just right.
#1 Quality of Lessons
When shopping for guitar courses, always note the quality over quantity approach. Sure, one course may advertise 300 guitar lessons but how many of those lessons are actually teaching valuable information and exactly how long are those lessons. I don’t know about you, but I would take 50, quality, 20+ minute lessons over 300, dry, 2 minute lessons. It’s all about the quality. How do you get good quality with online guitar lessons? That’s a great question…
#2 Teaching Style
It’s not exactly about who is teaching when it comes to online guitar lessons, but rather how many people are teaching and of course…what’s their background. Arguably one of the greatest features of self-taught lessons through book and DVD is that you can get multiple different opinions from multiple teachers. You may have a particular name in mind. However, you’re much more likely to not know a name yet seek a particular style. Do you enjoy, lively, energetic teachers or straight-to-the-point, step-by-step educators? Always consider the style of the teacher.
#3 Support
This feature is often overlooked so make sure you’re aware of its importance. In the last feature we examined one of the strongest selling points of online guitar lessons — the availability of multiple teachers on one course. Now let’s look at a major drawback — a lack of support. No personal instructor means NO personal instructor. You’re going to get confused, lost and have a question or two from time to time. Invest in a product that has features like 24/7 chat, phone, forum or any other way you can either connect with an expert or fellow guitarists. You need these people during your early struggles learning the guitar.
#4 Additional Features
We define “additional features” as anything that goes above and beyond the basic tools and resources needed to learn the guitar. For example, have you ever considered how important a metronome is and how few online guitar courses actually provide one with the program? Wouldn’t it also be nice to have a variety of different backing tracks once you become a little more advanced and want to strum along with a tune? Again, some have them…some do not. Write down five things you would really like as extras to your guitar learning experience and your goal is to try and find one program that offers them all. Deal?
#5 Value
Ah, the good ole’ C.R.E.A.M. rule. Price does rule everything around you and selecting the best guitar lesson is clearly no different. The key term here is value. You do not want a product that is too expensive, because, after all we all have budgets. Some guitar lessons out there are simply way too over-priced. On the contrary, avoid those ridiculous “bargain deals”. As always, common sense is advised. Find something that is a nice, “happy medium”.
In short, the basics to learning the guitar have not changed. However, some programs (just like educators) are better than other programs (or fellow educators). If you’re going to spend money on a course that will teach you the guitar why waste it on something that is not appropriate to your individual needs and/or learning style?
Consider the five most important online guitar lesson features, research convulsively and consider wisely. Oh yeah, and we also broke down what we found to be the five best guitar lessons utilizing this same criteria. Enjoy!
