Learning Guitar
Learning to play guitar is a serious business that you should take lightly. Once you have a little physical hands-on experience with the guitar you can relax and make choices about what style of music you want to learn and how you want to learn it. Once you have learnt the basic chord shapes and how they can be moved up and down the fretboard, you can experiment with strumming patterns if you get bored with that, you can start on learning a few finger picking patterns. You must never lose sight of the goal of personal satisfaction behind your musical efforts.
Part of learning to play guitar is, unfortunately, the wondering. “Which way of learning to play guitar is the best for me?” “How many ways of learning are there?” Are books the best source of guitar learning information? Or is it better to pick some of my favorite songs and concentrate on learning how to play them?
What makes learning guitar more confusing is the fact that everybody who learns seems quite happy to have taken the path that they took and, in hindsight, would not have done anything different. Anyway, maybe talking to friends who already have been through the learning journey would probably be a good start. Did they learn to play by starting on chords? Or scales? How do people feel about their abilities as a guitar player after a few years of fooling around in a non-disciplined way?
Many guitarists have made their way by watching and talking to friends and making use of the free tabs on the internet. Choosing tabs should be a fairly stress-free job if you are guided by your personal musical tastes but there could be a problem with learning from friends. If you have a bunch of friends or family members who think they know a thing or two about playing the guitar, you are talking to someone who may or may not be aware of their own limitations.
A guitar playing friend can show you how to play a chord or a riff but they will have only limited ability to provide you with the guidance you need to chart your own guitar learning path and to judge your own progress.
If you do take the unstructured route for learning guitar, you can always take a lesson or two from a professional teacher just to make sure you haven’t acquired too many bad habits and to help with charting a course for your guitar music progress.
One experience you could do well to share with a guitar teacher is learning from a printed guitar tutor. If you choose one of good guitar lesson books you already have a structured learning program and sharing the learning with an experienced guitarist who can add his own perspective to the info in the book.
Learn & Master Guitar
Winner of the 2008 Acoustic Guitar Magazine Players’ Choice Awards, two Telly Awards and an AEGIS Award for Excellence in Education, Learn & Master Guitar is widely recognized as the best home instruction course for learning guitar available anywhere. It consists of 20 professionally produced DVDs, 5 Jam-Along CDs, a 100+ page lesson book, and a free online student support site. It is the only instructional package you’ll ever need on your journey toward mastery of the guitar. All you provide is the practice!
Let’s face it, really learning guitar can seem like a daunting task. There are so many different things to learn and practice. What you’re really looking for is high-quality, step-by-step video instruction that takes you from beginner (or intermediate) all the way through advanced instruction. A thirty-minute “Learn Guitar Overnight” video isn’t going to do it, and advanced instructional videos are usually too specialized and they often assume that you know more than you do. That’s never a problem with Learn & Master Guitar, because it is a complete step-by-step video instruction course that takes you from any skill level, even if you’re a total novice, through the advanced skills training used by the pros. Not a beginner? Just skip through the basics and jump into the more advanced training.
Testimonials
If you are looking for comprehensive program for learning guitar, this is it. You can learn everything you need to know from the comfort of your own home. And if you are an instructor looking for resources as I am, I would bet this will be one of your favorites. Lastly, if you want a great gift for a budding guitar player in your life, stop here… they will thank you publicly on their first CD! I believe this product will be around for a long time to come, and I for one am happy to have it in my calloused, hot little hands!”
— Carol Manglos, Professional Guitar Instructor
E. Syracuse, New York
“…a test run through Learn & Master Guitar: Expanded Edition leaves me confident that this package really is capable of taking the non-player all the way from the basic steps of tuning the instrument and fingering notes and chords, to executing advanced songs in a broad range of styles.”
Gibson.com’s review
Learn & Master Guitar is a remarkably thorough course. It starts with the very basics, progresses in a clearly presented format, and guides the student all the way through remarkably advanced training techniques. It comes from a reputable company, has won numerous awards, and was our overall favorite.”
US Music Academy
Writer Will Bryant lists Learn & Master Guitar #7 on his Top Ten Gifts for 2010…a majority of writers do eventually turn to the singer-songwriter’s bread-and-butter: the guitar. For these beginners, Legacy Learning Systems offers an excellent musical life raft with the acclaimed instructional system…Better yet, the system has enough focused instruction to be a valuable learning resource for experienced guitarists too. And numerous lessons are particularly useful to songwriters, such as advanced chord shapes and the logic behind connecting pentatonic scales, both of which can offer ample inspiration in crafting songs.
AmericanSongwriter.com