Are Online Guitar Instructions Any Good?

Since the widespread takeover of the internet on popular media and even things like shopping and communication, learning the guitar has become an activity that can be done from home at your leisure.

Imagine learning the guitar for free, and learning it properly? Well with the internet, that becomes a major possibility to teach yourself to play the guitar.

But is it one worth cashing in on? I mean, just because it’s there and it’s free, that doesn’t automatically qualify it as useful or informative, right?

Just because the internet says it isn’t, doesn’t mean it’s good. We’ll talk about whether or not that is true as pertains to guitar lessons in this article.

First off, you need to understand something; there are two different types of material available on the internet. Three if you want to get down to the truth. The first is useful materials, such as well constructed guitar lessons, of which there are tons available (pretty quick answer, huh?); the second type is material that means well but winds up missing the mark completely.

It may be useless for a musician, but it is a great teaching tool for the “what not to do when constructing a lesson” seminar that should have been created years ago. Things such as recording a lesson with a cheap webcam and offering absolutely no tabs or sheet music at all.

While the lesson itself could be genius, it doesn’t matter a bit if the viewer can’t see what is going on and has no references readily available to them. This is just one of many examples of things that will wind a video up in category two.

The third category is completely useless material. This includes, but is not limited to, that guy who thinks shredding and showing off his guitar chops qualifies as a lesson. It doesn’t. Don’t be fooled by a video of a guy who can play at light speed; it won’t make him any better of an instructor than your local mailman or grocery store clerk. Being able to play does not make you a good teacher, and showing off does not make for a good lesson.

Now that you know the three categories of internet materials, it will be easier to explain that yes, there are some online guitar instructions that are great. Some lessons are written, others can be video, but a great lesson is a great lesson regardless of the medium. The big challenge is wading through the junk to find that golden lesson.

It isn’t as hard as you would think (usually you can find some pretty decent lesson by typing in the category that you want a lesson in and seeing what Google spits up), but for every good lesson on the internet, there are five hastily constructed lessons that will leave you scratching your head and wondering what you just watched, read, or listened to.

No one is immune to finding a poorly made lesson, but everyone should be immune to suffering through one. If the lesson isn’t good, don’t wait it out and see if something better happens; find a new lesson. Your time is important.

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