Like for many who aspire to learn to play the guitar, my quest at proficiency has taken many twists and turns. I have considered taking formal classes at $30 an hour. While this method appears to be the best, it is expensive and requires a long commitment. In addition, due to my busy schedule I found it impossible to commit to a set schedule. I purchased the latest books, videos, and online software. By using each of these different delivery methods I learned a bit, and am able to play many basic tunes on the guitar. The purpose of this article is to share my thoughts on the benefits and drawbacks of each method mentioned above. These opinions are based on my experiences and frustrations in my journey to learn to play guitar. So lets get started!

My love affair with the guitar started about 12 to 15 years ago. I was listening to B.B King and was entranced by the sounds coming out of Lucille. I knew that I would love nothing more than to sit back at home and play those awesome songs all night! I thought it would be pretty cool to play some sick blues for a few of my friends at my very frequent (and often drunken!) parties. So I started to look for information on how to learn to play guitar. The Internet was not quite so replete with information as it is today (and I did not have a PC at my disposal) so I went to the bookstore and bought a few books. These books gave a pretty good basic history of the guitar and a cursory introduction into music theory. When it came to learning how to play, problems occurred from the start.

The first issue was tuning the guitar! The instructions were to use a piano for tuning. I did not have one and I suspect not many people do today. The tuning fork was a pain and I suspect that my first few months of learning were done with an out of tune guitar. The next issue was hand and finger position. Six lines, frets and black dots are a poor way to show you how to place your fingers. Even if you have no problem with this, the dynamic nature of playing guitar is difficult to illustrate on paper. The next issue was reading the music. It was presented in a cumbersome and very boring manner. How did I know that I was playing the notes right? The big issue with the book method for me was a lack of visual step-by-step instructions that showed me how the fingers worked in unison, and how the notes (and songs) were supposed to sound. In later years, books on how to learn to play guitar came with CDs. This was a tremendous improvement and help. Tuning was much easier, and I could listen to what the songs I was learning were supposed to sound like. But many of the problems remained. I feel that books are not the best delivery method for learning to play guitar.

Next came the videos. This media was leaps and bounds better than the books I had purchased. I could see and hear what the instructor was teaching. Tuning was even easier than before. Video close ups shed light on many of my previous questions on hand position and the dynamic nature of guitar playing. I was able to copy the instructor and actually play some cool tunes. I used the rewind function hundreds of times to reproduce something I had missed or was having troubles with. There were some very painful limitations to this method though. The first was boredom. You can only rewind the same tape to watch the same thing so many times. After that you lose interest. The next problem was that you really only learned to play whatever songs are on the 60 min tape. You were never (or at least not very well) given the tools to play other songs. This was quite limiting for me. The last issue was the actual camera angles of the videos. The shots were often too far or at wrong angles for you to see exactly what the instructor was doing. This was frustrating for me.

So we get to my favorite method: Online software! Today’s Internet gives us the ability to download full courses that allow you to learn to play guitar in the comfort of your home. Some of these courses are multimedia instructions that allow you to use technology to maximum effect. One such course is Jamorama. This course teaches the user TAB, and how to play songs by ear. It takes advantage of the thousands of TAB songs available for free on the Internet. The price is close to what you would pay for one hour of instruction, or what you would pay for 2 good books on learning to play guitar. This course overcomes the shortcoming of books and videos because it is dynamic. There are games that teach you to learn the tedious and boring tasks of reading and transcribing music. There are over 148 videos that show you step-by-step how to play songs. One of the more interesting things about Jamorama is that it also has 26 tracks that you play along with. In fact, you can turn off the guitar track and play along with drummer and bassist. This is a vast improvement over the other methods. The main benefit with this method, and with this course in particular is that it is more interactive!

So what are the downfalls? Because these methods are made to appeal to a large audience with many different musical style interests, there are a lot of songs that just don’t appeal to me. I personally have no interest in Nirvana, Van Halen or a multitude of Bands/singers that always appear on these types of courses. Much of the content is just not interesting and therefore some of the wealth of information that is offered is often wasted. I still believe that online software is the best way to go to learn to play guitar. The interactive benefits are excellent. This is also a very convenient way to learn!