Now, that will impress your friends, your teachers, your parents – it will even impress yourself! And I want to recommend a great course (which will save you the money it would cost to hire a private teacher). I also recommend this course because it comes on DVDs and that can be easier to use than having to log into a website to get video downloads. The course is called Learn and Master Guitar (read our short review about guitar lessons on DVDs vs. Online Lessons). The Learn and Master course will help you learn either acoustic or electric guitar. Another thing you can do is get some inspiration from watching other guitar players. That is the whole purpose of this site (Guitar Lessons For Beginners) that you are visiting right now (and we appreciate your visiting, too). There are some great guitar players on video right here for you to learn from.

So, you probably doubt that you could learn to play the guitar in just one Summer. But, you really could – some people learn to play in just days. An entire Summer would give you time to buy a guitar, buy the lessons, start learning and there would still be plenty of time to practice and get pretty good at playing.

Now, I’ve got a message for parents. You might worry every summer about keeping your kids interested in something besides TV and video games (or just sleeping all day). I hope you will consider helping your child get a guitar course to encourage them to use their time off from school to learn something really awesome that will be of value to them for their entire life. In fact, there is no reason that parents can’t “borrow” the lessons and learn to play guitar, too! Maybe you could come up with some incentive, such as have certain chores that must be done each day for your kids to earn the privilege or a reward such as a guitar or a guitar course. Also, for parents or grandparents that might consider “financing” the guitar lessons – there is a risk free 60 day guarantee (it isn’t even in fine print).

I just want to tell everyone how great it is that when I was young, my parents helped me get guitar lessons and it’s still the best thing I ever learned and the best thing I ever did – I am so glad I am a guitar player! One last thing to think about – this Summer, become a guitar player. Who knows, you might form a band over the next year and have gigs to play next Summer!

Technorati Tags: DVDs, Guitar Lessons for Beginners, Learn and Master Guitar, learn guitar, lessons, review, summer, summertime

For some people, the best way to learn guitar is through instructional videos that allow them to practice at times that are convenient for them. Because videos are also extremely affordable, this can be an inexpensive way to embark upon learning this instrument. The downside to the video instruction is that the material soon becomes dated. However, it may be a good way to start off your instruction.

There are books that are devoted to guitar lessons and for some this visual method is the best way to learn guitar. Just as some students learn better by the book then they do by the teacher, the same applies to learning an instrument.

But for most people, the best way to learn guitar is through a knowledgeable and experienced guitar teacher. This can mean private lessons or group instruction depending on your level of commitment and financial considerations. In either case, a person experienced in teaching guitar can observe your technique and give you hands-on instruction in order to improve your skills. For others, this commitment to another person increases their dedication to practice. If you know that you meet with your guitar teacher once a week then you may be more inclined to practice ahead of time.

Ultimately, the best way to learn guitar is to go with the method that works best for you and takes into consideration your availability, time for practice, and budget. Before long, you’ll be well on your to proficient guitar play.

Michelle Bery

http://www.articlesbase.com/education-articles/finding-the-best-way-to-learn-guitar-118503.html

I cannot stress enough the importance of being able to play by ear. Everything that you’ve ever heard anyone play on your instrument is at your disposal – you just have to figure it out. Learning how to play tunes or instrument parts using your ear is just like anything else you practice: the more you do it, the easier it gets. If you do it often enough, you won’t even need your instrument to figure it out. The concept of teaching your ear to decipher musical structures as they’re being played is called ear training and it’s been practiced and honed for centuries.

Whether you are interested in learning to play the guitar by ear, or virtually any other instrument for that matter, there are a number of excellent learning aids available to assist you! The current state of learning aids for ear training is quite well these days (thank you for asking). With a variety of books, CDs, DVDs, and even software, there’s plenty from which to choose when you decide to add this important skill to your arsenal:

Ear Training Books -

In the musician world, there are two reknowned learning institutions, the Berklee College of Music in Boston, and Musicians Institute (MI) in LA. Both have their own take on ear training. For Berklee, it’s Essential Ear Training for the Contemporary Musician and for MI, it’s Ear Training – The Complete Guide for All Musicians. Homespun, which makes a large variety of books, CDs, and DVDs for all musicians and styles, has their take, which is Ear Training for Instrumentalists featuring a whopping 6 CDs full of exercises and drills. If you’re a guitar or bass player, you’ll definitely want to check out Ultimate Eartraining for Guitar and Bass by Tribal Tech’s Gary Willis. My friend Chris, who’s a working electric jazz bassist in NYC, absolutely loves this book.

Ear Training Videos -

Playing the guitar by ear, or nearly any other instrument for that matter, is not as hard as you may think! For videos, Berklee has produced Harmonic Ear Training (DVD). This 73-minute DVD will help you recognize chord progressions quickly and listen to music more analytically. Bass players get a real treat, as jazz bass great John Patitucci has released John Patitucci – Electric Bass 2: Soloing Ear-Training And Six-String Technique Video, which teaches soloing by stressing the importance of ear training.

Ear Training Software -

As you might expect, software is a natural choice for teaching ear training because it’s interactive. The cream of this crop is Ars Nova Practica Musica which is both Windows and Macintosh compatible, covers just about every aspect of ear training, and features customizable exercises. Ear Training Coach is a more affordable option and offers a 10-grade curriculum in ear training and sight-reading. However, the piece de resistance and the one tool that should be in everyone’s ear training bag is the SlowGold CD-ROM. This nifty piece of software lets you slow down any piece of music on CD or MP3s without changing the pitch. So if you’re learning to play a passage from a recording, and it’s too fast, just run it through SlowGold to hear every single note at the exact pitch it’s played.

Ear Training Hardware -

Not surprisingly, music equipment makers have gotten into the ear training game, and not surprisingly, the offerings are particularly good for electric guitar and bass guitar. The Tascam CD-GT1 MKII Guitar Trainer and the Tascam CD-BT1 mkII Bass Guitar Trainer features the same slowdown technology of the SlowGold software, but have housed it in a standalone unit with a built-in CD player, effects, and a headphone jack for silent practicing. Tascam has even made one the vocalists, the Tascam CD-VT1 Portable CD Vocal & Performance Trainer, which has a Vocal Cancel feature that removes the vocal from the CD during playback. Karaoke will never be the same …

Learning aids aside, one really useful exercise is to pick out a recording of a simple tune that you like. Listen to it very carefully. See if you can determine when the band is changing chords. If you can pick out where these chord changes occur, then you’ll know the points in time when you need to determine what the next chord is.

Tune your instrument to the recording. Take the first chord in the tune. As it plays, try to pick out a low note on your instrument that best matches that chord. There should one note that resonates with the recording. Did you find it? This is the root note of that chord. If this note is a C, you know that the first chord is a C (something). It could be a major chord, a minor chord, a 7th chord, but whatever it is, it’s a C version of that chord. If you’re listening to “Hey Jude”, the root note for the first chord is an F. If you’re listening to “Wonderwall”, it’s an F#. If it’s “Layla”, it’s a D …

Now that you have your root note, the next step is determine what the quality of the chord is. Is it a major or minor chord? Is it a power chord? One surefire way to determine this is trial and error. Assume it’s a major chord. Test out this possibility by playing the major chord for your root note along with the recording. Does it sound good? Does it resonate? If so, you’ve just figured out what the first chord is. If not, try a minor chord. Play the minor chord for your root note along with the recording. Does this sound good? Does this resonate? Try a few different choices. If you get stumped, look at the sheet music or transcription of this recording. This is your answer key, so to speak. If you’re just starting out and need a lot of easy tunes for practice, there are some great 3-chord songbooks such as The Guitar 3 Chord Songbook and Favorite Songs With 3 Chords.

After you’re figured out the first chord, go to the next point in time where this changes, and figure out what the second chord is. Repeat this process until you’ve covered the entire tune. A lot of popular music is cyclical in that the same 3-4 chord pattern will often repeat throughout the tune, so you may not have to figure out more than 3-4 chords for the entire song. Yes, when bands write great songs using just “three chords and an attitude”, it makes your job a lot easier.

So why would you want to do this? Well, first of all, you’re improving your ear. Secondly, you’re improving your knowledge of chords because you’re forcing yourself to play a variety of chords. If you know your root note for a particular chord is an F#, but you don’t know what the quality is, you may have to test out an F# major chord, an F# minor chord, an F#7 chord, and so on. This solidifies your knowledge of chords throughout the parameters of your instrument. The more tunes you figure out, the easier it is to find and play these chords. The other benefit of going through this process is that you’re playing along with recordings, which is going to make you’re playing better, because you’re subconsciously absorbing all the nuances of the recording into your playing.

The main thing is to not get discouraged and to do it on a regular basis. Turn on the radio and try your hand at whatever’s playing. If you don’t like the tune, change the station. Put it on the classical station – yes, you can play along with classical ones too. Don’t be afraid. It’s all just music, and in the end, armed with just an ear and the knowledge of some basic chords for the trial-and-error process, you can figure out how to play it.

Christopher Sung

http://www.articlesbase.com/music-articles/learning-to-play-by-ear-88454.html

Many people choose to start their guitar-playing education by consulting with a guitar teacher. One on one lessons can be very helpful, as there is always someone there to guide you step-by-step, from the very basic skills to more advanced techniques. Teachers can provide valuable feedback, and can clearly demonstrate the proper techniques. They can also adjust lessons to a person’s particular skill level and learning pace. This can keep novice players appropriately challenged without demotivating frustration.

For more practical knowledge about how to learn to play guitar, books can be an informative resource. From explaining the techniques and theory involved in guitar playing to illustrating key concepts, books make it possible to re-review sections whenever necessary, or skip past concepts already understood. However, books are limited in their ability to comprehensively describe complex techniques, and often work best in conjunction with other learning methods.

Like books, “learn to play guitar” videos offer flexibility in learning and have the added benefit of being able to explain techniques step by step. Videos make it easy to re-review lessons at the desired pace, and lessons can be repeated as often as necessary until the concepts are well understood. As with books, familiar concepts can be bypassed, allowing the player to focus on the areas that need the most work. Used together with books or private lessons, videos can be very helpful in the learning process.

Regardless of the learning method(s) chosen, there are certain fundamentals that are key to success. Patience is important; very few people are able to pick up a guitar and play complex songs right away. Setting realistic goals and appreciating even progress that seems minor can help avoid frustration and boost motivation. Of course, practice is also vital. The more a person practices, the more natural guitar playing becomes, and what once required concerted effort and thought can become second nature. Practicing reinforces the lessons learned, and lays the groundwork for future learning.

Learning to play the guitar has both its rewards and challenges. With patience and perserverance, even the most novice guitarist can find themselves playing recognizable tunes that previously seemed impossible to master. Whether pursued as a part time hobby, or with the aspirations of becoming a professional guitarist, the choice to learn to play guitar is very rarely regretted.

Ian Jefferson

http://www.articlesbase.com/music-articles/effective-methods-to-learn-to-play-guitar-121299.html

Irrespective of how you learn, the ultimate aim of learning to play the guitar is to play a song that you are fond of or familiar with. The song may be your favorite song from your childhood heard over the radio or CD or TV or in a concert and might have been played by your favorite band.

Whatever be the nature of the song, the usual way of learning to play it is to buy the sheet music and read from it and practice it. But a superior method of learning a song is to learn it by the ear i.e. to learn by keenly listening to the song.

This technique can be applied to practically any type of song and all you need is a CD player to play it. The instrument used to replay the song does not really matter. It is a very useful skill that you need to develop if you are interested in making a career in music. The following paragraph gives a few tips for learning to play the guitar by the ear.

Tips for learning to play guitar by the ear

Training the ears to listen to the music carefully is the first step in learning to play guitar by the ear. Having an ear for music need not be an inborn quality alone but can be developed through practice. You can prepare your ears to pickup different features of the music. You have to learn to identify different chords in the music and the changes in them even as a song is played. You should be able to distinguish between the major and the minor chords.

A deep interest in the type of music that is being played helps in quickly learning its finer points. Tuning the guitar so that it matches with the song you want to play is the next step. This step requires a little practice and patience and individual string may have to be tuned to match each individual note of the song.

With these basic tips, you can learn to play the guitar by the ear through regular practice. It is not as hard as it sounds as.

Andreas Lillebo

http://www.articlesbase.com/music-articles/learning-to-play-guitar-by-the-ear-98757.html

This frustration led me to order cassette-tape lessons by mail. Since this was well before online lessons, I often waited weeks for delivery. Little did I know that online lessons were coming our way.

Today, many types of guitar lessons are available online. These include beginner’s lessons in mp3 format, instruction videos, and tab transcriptions of your favorite licks. Tablature, or “tab”, is a transcription method that tells you exactly when and where to fret and pick. You don’t have to read music to read tablature.

Online guitar lessons are very convenient, and learning this way can also be cheaper and more effective. If you travel like I do, you can learn new songs on the road rather than watching TV!

Here is a roundup of some sites that I have used to find online guitar lessons:

Video Lessons: Guitar Tricks

Guitar Tricks features a library of lessons that you can access anytime and anywhere to improve your ability. They currently charge $5/month subscription fee, but offer free lessons (150) to start. Their roster includes 48 instructors from all over the world.

Mp3 Lessons: Fender Players Club

This excellent site is devoted to helping you get started on the guitar. Yes, barre chords are easier on an electric guitar! Sample beginner’s lessons include:

Chords in the open position – Learn the most basic chords and practice switching between them; practice tips, how to read the diagrams, and more.

Chords – Once you’re used to playing the basic chords, it’s time to start learning some other ones. Included is a chart with a whole bunch of chords.

Barre chords – When you have some strength in your fretting hand, tackle the barre chords. They’re tough, but don’t give up.

Tablature

If you like doing things the “old-fashioned” way, two news groups are sources for guitar tablature:

rec.music.makers.guitar.tablature
alt.guitar.tab

Tablature Web Sites: Guitar Notes

This site claims to be the largest collection of guitar music on the net. You can browse through their artist index or use their search engine to look through over 150,000 songs.

Unfortunately, the mother of all tablature sites, OLGA (On-line Guitar Archive)is currently offline while attempting to resolve legal issues with the archive. I hope they get this worked out shortly as this site is a valuable resource.

In closing, whether you’re just getting started or are looking to advance your ability, online guitar lessons can be a fun and effective way to take learn guitar.