Wednesday, June 1, 2011

Free Guitar Lessons Online

Free guitar lessons online are a great way to learn the basics of playing guitar, develop a particular technique, or explore a new musical style. Your sources for online guitar lessons are varied and many. In this article we’re going to show you some of the more common resources you can tap into and learn the basics of guitar playing.

Start your search for free guitar lessons online by exploring web sites dedicated to teaching how to play guitar. Many of these are subscription based online video guitar lessons, some of them sell guitar lessons on DVDs and most of them will offer introductory guitar lessons of some kind. You may even want to sign up for more than one of the providers of free guitar lessons online so you can get a taste of their teaching style before committing to a paid subscription.

YouTube.com and other video sites are a great resource for free guitar lessons online on just about style or technique you could imagine. Since many of these videos are made by guitar playing enthusiasts, you may have to filter out some of the bad ones. What’s interesting about these types of lessons is that you can find information on how to use equipment like effects pedals, or amplifiers. You would be hard pressed to find this type of information on a dedicated guitar lesson site.

Online user generated forums are another great resource for finding tips and techniques, as well as reviews of other lessons and methods. Find one or two active forums and start mining the posts and topics based on your particular interest.

Guitar magazines and blogs like guitarplayer.com also post many free guitar lessons online. Here you will find tips, techniques and tabs of complete songs in many different styles and genres. Additionally, don’t over look their interviews of famous artists. Often time, these interviews turn to questions on how the artist approaches a particular style or technique. A careful reading of an interview can turn into a great way to get free guitar lessons online.

Listening actively to music online can be a more creative, but important way to collect free guitar lessons online. Find a customized online radio station that focuses on a particular style or artist, and begin to listen carefully to the music. Listen for the music's phrasing and articulation. Learn its rhythms and chord progressions. Find the tab of a particular piece.

A final online resource for free guitar lessons that you may not have thought of is your public library. Check out their web site and research what kind of online resources they may have. Your library card will gain you access to these resources which can include online music books, magazines, and articles.

As you can see, looking for and finding free guitar lessons online is pretty easy. Once you have a few successful searches under your belt, you can start to organize your results. Create a set of bookmarks in your browser or through a service to track your favorite sites and lessons. Keep a journal of the specific techniques and pieces that you found particularly useful. Through this process you can start to shape a program of study consisted of free guitar lessons online for your personal study.