Saturday 3 April 2010

How Free Online Guitar Lessons Work For You

You know that there are plenty of guitar lessons available online for free, but how do you know which ones are going to help you to learn to play the guitar in the shortest time for the least expense? There is actually a very simple formula for finding the best online guitar lessons to suit our musical and financial needs. There are free guitar lessons available online to suit any genre, and you need to examine them to be sure they fulfill the major requirements of the beginner guitar player. Your guitar lessons should be aimed at beginner guitarists with attention paid to basics like tuning and learning the structure of chords. They should start you off playing songs using easy guitar tabs. Additionally many free guitar lessons sites have forums attached where you can get feedback and advice on your guitar playing progress. So let us get into more detail on what free guitar lessons offer.
The advantages of online guitar lessons are in their versatility. You can find lessons using tablature, lessons on video, tutorials on power chords and improvisation, all right there on your computer. The thing with free guitar lessons is you have to put the package together yourself. It is best to find, if you can, lessons that are in a series that takes you through a learning process rather than an unconnected bunch of lessons bookmarked from different sources.
Usually the beginner guitarist finds the biggest hurdle right at the start. Tuning the guitar. Your lessons will eventually show you how to tune the guitar by ear but at the very beginning you will need some kind of electronic guitar tuner and a brief tutorial on how to use it. Do not worry, it is not rocket surgery. You can pick up a guitar tuner at a music store, but they are easy enough to find online for free.
Now we come to where some kind of series or package of free lessons is needed. You see, you will need to learn a little music theory before you start learning chords and playing songs from tabs. You will, for example, need to know about things like triads and octaves. Also some explanation of how as you work your way up the neck of the guitar the same notes recur at differing pitches.
Chord progressions are a major part of your guitar lesson experience, so you need to get a thorough understanding of scales and their relationship to chords with examples of the common chord progressions. By this time you will be actually playing the guitar so your lessons should include some material on how to hold the instrument and use of the plectrum.
So much guitar music is available in tablature form now that learning to read sheet music is practically unnecessary. Your online guitar lessons will introduce you to guitar tabs and how to read them. Once again, they might look scary but they are very simple to learn. You will probably be able to find some free guitar lesson videos which show you how to read tabs if you are more comfortable learning that way. Just do a search on some of the video sites. Online video lessons will help your progress by giving you the opportunity to see a guitar teacher playing slowly and up close, but do not forget to look for a guitar forum to get your specific questions answered.
If you can't find a set of guitar lessons which suit you, you might need to do a web search for the individual components. The main things you should be searching for are: "free online guitar lessons" "free guitar tabs" "basic guitar chords" "beginner guitar tabs" and "guitar forums". There is a wealth of free guitar lesson material online, so make the most of it!
Ricky Sharples has been playing guitar his whole life, and is presently engaged in building a blog called Learn How To Play A Guitar For Free. Ricky's blog features free tools, lessons and resources for guitarists of all ages and stages. Ricky updates the blog regularly so if you are interested in learning to play guitar there will be an enormous variety of tip, tools and tutorials for you.