Monday, April 4, 2011

When Learning Acoustic Guitar, Should You Do It Online, with a Personal Teacher, or Through Self-Teaching?

By Scott Forrester


If you decide you want to learn how to play the acoustic guitar, you have some choices to make. The Internet has made a lot of things very easy to access, including online resources to teach yourself guitar. However, a personal instructor has advantages as well. You can also theoretically teach yourself. Let's look at the pros and cons of each method so that you can decide for yourself just what is best for you.

The Internet offers many choices for the guitar student. Professionals who certainly know what they're doing put most of these tutorials together. Some of these people offer written lessons, some offer you lessons by video, and others offer a combination of both. I suggest the combination method, for a couple of reasons.

One of the ways you can do this is to get a text lesson and learn it, but this has disadvantages because you'll have no idea if you're actually learning correctly. Learning from a text lesson and nothing else is probably the least effective when it comes to learning acoustic guitar. At the end of this lesson, you'll usually get a little song or piece of music included (in text) that incorporates the lessons you've learned in the lesson a true, but you're not going to know how it should sound.

If you learn from just a video, it's more effective, but you're not going to have the benefit of having it reinforced by seeing it on paper, too. What this means is that you see the material played by the person in the video and you can hear how it's supposed to sound, but you couldn't see what it should look like in sheet music. What that means is that this isn't the best situation, either.

If you use a video plus sheet music, this is probably the best way to learn the guitar. That's because it combines every proper learning and feedback method. You can see the music in print, you can hear how it should sound, and you can also see how it should be played. And if you wish, you can go over and over again until it sounds just the way you should be producing it, and until you've mastered each lesson.

Using a personal instructor is also a good way to learn guitar, because a good instructor will show you how to do everything properly. He or she can show you how to play, listen as you play, and point out areas that need working on. The instructor can also tell you what you're doing well and reinforce good habits, too. However, if you don't practice, you may spend two or three lessons on the same material with this particular method.

Self-teaching is probably underrated in some ways. You can get a book and teach yourself the lessons, but this method will likely leave you weak on ability. It'll also likely leave you weak on fluidity and agility, which means you're in about the same boat as those who use text lessons online.

However, no matter which method you pick, none is going to have a positive effect or help you play guitar unless you practice. Practice is the key to becoming the best you can as a guitarist. Take each lesson home and practice until you can do it backwards, forwards, upside down, and in your sleep. What does that mean? PRACTICE. Practice, practice, practice, and then practice again.

No matter how you choose to learn to play acoustic guitar, practicing is going to be the key to success. In the end, it doesn't really matter whether you go online or choose a teacher for hourly lessons; what really matters is that once you've got the knowledge, you practice. That will make all the difference.




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