Friday, May 1, 2009

Blues Guitar Lessons DVD: How to Be Your Own Course Planner

It is very difficult to find a good and reasonably priced guitar instructor. Since the guitar is still kind of a looked down upon instrument in the more traditional parts of the music community, there is definitely a shortage of trained teachers. Don’t let that discourage you though, guitar instructional DVDs have been quite able to fill this gap for many guitar students. While not having the feedback a good teacher can provide is somewhat of a downside, the wide variety of good material does make up for that.

The information age has given guitarists access to a wide variety of guitar lessons DVDs. It doesn’t matter what kind of music you want to play or if you are a complete beginner or a seasoned veteran, there is something right for you.

You can tailor make a course that is right for you using these lessons, which can make learning and practicing that much more enjoyable. If you take a course with an instructor, there is usually a very set path and goal for the course, which can be good, but it might not necessarily give you exactly what you want.

By choosing the guitar instructional dvd focused on the areas that you want to play in, you can focus on learning guitar how you want to learn it. If you are having fun learning, you will be more motivated to practice the material and will progress much faster than you would otherwise have been able to.

One thing to keep in mind when building a guitar course is not to neglect more traditional guitar instructional dvd . Having a good understanding of the basics is very useful for a guitarist. With the basics you can move on to the techniques and styles of lessons that most appeal to what you want out of your guitar playing. There is a plethora of good information out there now, something many musicians would doubtlessly have loved back when they were learning to play.

Having such a wide variety of guitar instruction DVDs to choose from can let you build whatever kind of course you want. If you start finding material in certain areas too difficult, you can focus on DVDs that are more oriented towards those techniques, if you find the material you are working on too easy, you can expand your library and work on more intermediate or advanced material. The sky is the limit.

Of course, if you do have the money, a live guitar teacher can be quite a useful thing to have. However, if you can give yourself honest feedback on your playing and follow a disciplined course of your own making, then learning to play guitar on your own should not be a problem.

There are a lot of guitar instructional DVDs out there, so be sure to check our website for more information on them. Don’t forget to check out some of the general learn to play guitar lessons in addition to the more glamorous and technical ones. Find the lessons that will motivate you to learn and practice and get to it.

Tuesday, April 21, 2009

Guitar lessons DVDs: Unlocking the Guitar Player Within You

There are tons of guitar lessons DVDs out there, which can make it hard to find the ones that work best for you. While it is great having such easy to access to some of the best guitar teachers from all over the world, it does mean that finding a starting point can be quite difficult. However, by setting your goals ahead of time, you can find the DVDs that work best for you quite easily.

Choosing between playing and electric guitar or an acoustic guitar is one of the first decisions a guitarist makes. In some cases, a number of guitar instructional DVDs are specific to one instrument or the other. While both are guitars, make techniques are not usable on both kinds of instrument, which can have a dramatic effect on playing. The fast lead techniques beloved by shredders are too soft and quiet on an acoustic guitar. Without the amp, an acoustic guitar simply lacks the power to project those techniques. Then again, trying to play an electric guitar like a classical guitar can lead to headaches with the open strings causing feedback in the amp.

A common thing many new guitarists here is that acoustic is easier to start with than electric. Acoustic guitars are much more forgiving instruments than electric, which is part of the reason this is a common view. That isn’t to say acoustic guitar doesn’t require the same level of skill to play well, just that not having to deal with issues like feedback make the basics easier to pick up. However, switching from acoustic guitar to electric guitar is actually more difficult than learning an electric style from scratch. The two project sound so differently that playing the two the same way can lead to unpleasant results.

When looking for learn to play guitar DVDs, it is quite important to consider which type of guitar that you wish to play. Changing between the two and learning the nuances of each can slow your progress a bit early on, which is inconvenient for a person that only wants to play one or the other. You can quite easily learn both through guitar lessons dvd , but focusing on one or the other as a new guitarist can be more enjoyable and quicker.

While the same instrument may be used for metal, rock, blues, jazz, pop, etc the way it is used actually varies quite a lot from one style to another. A metal guitarist running through a distortion pedal and a high gain amp has a whole different area of issues to address than a pop guitarist running on a clean amp. Knowing what kind of music you want to play will let you develop the appropriate techniques you need for that kind of music.

Some beginner guitar instruction dvd for beginners start out with the basic open chords, strumming patterns, and similar techniques, which is a great way for most guitarists to start.

Blues, funk, metal, and classical guitar, for example, all rely heavily on techniques that are not as commonly used from genre to genre, and make far less use of the general techniques than genres such as pop or folk. While the general techniques can see use in these styles, a new guitarist looking to play more distinct styles such as these should focus more on the techniques of the particular genre. There are a number of lessons made specifically for starting in these genres. While they can be harder to start learning, focusing on the type of music you want to play is the surest way to make learning to play guitar fun and to be motivated to practice.

Setting goals is an important part of becoming a better guitarist. Be able to find the guitar lessons DVDs most appropriate for you can make learning to play the much more enjoyable. Be sure to visit our website to find information about the learning materials that are available, and start looking for the ones that are right for you.

Friday, April 17, 2009

Blues Guitar Lessons DVD: A Guide to Teaching Young Guitarists

This isn’t completely without reason, there are some things that are very difficult to impossible for a young child to do on a guitar. An easy concept from a guitar lessons DVD for an adult might not be physically possible for a child. However, taking this into account can help a child avoid a lot of frustration when learning to play guitar.

Yo-Yo Ma began to play cello and Emilie Autumn began violin when they were four years old. This isn’t actually that unusual age to start playing for a lot of instruments. However, look at guitarists and you will see people like Steve Vai and Ryan Roxie not really starting until they were fourteen, and Frank Zappa was seventeen before he got his first guitar.

An important thing to keep in mind with a young guitarist is that it is important not to push them too hard to practice. Initially, guitar is a painful instrument to learn as it does take time to build calluses. In addition, guitarists do manipulate metal strings with a decent amount of tension on them, and that is quite physically intensive and can cause injury if pushed too hard. A little push now and then to keep them practicing is alright, but definitely be sure to have them stop if their hands are tired or start hurting.

This may not be as big an issue as it seems, a child that really specifically wants to learn guitar will probably be more motivated to practice than someone forced onto another instrument. It can be painful and uncomfortable at first, but once they get used to playing, you may find it hard to get them to stop. Just let them progress through their guitar lessons dvd at the pace that is suitable for them, and don’t insist on any sort of time schedule.

A standard guitar can be too big for a child and one way to work around this is to get a specially designed small scale student guitar (even though they are technically a specialty guitar, they do cost about the same as any student guitar would). Travel guitars also happen to be about the same size in many cases. Using this guitar, they could use the same guitar instructional DVDs that an adult would use to learn to play guitar.

The main downside to this is that down the line, if they are serious about guitar playing, they will end up having to transition to a full sized guitar, which can come as a shock since the scale difference and size and weight will take a good amount of time to get used to. It may even take some time before they can play lessons on guitar instruction DVDs that they had already mastered.

Another option is to use a capo to effectively remove part of the neck and cause the bottom of the neck to be on smaller spaced frets. They could still use the same mechanical motions, but the pitch of any given note they play would be higher than normal. This can allow them to more gradually move down the neck until they are playing on the full neck. However, since their guitar is in a different key, any attempt to play along with a lesson from a guitar instructional dvd will naturally sound out of key. This is a good way to develop the mechanical abilities, as long as the child realizes their notes should sound higher pitched than on the lesson.

Both solutions can work for a child to help deal with their smaller reach, and there is no reason they can’t use the same beginner guitar lessons DVDs that an adult uses. The pace will likely work just as well for them, and they won’t be bombarded with advanced musical concepts. Don’t forget to check out our website for more information to find the most suitable DVD.

Saturday, April 11, 2009

Guitar Lessons DVDs: Using them to Teach Yourself Guitar

The question of whether a new guitarist should learn from guitar lessons DVDs or hire a teacher is a common one. You can find plenty of people that will argue both are better than the other, which can make this a tough question to answer. Considering there are self-taught and trained professional guitarists, it does show that both can work quite well.

A guitar teacher is not actually a guarantee of good training. As great as having a good teacher can be with eliminating issues early on, a bad teacher can actually so thoroughly damage your ability to learn the instrument that you will never be a decent guitarist learning from them. A bad teacher can frustrate someone who could have been a good, motivated student so badly that they completely quit learning to play.

Of course, the obvious thing is just to go to a good teacher, but here is the problem with that. Most guitar teachers are awful, there is no correlation between how much they charge and how good a teacher is, and every teacher’s students think they are amazing teachers. Finding a good teacher tends to be blind luck more than searching. Joe Satriani taught Steve Vai, Kirk Hammett, Marty Friedman, and many other famous guitarists before he got famous. They just happened to be in the right place at the right time.

This means that even if money is not the problem, just trying to locate a good teacher could very well be it. The question is where do the good teachers go to teach? Oddly enough, quite a number of them go on to teach through guitar instruction DVDs. The reason that guys like Troy Stetina make so many guitar lessons dvd is because they are good teachers. The companies that make these DVDs do put time, effort, and even their reputation on the line when they make one, so they do spend the money to try to get the best teachers they can.

That is actually a very nice thing about guitar instructional DVDs, you get to learn from some of the best guitar teachers around for a fraction of the cost of what being one of there students would be. Of course, you do miss out on feedback and some of the give and take relationship of student and teacher, but you also don’t inadvertently end up with a bad teacher hurting your playing either.

Why spend the extra money learning from someone in the back of the music store when you can learn from some of the best teachers from around the world? Anyone can call themselves a guitar teacher, and unfortunately that is the case with a lot of them. Even if a person is a good, well-trained guitarist, they aren’t necessarily going to be a good teacher.

You are learning the same techniques from a guitar instructional dvd as a teacher would show you, so if you do put the effort to learning them properly, you will learn to use them just as well. Needless to say, the convenience of a DVD over a live person can be extremely helpful for a lot of people as well.

Does that mean that guitar teachers are completely replaced and everyone should learn from guitar lessons DVDs? Not really. If you can find a good teacher and have the money for it, then it can be a wonderful experience. However, those can both be rather big ifs. Just visit our website and you will be able to see all the lessons you can learn on your own. You don’t need an instructor to learn guitar, and you shouldn’t feel obligated to spend the money for one if you can’t afford it.