While it is hard to imagine rock music without pounding drums, thundering bass, or powerful vocals, no instrument quite defines the genre like the electric guitar. But supposing you want to learn to play guitar, how should you go about it? Here are a few options.
Private Lessons
If you can afford them – and if you can commit to a regular lesson time each and every week – then getting private lessons from a good guitar teacher is the best way to learn guitar. That said, getting lessons from a poor or mediocre guitar teacher can be pretty much a waste of time. How can you tell if a teacher is any good? Well, one way is to listen to them play. But being a good guitarist and being a good teacher of guitar are seperate skills. So it’s better to have a listen to the teacher’s students, if you can. Sometimes, the best teachers can be expensive, or you might need to travel some distance to be able to learn from them.
Instruction courses
If you can’t find a really good teacher, or if a really good teacher isn’t affordable or convenient for you right now, then some guitar instruction material can be of great benefit. Guitar instructional programs come in a variety of media and formats: there are printed materials, like the Mel Bay courses; DVD materials, like the Metal Method series; and even digitally downloadable courses, such as Jamorama.
Going it alone
The phrase “self-taught” guitarist is something of a misnomer – because all guitarists learn by watching and listening and then putting it all together in our heads. But many guitarists have learned to play guitar without any formal instruction, including famous players like Jimmy Page and Kurt Cobain. If you learn without any formal instruction, your learning cure might be slower, and you might pick up bad habits, but you can still learn a great deal by playing along to CDs, jamming with friends, and these days there is quite a lot that you can pick up off the internet.
