FREE LESSON
PHIL KEAGGY - Grammy nominated and seven-time Dove Award winner, is one of the world’s great guitar players and a pioneer in contemporary Christian music.
- August 24, 2016
- Guitar Lessons
Have you been thinking about picking up the guitar but not sure you can afford a new hobby? Are you looking for Free Guitar Lessons?
Maybe you are afraid of committing the time and money, or you’re unsure of how successful you would be at playing an instrument. There’s nothing wrong with having the occasional doubt, but that doesn’t mean you shouldn’t at least dip your toe in the water before completely abandoning your hopes.
One way to get better accustomed to playing guitar is to find online guitar lessons for free. While the guys at Pro Lessons would recommend setting up a consistent lesson plan that will help you reach your full potential, free guitar lessons can be helpful for beginner players or anyone looking to mix up their practice routine.
But with all of the different options out there for free or cheap guitar lessons, how can you find the right guitar lessons for you? Fortunately, we’ve compiled a few helpful hints and recommendations.
Find Guitar Instructors Teaching at Your Skill Level
When looking for the right guitar teacher, musicians are going to want to look for someone who knows where they’re coming from. Even if the lessons are free, you will be wasting your time if you’re a beginner watching instructional videos meant for expert guitarists. Not that you couldn’t learn anything from watching someone play at a higher skill level, but it’s best to learn how to walk before trying to run a marathon.
The majority of what you’ll find for free guitar lessons online will be beginner level videos. Many sites use these lessons to hook you into their teaching style without divulging anything beyond common knowledge guitar terms. The idea is to give you, the consumer, a taste for quality guitar lessons at the least expense.
Aside from sites offering a sample free lesson or a one-week trial period, there are only a few places on the internet that can boast free guitar lessons at an intermediate or advanced level. If you’re a newbie musician, the sky's the limit.
The reason why it’s so important to find a guitar instructor teaching at your level is that you want to be challenged, but not to the point of frustration. No matter how free the lesson is, it’s still going to cost you valuable time. Don’t waste yours by picking the wrong teacher.
Try to Find Guitar Lessons (or Free Guitar Lessons) That Fit a Specific Need
Just as important as skill level, you’ll want to find guitar lessons that are going to address a certain skill you want to acquire. For many people, this need will be something along genre lines. If you want to become a better blues guitarist, try to find lessons that are taught by someone with expertise in that field.
One of the biggest advantages to learning to play guitar online is that you are not tied to the same instructor all of the time. If you’re looking to solve a problem with your playing, you can probably go online and find a video of someone explaining the solution in a clear way.
No matter what you’re looking for, the guitar lessons you choose should have some way of helping you fill the void in your playing.
Avoid the Wannabes
As big as the internet is, and as helpful as many of the people on it can be, there are a lot of people posting videos on YouTube or similar sites that you wouldn’t want to consider reliable sources.
Just about anyone with a smartphone and a guitar can claim to be an online guitar instructor these days. Just like with many social media “celebrities” out there, some of these people are just looking for views and followers. Try to find someone who genuinely cares about teaching you how to become a better guitar player.
On top of that, you’ll want to listen closely to make sure that whoever you’re listening to actually knows their stuff. A good way to foolproof a well-rounded education is to seek knowledge from a collection of different guitar instructors.
Find a Real Lesson Plan
One of the biggest dangers in looking for free guitar lessons online is that you often end up bouncing around from site to site like a pinball without a sense of direction. While this may help you answer a few questions here and there, it doesn’t provide the best guitar education you could ask for.
Just like in your K-12 days, guitar lessons should start with the basics and become more advanced as time goes on. It wouldn’t do you a whole lot of good to jump from 1st grade to 9th to 5th and so on.
The list of websites offering free guitar lessons in this kind of linear fashion is rather small, but there are some examples out there. Two of the most well-known websites that present actual lesson plans are Justin Guitar and Guitar Lessons. We wrote a review of these and other free guitar lesson websites in an earlier post.
These are just a few things to keep in mind while you search the internet for affordable guitar lessons.
For another option, Pro Lessons offers annual, as well as monthly, subscriptions at a fraction of the cost of most other guitar instructor sites. We have professional musicians from a variety of different bands who are eager to share their knowledge with guitarists of every skill level. For more information on these lesson plans, click the banner below.
