Five Reasons to Consider Online Guitar Lessons

• January 10, 2017
• Guitar Lessons

Almost everyone, including children, are walking around with the Internet in the palm of their hands. It’s astounding! Ask Siri a question and you can find out anything you’re curious about. She’ll even rap for you. Go ahead and ask her. Never has it been easier to get the information we need, but some things require a response. If you want to learn “Cliffs of Dover” by Eric Johnson, you can pull it up right there. You can view the video and pull up the tablature. Now what are you going to do? Play “Cliffs of Dover” right then? No way! Whether you’ve been playing for 10 years or 10 weeks, you will have to decide if you’re going to do the work. There are plenty of good reasons to consider online guitar lessons. Let’s check out a few of them.

1. Convenience of Online Guitar Lessons

One reason to consider online guitar lessons is simply convenience. We’re all super busy and finding it hard to take time to schedule anything extra. It’s at least a 2-3 hour commitment just to go take guitar lessons in your local music store. By the time you drive home, get your guitar and music, drive to the store, do the lesson, and drive back home, you’ve invested valuable time and you haven’t even practiced the lesson yet.

With a laptop, iPad, or even a phone, you can step into a quiet place and view a half-hour guitar lesson anywhere, anytime. You just need to have a quality travel guitar and the Internet and you’re good to go. At the office, in a hotel room, or at home, you can work on your guitar lesson. You can even watch online guitar lessons while you wait in the car line at your kid’s school.

2. Repetition

If you are taking lessons via Skype, you will still have a designated time just like regular guitar lessons, but if it’s a pre-recorded lesson or instructional video, you can pull it up anytime you like. You can pause the lesson. You can repeat the lesson or a section of it as many times as you like.

Some websites even offer a slow down feature where you can slow the lick or riff down, allowing you to learn the riff slowly, then speed it up. In a classroom setting, things might go over your head or slip past you, but with online guitar lessons, you can watch it several times until you’re sure you’re getting it right. Basically, you’re in control of the information. You’ll find this is a serious reason to consider online guitar lessons.

3. Move At Your Own Pace

Since everyone is at different levels and we all have different schedules, we like online guitar lessons because you can view a lesson and save it in your favorites. Then, you can come back anytime and view it again and again. Your success will be determined by your ability and commitment. Some musical pieces might require techniques, such as sweeping or tapping, which may force you to put the lesson on hold while you work on them before you can advance and master the lesson.

When it comes to learning a song or technique, it’s not good enough to just memorize the motion and mimic the sound. What? That’s right. Just because you can play the intro riff and solo section to a four-chord praise and worship song for Sunday morning church service doesn’t make you a guitar player any more than learning “Eruption” makes you a rockstar.

Knowledge is dangerous if you don’t have enough hours under the hood to meet whatever you’re endeavoring to do. One of the Disney stars recently sat in to play guitar on an award show. When it came time for his solo, he totally choked. It made Internet headlines and was the joke of the year among musicians. You need to know what you’re doing in order to avoid press like that.

4. Affordability

Perhaps the biggest reason folks like online guitar lessons is that they’re affordable. Some sites are as cheap as $10/month. Others might be more, but you can do very well studying online if you have the discipline. You’d be lucky to find an instructor nearby that is worth your time and charges less than their online counterparts.

One of the things you might miss with online lessons is the ability of an instructor to monitor your progress, but some sites actually have an answer to that. You can play along and record a musical piece right on the site, then one of their instructors will critique your work and evaluate your progress. If you’re doing Skype lessons or some other online real-time service, you don’t have to worry about that so much. However, these lessons will most likely be more expensive.

It might seem a little impersonal coming from a computer screen, but that’s no reason to stop taking guitar lessons online. There’s plenty of pros to the cons. Just think, for the price of one meal at a restaurant, you can have unlimited access to many of these online guitar lessons.

5. Choice of Instructors or Style

Whether you live in the city and it’s 45 minutes to Guitar Center or in a rural area and the nearest music shop is 45 miles, your options for quality guitar teachers might be limited. Your ability to get good Internet might be too, but finding a good connection is usually much simpler than finding an instructor who’s a good fit for you.

There is practically every style and countless options for instructors online. If metal is your thing or bluegrass is your passion, you can find an online guitar instructor who specializes in that genre. One of the great benefits is simply the inspiration. Watching someone shred or burn a guitar neck up close is inspiring. Your computer screen is even better than a front row seat at a concert. You have the perfect angle and detail when watching online guitar lessons. Some of these sites offer the original artist teaching the guitar parts. For example, Mike and Barry of MercyMe break down their guitar parts on the Pro Lessons site. How awesome is that? This is a big reason to take advantage of online guitar lessons.

It’s really up to you to decide what kind of guitar lessons you want to take. There are many reasons to study guitar online. If you have great internet, a good laptop or iPad, and some quiet time, you can do very well learning from an online source. We do however encourage you to do the work and give yourself an honest evaluation. If it takes 10,000 hours to become an expert at anything as some say, online guitar lessons may help you get you there. It’s no substitute for putting in the playing time, though.

You also want to find an instructor that fits your style and knows what he’s talking about. If you had to have surgery, you’d want a doctor who has performed hundreds of successful operations. Now playing guitar isn’t as important as heart surgery, but performing successfully at a show is very important if you’re going to build a career as a respectable guitar player.

If you’re considering enrolling in some online guitar lessons, we’d like to throw our hat in the ring as a viable option for your educational needs. With professional guitar instructors and affordable rates, we hope you’ll click on the link below to find out how you can be our next student.