Start Guitar Lessons Online
Learning how to play the guitar is the beginning of a life-long journey. First you must learn the basics: strumming, chord shapes, getting to know the fretboard and basic music theory. After you’ve mastered beginner guitar, you will be ready to work on soloing and writing licks using the pentatonic scale, learn fingerstyle, jazz guitar as well as more advanced strumming patterns.
Electric or Acoustic?
Are you an acoustic guitarist, or an electric guitarist? Why not be both? Both instruments have their advantages.
The electric guitar is an extremely versatile unit, with many changes you can make to the amplified sounds using guitar effects, pedals and amplification units.
The most iconic electric guitars are made by Fender. The Fender Stratocaster is a legendary and versatile guitar played by legends such as John Mayer and Stevie Ray Vaughn, while the Fender Telecaster is an extroverted piece of music gear, which twangs quite beautifully when used in blues, jazz and rock scenarios. Fender also sells beautiful bass guitars such as the Fender Jazzmaster.
The acoustic guitar is an instant campfire classic. You can still play a diverse range of genres such as blues, folk and soft rock, and it requires next to no additional equipment! Guitar lessons for beginners often commence with acoustic guitar, with chords being taught to give the student the ability to play rhythm guitar.
Online guitar lessons
Bizarrely enough, playing the guitar can be learned through online lessons these days! Get in touch with a tutor, and they will instruct you and demonstrate how to play chords, licks, scales and the rest over video call! Of course, they will send you some tablature (tabs) for you to play along to, and they will give you feedback on correct fretboard fingering and fingerstyle/picking, all from the comfort of your own home.
Guitar lessons for beginners
Beginner guitar is undoubtedly the most difficult phase of learning the guitar. The best guitar teachers teach strumming patterns and common chords, so students can learn how to play their favourite songs. Guitar lessons for beginners don’t have to be frustrating, the most important thing is that students practice timing and intonation in this phase. That’s why its critical for guitar lessons for beginners to be done with an experienced teacher. After that, students can strum away to tablature or videos found online.
Chords
The first chords any student should learn while doing guitar lessons online are the ones which do not require barring - that is, laying the finger flat across multiple strings on the fretboard. The chords which avoid this technique are C, G, D, E, A, Am, Em and Dm. With just these chords, the student will be able to play a wide variety of songs, in particular pop songs. Just look at the Axis of Awesome’s Four Chord Song to see how many popular songs have a simple, continuous four-chord structure that any beginner guitarist can play along with. Guitar lessons for beginners can be simple if these simple chords are used while correct strumming is the focus of the lessons.
While during online guitar lessons it may be more difficult to adjust the students fingering for chords in-person, the internet proves an extremely useful resource for beginner guitar players attempting to master these beginner chords.
Lead Guitar
Once you’ve mastered the chords, and even learned how to play some barre chords, you will be ready to channel your inner Hendrix and play some lead guitar lines! This will include improvisation over pentatonic scales, as well as famous rock guitar riffs such as ’Smoke on the Water’, ‘Voodoo Child’, ‘Enter Sandman’, ‘Heart Shaped Box’ and many more.
Playing guitar solos involves developing an instinctual sense of where each note is located on the fretboard. Countless hours of jamming and ear training over a variety of styles of music is essential in developing the various guitar tricks we see Frusciante, May, Clapton, Harrison and Hendrix pull out on a regular basis. Guitar lessons for beginners set the foundation for this type of creative mastery to be executed later on.
Jam Tracks
Another benefit from seeking out online guitar lessons is that the internet provides countless jam tracks for you to try out your new skills over the top of. For example, the YouTube channel ‘Elevated Jam Tracks’ provides online guitar lessons in the form of a graphic of a fretboard with the notes which fit the key of the track highlighted. The audio plays an instrumental track for you to play along with. There are a variety of tracks available for major and minor scale keys, as well as many style variations to play along with such as blues, jazz and rock. These fantastic new types of guitar lessons for beginners are innovative ways to use the internet to further your guitar playing. I would highly recommend you check this out once you’ve mastered the chords and are ready to learn how to improvise and play lead guitar.
Music Theory
Another question for any would-be guitar learner may be: how much music theory do I need to know? The answer: how long is a piece of string? The world of music theory is endlessly deep and complex, much like mathematics. as a beginner guitar player, you can begin with the basics, such as the cycle of 4ths and 5ths as well as common chord progressions and combinations for composition. Acoustic guitar tabs will show you where to place your finger so you needn’t worry about knowing exactly which note you’re playing every time, that can come later. To play guitar, the most important thing is that you’re enjoying it and improving. Online guitar lessons will deal with technique before they go into theory. However, there will be ample time to learn theory later once you have mastered the basics of guitar playing.
Learn to play your favourite songs
To learn guitar is to be able to communicate with your favourite musicians in a way you never could before. If you love Queen, or Pink Floyd more than anything in the world, then ask your guitar teacher to teach you the chords for one of their simpler songs to start out. This will keep you motivated and make you come back for the next guitar lesson and the one after that. Many places offer a free guitar lesson to begin, to ignite that passion within you. So go out there and find some beginner guitar lessons, be it for blues guitar, rock guitar and any other genre. Many experienced teachers are versatile and will be happy to instruct you in the genre that you prefer. Even classical guitar can be very rewarding to learn! Whatever you do, just play! And make sure your lessons motivate you to play more and more every day.
Geoff is a very enthusiastic teacher and a great communicator, unfortunately lockdown disrupted our plans, but I'm sure we will meet in person in the near future for some lessons!
Rob, 2 weeks ago
Madison was very positive and helpful. I enjoyed my first lesson with Madison, she sounds incredibly talented.
Tash, 3 months ago
Super friendly and encouraging. Has really shown a lot of knowledge, and adaptability to questions and shifts/refocuses to suit. Definitely recommend :) Also replies super timely to queries and messages
Therese, 3 months ago
Thomas is incredibly nice, polite and patient. With his 14 years of guitar experience, he really knows what he is talking about. Impressive!
Melanie, 5 months ago
Well thought-out step by step process for a beginner, lessons always productive and suitably structured. Nir always has a gentle thoughtful attitude which allowed me to go at my own pace and feel calm/safe to learn :)
Jessica, 5 months ago
Madison is a brilliant tutor, we are learning so much, and enjoying the process! She makes you feel very comfortable, is attuned to what we want to achieve and offers the feedback we need. Also takes time to prepare a session that is relevant to us,...
Andrew, 5 months ago