The one thing many guitarists do not consider is the cost of learning music. Personalized one on one music lessons, while perhaps the best option to a musician, can be quite expensive. Finding other people to jam with is the second best option, but is sometimes difficult or impossible due to music choices or the geography of a rural area.
Many younger musicians lack the patience to sit and learn guitar standards, such as “Greensleeves” or “Canon.” Furthermore, these songs may be totally unrecognizable to anyone under the age of thirty. Trying to force these lessons on a beginner can result in them looking for the exit. Young musicians want to learn to play songs they know and love. While the standards are important, gaining the interest of a young person requires an attention getter, and often “Greensleeves” is not it.
For the young or old, the good news is that there is a wealth of free information available on the internet that can assist in their development as a musician.
Free Online Tablature
For online tablature (printed sheet music), www.ultimate-guitar.com is one of the few (and best) remaining choices left on the internet. With over 300,000 available, ultimate-guitar.com has a tab for any taste, from heavy metal to classical. The website also offers video lessons and simpler chord printouts for songs, which are excellent for beginners. Ultimate-guitar.com offers bass guitar tablature as well.
The website also offers “Power Tabs,” which utilize a free computer program that can be downloaded from ultimate-guitar.com. The Power Tab program shows the tablature and plays the song in a midi sound format. The program also allows users to create their own tabs and hear it played. A user can then upload their new tab onto ultimate-guitar.com to be rated by other users.
Free Online Video Lessons
YouTube is an excellent source for music video lessons. There are thousands of videos posted by everyone with a guitar and a video camera, so it takes some hunting to get to the quality ones. Here is a list of worthwhile channels to search for and visit on YouTube;
- · Marcos Farhat: From Guns N’ Roses to Flamenco, this channel has fair to excellent video and sound quality on all videos. This channel offers the complete lesson of many popular songs. A drawback is the videos are often in several short parts that can last only a few seconds, making going back and forth from the mouse to the keyboard a bit of a chore.
- · Guitar Tricks: This channel has over 400 YouTube subscribers, and offers in depth product and guitar reviews as well as quality lessons. The video and sound quality is excellent on all videos, and the instructors do a nice job explaining theory. A user will not find many popular song lessons on this channel, but will find examples of playing styles that will help them go a long way. While this channel is free, it does promote a website with expanded lessons and tips that may require a fee.
- · Rockongoodpeople: An excellent channel with personality, this channel has good to excellent sound and video quality, and also offers a lighter side to guitar instruction. Tim and Dave, instructors on the channel, are intelligent and funny, and still manage to offer great song and theory lessons. The videos on this channel are free, but the channel promotes a website with expanded lessons and tips that may require a fee.
- · SoloDallas: AC/DC is a band that mixes the blues and hard rock into a multitude of driving rock songs, and SoloDallas’ channel is the place to go on YouTube to find AC/DC lessons. While it’s worth a look just to ogle over all the vintage guitars and amplifiers on the videos, the instruction level on this video is better than most. The channel offers excellent sound and video quality as well as insight into the rights and wrongs of playing. This channel is completely free, making it even more worth a visit.
With all of these free resources available, learning to play and master the guitar can be fun and free.
 |
