subject: Guitar Trick: 45 Online Video Instructors For The Price Of One... [print this page] In the late 1990s Jon Broderick searched the internet for online guitar instruction and came up empty handed. His frustrations lead to the creation of the Guitar Tricks website for which he claims to have pioneered online video guitar lessons.
At this point in time there are about 45 different instructors delivering over 3000 video lessons. Each instructor is an experienced guitarist and many are naturally gifted teachers. While some are less comfortable than others on camera they all seem to present an orderly logical progression to the lessons.
Who Will Benefit Most From These Online Video Guitar Lessons?
There are guitar courses for beginners that have never touched a guitar. There are also courses for intermediate to advanced students that cover most major genres of guitar music, techniques, popular songs as well as the individual style of many famous musicians.
Are These Lessons Designed For Electric or Acoustic Guitar Players?
The lessons are designed for a wide range of acoustic and electric guitars.
The Video Quality is adequate to excellent. This variance depends on when the video was made. The more recent lessons produced after 2005 seem to be much sharper than earlier ones.
A Partial List Of The Lesson Categories:
Fundamentals, Blues, Country, Rock, Acoustic, Bluegrass, Blues, Classical, Country, Electric, Funk, Jazz, Metal, Rock, Rockabilly, Surf, World Music, Technique Studies, Individual Artist Studies and Popular Songs.
The Negatives
The videos had trouble running smoothly without stopping. It appeared that sometimes they just couldnt load fast enough to keep up with the playback. Changing the video to the lower quality setting drastically reduced the number of times it would stop without making a huge difference in the picture quality.
Guided Practice sessions, where the instructor actually practices with the student in order to teach the discipline of professional practice techniques, could be stronger.
I wish Guitar Tricks would offer a DVD set that contains all of the current lessons. This could avoid the time consuming task of downloading the videos for those that wish to view them offline.
The Positives
Guitar Tricks seems to make a significant effort to continually add new lessons and articles.
At this writing, Guitar Tricks covers more styles of guitar music than any other online company.
Their website is logically organized and very user friendly.
The video lessons can be downloaded directly to your hard drive if you prefer to view them without using the internet. This is especially helpful if your internet connection happens to be running slowly on a particular day.
With over 45 instructors, you are not limited by the strengths and weaknesses of just one teacher.
The lessons are well thought out, consistent in delivery and structure.
Support: Guitar Tricks supports its subscribers with a newsletter, a GT Channel which is a video lessons and tips newsletter, a forum with over 200,000 posts for asking questions of fellow students and instructors. There is also a support phone line and email address.
Guarantee: There is a 60 day, no hassles, money back guarantee.
Price: At this time, the subscription service is $14.95 per month if you pay month to month. It is only $10.75 per month if you pay $129 USD in advance for an entire year.
The Bottom Line
This is an easy guitar lesson program to recommend for beginners and for more experienced players looking to refine their techniques, understanding of music theory or just to add a new playing style like Rockabilly to their repertoire.
I do still slightly prefer the Learn and Master Guitar DVDs for beginner guitar students primarily because Steve Krenz is my favorite video guitar instructor, the lessons have a little better detail and they offer guided practice sessions. However, Guitar Tricks is still a good choice for new players.
The bottom line is that no other guitar course offers as many options for instructors that teach so many genres of music, so many diverse techniques, so many studies of the famous guitarists and their songs all for only $14.95 per month. No matter which guitar lesson program you decide for your primary source to learn beginning guitar, this should be seriously considered as a companion study for everyone. Without a doubt Guitar Tricks ranks highly on my short list of recommendations.
