This blog is dedicated to the idea that learning and playing guitar should be as fun as possible. It is a fine read if you are starting to learn guitar from scratch and if you tend to search for ways to be more creative.
Learn guitar and have fun too.
One key failure that online guitar lessons have not been able to escape is that they do not seem to make most challenges beatable. What I mean is that most online guitar lessons do not take into account where the student is coming from and exactly how much to guide them along. Most of these lessons somehow skip a crucial step here and there that would greatly aid in understanding. Worse, they will put pressure on the student to get over it, buckle down, struggle, and learn guitar. This is analagous to being given a 500 page book on anatomy and being told, "You have a test in three days on this. Fail, and you will be thrown off a cliff. Pass, and we give you a different book. It might be Quantum Physics, too. Good luck."
The trick to learning anything is making sure that the information presented to us, as students (and I am absolutely a student as well), is thoughtfully selected and tested in real-time. I am wary of any teacher who tells me to memorize things; If it's not useful then it's a waste of my time and energy! Selectivity is everything. Furthermore, memorizing things makes it hard for each challenge must be commiserate with my ability. I only have so much brain power. In conclusion, the entire set up of the lesson, the presentation of the material, everything, must ultimately help the student learn what it is they need to learn, and no more. Anything more is like cotton candy; Lots of sugar and little substance.
There are many avenues for learning guitar. That much is obvious! With YouTube and Google, the plethora of online guitar lessons is pretty staggering. I get a little overwhelmed by all the choices there are. For this blog post, I want to take a closer look at YouTube and how it could possibly help a person who is starting to learn guitar from scratch. I think there are advantages to using it, but I think there is a really good way to approach learning from YouTube that can be most beneficial.
Before I get into that, I want to write about YouTube's advantages and disadvantages.
YouTube has a fantastic wealth of videos, showing you everything from a C Chord to playing fast shred licks. The variety of the lessons is staggering. You can find just about everything. What this means is that you can find a simple video on how to learn a specific scale that might ordinarily not be found. Chances are, some person out there took the time to set up their MacBook, shot a video how to play it, and then uploaded it. It's pretty cool. It's definitely a "let's democratize the tools and see what happens," sort of thing.
There are some guitar teachers who have built a huge YouTube presence. I think that is great. The benefit to following these people is that you get a specific insight into their worldview, how they think that you should or should not play guitar. Of course, you have to make up your own mind, and it's my belief that education is often about connecting the dots between several teachers. It's good none-the-less to get some of these opinions
I will be blunt: YouTube utterly fails at crucial tasks in education. First, YouTube cannot encourage you or interact with you. Other than the person in the video saying "Hey- if you are doing this, you are doing a good job" there is no way that YouTube can encourage you to keep going, even when the going gets rough (it sometimes does). In addition to this huge limitation, you are on your own when it comes to the next video to check out. Although there are people out there who have built huge YouTube bodies of work, there is no guarantee that their approach will lead you to the destination you want to arrive at.
With YouTube, there is the distinct danger that it will be a scary waste of time and energy. First, there is searching for a video you want. if you find the video, there's the chance it could be utterly ineffective. It might be too hard, not at your skill level. Worse, the instructor on the video might not say why learning a specific concept is good. For example, many teachers insist that learning music theory is a good thing, while personally I am passionately opinionated in saying that it's the student's choice to learn music theory. You might be stuck with someone who is hell-bent on getting you to learn scales, and you couldn't care less.
The nail in the coffin for me is that YouTube doesn't have the highest quality videos. Of course, they are educational videos. They just need to help you learn guitar. For me, there is something about aesthetics that is lost or forgotton with YouTube. Anyone can do it, including the mediocre. Sure there are good videos out there. Find them! But the bad ones makes the whole experience feel kind of cheap. To me at least, it feels like YouTube's staying power with education is limited because of it's lack of quality video.
There is one way that I have found that works particularly well when you are using YouTube as a way to learn guitar: Question a concept mercilessly. Ask someone whether or not they agree with what the instructor said. Start a dialogue! This could be a guitar teacher, or a friend who plays. Anyone with experience. Ask them if they learned to play guitar without knowing music theory. The answer might surprise you.
The way I learned guitar was anything but traditional. If I did this all over again, I probably would have searched the internet twice over for answers to my questions. I know that I would feel pretty unfulfilled, as I tend to be the insanely curious type. I guess if YouTube does anything, it's latent function is to feed that curiousity. Enjoy!
Sometimes I shout myself a little hoarse with this whole music theory thing. I really, really, don't think it is appropriate to assume that every single person out there in the world needs to know music theory in order to simply play a chord. I have said it time and time again, and I will continue to for as long as I am involved with music education: Anyone can learn to play the guitar without knowing a shred of music theory.
In a previous post, I stated that about 80% of the people I teach just do not want to learn music theory. The other people do, which of course I happily oblige. The mistake that many guitar teachers make, either in person or online, is that every person must learn music theory to play guitar.
Yuck.
I am basing my rather sharp opinions on the way I learned guitar. I will share: I had no instructors (or online lessons either!). All I had were friends who played and showed me a thing or two, and Van Halen. I wanted lessons. I wanted to learn. I didn't really get the chance until college. By that point, I knew music theory was something I needed to know. After all, it was fun. "Oh- that's why that chord progression sounds cool. Sweet." I heard it, and then I seeked the music theory to back it up. To this day, that is my approach to teaching guitar.
When learning music, it's my opinion that it's better to experience it without complication. The ear needs to hear the music. The body needs to feel rhythm. The fingers need to feel the strings. The muscle memory has to develop. Music just has to be there. Music theory is nice to know if one is curious about it. If someone doesn't want to be taught music theory however, and if they are forced to, then music theory will build a wall right in the middle of the creative spirit. Not fun.
If you absolutely crave learning music theory, it's good to learn it. Do it! But if you don't crave it, simply allow yourself to experience playing music to it's fullest. There is plenty of time later for learning more technical aspects, and it does nobody any good to feel guilty about not knowing music theory until that point.
Relationships are important. People help us and we help others. We stand on our own merely because someone helped us stand in the first place. That's why I say that teaching guitar has just as much to do with the curriculum as it does with having a good professional relationship between teacher and student. As far as I can tell with online guitar instruction, I haven't seen any online course that could possibly substitute for playing music from others or learning from a teacher. Here are two reasons why:
I don't bring this up to discourage people from learning online. Learning how to play guitar completely from the aid of Google and YouTube may be possible, but online lessons have a place. It's just that the amount of effort people put into online lessons can have twice to three times as much payback if that energy was to be invested into guitar lessons.
Bob Sneider, at the Eastman School of Music, cautioned me once that though he learned a lot in his music classes, the more he played with this old standup bass player the more he learned. Bob learned how to play jazz by playing it with someone who knew it inside and out. Chris Buzzelli, of Bowling Green State University music school, maintains that in order to get good time and rhythm, one has to play with other musicians who have them. Nick Goluses, at the Eastman School of Music, get's right to the point with each graduate student he teaches. He makes each of them learn a concerto, which is a really difficult piece that shows off your technical prowess. Most concertos have orchestral accompaniment. Talk about pressure! He also asks them to learn the Concerto de Aranjuez in their doctoral studies. Not an easy piece of music. His point is that a guitarist changes once they play with an orchestra. His point is that after guitarists learn concertos and play them in a concert, they are playing for an auditorium and symphony hall wherever they go. They project confidence and sound.
Playing with others, outside of our little bubbles, is exactly what it takes to learn guitar. Whether it's a concerto, jazz, Beatles songs, or strait noise, we learn by doing. It's important to understand that no amount of online lessons alone will give you everything you need to play guitar, ever. No one learns in a bubble.
Instead, look to online lessons as a way to learn something new when you are already into guitar. It's more fun to learn new things once you have a certain skill set mastered. Use those lessons as a supplement, and there is less chance for frustration sidelining the entire approach.
We have trained ourselves to see through bad marketing easily. Sometimes I think that "best practice" has been relegated to hoodwinking the customer into buying the product first, and then finding out if it's any good. This is unfortunately the case for guitar lessons. After all, the person searching just has to take the leap of faith and see if the teacher is good for them or not.
I think one of the reasons why people can see through marketing so easily is because the product is empty of meaning in the first place. If the product or service isn't remarkable enough, so we might naturally ignore the the marketing and advertising completely. As Seth Godin so eloquently describes in his wonderful book "The Purple Cow," if a product is not remarkable, then how could it possibly do well?
This brings me to a weird spot in my pursuits. I will be launching an online guitar lesson app sometime in the next month or two. My questions have been nothing short of "How do I make this so remarkable that anyone who tries it out tells others about it because it is so cool?" Friends and colleagues have been supportive, but also cautious with their words. I know I have a long haul to get to that point, but am ready to put the hours in. Just as long as it's nothing short of the most kick ass online guitar lesson anyone can find, I will be happy.
This was quite a babbling blog entry. Thanks for reading.
This blog is dedicated to the idea that learning and playing guitar should be as fun as possible. It is a fine read if you are starting to learn guitar from scratch and if you tend to search for ways to be more creative.
This blog is dedicated to the idea that learning and playing guitar should be as fun as possible. It is a fine read if you are starting to learn guitar from scratch and if you tend to search for ways to be more creative.
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