The School of Feedback Guitar Blog

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:

1. It's the teacher's job to create lesson plans that match the student's ability AND to be there to hear their frustration. Frustration in any pursuit is bound to appear. Online lessons give you no one to talk to and no one to encourage you. You are pretty much on your own. If you want to learn guitar on your own with nothing but online lessons to guide you, you have a hell of a hurdle to circumnavigate.
2. Online lessons, as of this writing, cannot conform directly to a person's interests in a direct manner. A teacher, however, can. Want to learn a song? Well, a teacher could show you immediately and tell you what details you, specifically, need to focus on in order to master the song. Google is more likely to throw you a badly written tablature, and YouTube is more likely to give you a poorly produced lesson that pretty much ignores your abilities completely.

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.