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There’s a real danger with using guitar tutorials online. Don’t get me wrong, there are some fantastic guitar video tutorials available, many of which have been produced by some of the leading guitarists within the music industry. The trouble is that there are also many guitar videos which have been produced by people who would like to become one of the leading guitarists in the industry, but who at the moment are only a few steps up from playing the air guitar.

The other problem is that for those people who are hoping to move on from learning a few basic guitar chords to being able to read and play guitar tabs and guitar sheet music, learning from poorly made guitar tutorials can easily result in bad habits forming. Guitarists can very easily pick up bad habits, and whilst for some people this isn’t really much of a problem, for those people who are more serious about learning to play guitar these bad habits can become real obstacles later on.

If you were wanting to learn to play the piano then you would expect that right from the very first lesson you would be taught not only how to physically play the notes, hold your hands and move your fingers, but also how to read the musical notation correctly. The two would go hand in hand, and you would be expected to apply a certain degree of discipline, practising both the technique and the theory week by week.

The same is true for learning to play almost any instrument, except, that is, for the guitar. Strangely the guitar is an instrument set aside from most other instruments. It’s one of the only popular musical instruments not to feature in a classic orchestra, and it is one of the only instruments which can be picked up and learned by almost anyone very quickly indeed, without any real professional help or training.

There are very few guitarist teachers compared to piano teachers, despite the popularity of the instrument. The reason for this is that demand is very low, because most people who want to learn to play guitar are self taught, or learn with or from their friends.

Today the internet has introduced the opportunity learn to play guitar by watching guitar tutorials, and with many hundreds of thousands of guitar video tutorials getting the information you need is just a matter of a couple of mouse clicks. But just because information is easy to access and readily available doesn’t necessarily mean that it is advised or recommend. Or even right.

Many tutorials are likely to encourage you to apply bad habits or poor techniques, and very few will encourage you to be more disciplined or to learn the theory of playing as well as the physical technique. If you’re happy continuing to just be a casual strummer then this isn’t really a problem, but if you’re hoping to take your guitar playing to a new level in the future, perhaps playing solo or playing in a band, then you will need to understand more about how professional, experienced and accomplished guitarists do what they do.

Even rock guitarists will need to have a sound understanding of how to read guitar tabs, and you can learn a very great deal about how to improve your playing by learning from people like this. Of course if you don’t happen to have an address book stuffed full of rock guitarists then you could head over to one of the specialist guitar video tutorials sites where professional, high quality and recommended tutorials and training is available which will help you to learn the basics in a way that won’t encourage bad habits, and will more easily enable you to move on with your playing when you feel the time is right.

 

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