Learning to play the guitar at home through DVDs is a great alternative to hiring a personal teacher. There are lots of DVD courses out there for beginners and those who are looking to go in-depth with a specific genre, for example, blues or metal. But which ones can be considered the best guitar lesson DVDs?
Here are reviews of 2 really great DVD guitar courses, the best on the market in my opinion. Both of them are designed to get an absolute beginner playing and actually enjoying the guitar, which isn't that evident. They combine a good amount of theory and techniques to learn guitar, and have a well-structured outline, with each lessons building on the previous.
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So without further rambling, here is a great guitar lesson DVD course for you to check out. Unfortunately, the other DVD courses worth mentioning have been discontinued, as more and more lesson providers switch to the online lesson format.
Gibsons Learn and Master Guitar DVD Course
This DVD course is one of the most popular on the internet, thanks to its high quality, professionally produced videos. It is backed by Gibson, so you know it will be quality material. The course was written by Steve Krenz, an established guitar teacher, and an all-around sympathetic guy.
The course is comprised of:
- 20 DVDs
- 5 Jam along CDs
- 108 page book
Gibsons L&M guitar DVDs present a well-structured guitar course to get beginners playing and reach an intermediate level with enough practice. Each DVD lesson builds onto the previous, which makes learning intuitive. The lessons are just the right length as well, at around 45 minutes each. The course features a lot of teaching aids spread throughout the lessons as well.
The lessons go into great detail of just about every aspect of playing the guitar, for example forming chords, strumming, barre chords, jazz, blues, solos, etc.
The DVD lessons are meant for beginners and effectively teach basic technical and theoretical concepts. Steve Krentz does a great job of taking the viewer through the nitty-gritty of the guitar, then showing you how to apply it.
This is actually one of the best parts of this DVD course since each DVD shows you how to use everything you learned from the previous DVDs and apply them to different guitar genres, such as funk, blues, jazz, rock, etc..
The videos are supplemented with written material for reference when you just want to practice without turning on your DVD and TV. The book also includes many exercises, which help you learn theory (sort of like homework back in school).
Table of contents of the Learn and Master Guitar DVD course:
1) Starting Off Right
2) Reading Music & Notes on the 1st & 2nd Strings
3) Notes on the 3rd & 4th Strings
4) Notes on the 5th & 6th Strings
5) Basic Open Chords
6) Minor Seventh & Suspended Chords
7) Barre Chords on the 6th String
8) Barre Chords on the 5th String
9) The Secret to Great Strumming
10) Fingerstyle Guitar
11) Pentatonic Scales 63 Pentatonic Scales, Forms & Pentatonic Patterns
12) Advanced Chords
13) Playing the Blues
14) Giving Your Playing Some Style
15) Electric Guitars -The Heart of Rock & Roll
16) Advanced Strumming
17) Going Beyond the First Position
18) Jazz 93 Jazz Chords & Chord Progressions
19) Soloing & Ear Training
20) All the Chords You Need To Know
The one-time purchase price may seem a bit high at first, but when you think of the fact that you get over a year's worth of lessons, you'll see that the $7 per DVD price is actually very inexpensive, compared to how much you would pay a private teacher over the course of a year.
Click here to check out the details of Gibsons Learn and Master Guitar >>
These guitar lessons DVDs will be of great aid in learning the guitar, but ultimately, it all comes down to you. No one has ever picked up the guitar and instinctively knew how to play, it takes practice, lots of it in fact. But the rewards are amazing, learning the guitar will be one of the best things you've ever done.
Also, if you are already familiar with the guitar and know the basics, check out some genre-based courses, for example, these blues guitar lesson DVDs from the same authors as above.
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It seems like these lessons are geared more towards acoustic guitar rather than electric. Is that the case?
Well, the initial beginner lessons can be played on either type of guitar, it doesn’t really matter. Afterwards, there are sections of the course that are more suitable for a specific type of guitar. For example, the fingerpicking part is better on the acoustic, but can still be played on the electric. However, the rock and blues sections of the course are more suitable for the electric.
I updated the above article with the table of contents of Learn and Master Guitar, you’ll see that from about the half way point, it start becoming more geared towards the electric.