Learning the guitar is a never-ending journey. The more you know, the more you realize you don’t know.
Books
If you’re planning on being a self-taught guitarist, books should be your primary resource.
Some books stand out amongst others. It’s up to you to select books that you’re comfortable with and can easily understand. Some suggestions for beginners are:
- Music Theory for Guitarists (Tom Kolb)
- Approaching the Guitar (Gene Bertoncini)
For more advanced players, there are books like Develop Sight Reading (Gaston Dufresne,) which is only notation and no text.
Apps
A mobile app can listen to you play by using your device’s built-in microphone and then offer feedback. This is a fun idea, although it generally doesn’t offer any exclusive benefits to other learning methods. Premium applications are not free, although a trial may be offered.
Video
Online video is a great learning resource that was unavailable to previous generations. Free video lessons usually focus on individual concepts as opposed to a structured course. They should be used as a supplement to textbooks, and not as a primary resource for learning.
There are a number of great online video resources:
- Guitar Master Class (paid subscription)
- TrueFire (free and paid subscriptions)
- YouTube (tons of free content)
There are a number of great teachers found on YouTube that offer free lessons:
Online Tabs
Guitar tablature is a method of notating music that allows beginner guitarists to learn songs quickly and easily. It’s simply a number corresponding to a fret and string on the guitar neck.
There are a number of online tab sites that contain a free catalog of all popular music you would ever want to learn. The downside is that these tabs are uploaded by users and are not always accurate. If you pay attention to your ear, tabs are still a great resource for learning.
Don’t rely primarily on tablature. You should “relearn” the song by ear once you know (more or less) where the notes are.
