Online Courses

enjo

Recently I've been trying to focus on learning and I've been GASing for knowledge rather than gear. 

I bought a 1 hour Guitar basics course by Rhett Shull which was a good taster (for someone who has known how to play the notes for decades but without knowing the reason why I was playing the notes or how they really related to each other).

Now most of the youtubers I follow seem to offer a course and there are a the myriad of other online resources out there, none of which are that cheap. Has anyone done any that they can offer some thoughts on?

The ones I've seen so far:
Paul Davids 
Mary Spender
Music is win (Online Supersystem)
Justin Guitar
Fender
True Fire
Rhett Shull (Basics - done)

Evo

Firstly, before I say what I'm going to say, I fully endorse and completely recommend supporting creators that have provided value to you with any of their content. Paid or free.

That said, most of the information covered in these courses is available to some degree for free.

Now, I have purchased several of Tom Quayle's downloadable courses and found them very helpful as well as excellent value for money. But I also found the following videos to be incredibly well constructed and contain a huge amount of helpful information on the topic. 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iCF7RMt60aM
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dhwix_UAkm0

There are huge amounts of information from absolute titans of the guitar world on YouTube, just search for Robben Ford lessons and you've instantly got a lifetime's worth of study material. 

I have personally found that I learn the most from teachers I enjoy listening to, so my advice would be to find a personality which appeals to you and follow that route.

Best of luck!

David

enjo

Thanks David, I appreciate everything is available out there for free. There are some great links on this forum and I really appreciate the links to TQ! I think your last point sums it up for me, having someone that I enjoy listening to that encourages learning more. 

Part of me is thinking if I invest money into a course I'm more likely to want to see the return on investment and stick with it!

Evo

I’m the same!

It’s the “if I join a gym, then it’ll make me exercise” approach. 

Also like going to the gym, it’s a good idea to focus on small, short term goals like “learn one position of the melodic minor scale” as opposed to “learn jazz” or “master the fretboard”

best of luck and keep at it! 

Keep us updated with how you get on

Ridley

I understand the need for some structure in learning which at least for me helps keep me focused I have tried the following:
GuitarTricks
Aimed at beginners they are one of the first and biggest of the online course providers, they are one of the best for beginners to early intermediate as their structure works well for that. You can choose to pick a genre such as Blues, Rock, Country, Acoustic and follow that from beginner up
They have a pretty large catalogue of song lessons as well and the lessons are of good quality all tabbed out nicely.
Ultimately I wasn't enjoying the blues course and most of the songs were not what I wanted to learn and so tried Jamplay.
Jamplay
Probably better for an early to late intermediate player, I am currently using this site and the choice of courses is very good, you can pick from several beginners courses or pick a genre or an artist study. The songs are well taught but I find it odd that they only have 7 blues songs which is disproportionate to the number of blues courses, contrary to so many rock and metal song lessons for less actual courses, though still a good quantity.
Unfortunately the site videos have had an error all this weekend so Ive not been able to use it, so clearly no weekend support which quite frankly isn't good enough, though I can't say if the others are any better on this point.
GuitarGate https://www.guitargate.com/
Presented by Michael Palmisano. A good choice if you want to focus on theory and understanding the fundamentals of guitar. Don't expect any song lessons on this the course focuses solely on trying to help you improvise. It starts off with scales, chord structure, 7th chords, leaving caged, extensions and modes, playing over changes etc.
Check out his YT channel
https://www.youtube.com/c/Guitargate

Guitar Playback https://guitarplayback.com/
Run by David Waliman, I paid up for lifetime access to the full site as it was well priced at the time, I find it a bit too advanced for me as a lot of the content seems fusion based, but check out his YT channel and you will see if he appeals to you.
https://www.youtube.com/c/Wallimann

Here are the current YT channels for tuition that I follow.

Chris Sherland has some fantastic lessons
https://www.youtube.com/c/ChrisSherlandGuitar

Some very good stuff here
https://www.youtube.com/c/SoundGuitarLessons/videos

https://www.youtube.com/c/JulesGuitar/videos  Jules has just started teaching online, but so far looks good.

Supportact

I was in the same position as you a while back and ended up going for the Justin Guitar theory course.

I've not tried any of the others so I don't know how they compare but I found this one very good. I liked it because it comes in modules you can work through at your own pace, and the fact that it's quite practical (in that he tries to relate the concepts to actual playing). 

Teetonetal

Truefire is great if you want to expand your horizons and delv into a mayrid of different styles, but I found it a little lack luster from improving knowledge or technique. There is a lot of "how to play" explanation witho out some much "why it works"

No doubt the will offer another once in a lifetime membership for 99USD over black friday.

They have a lot of content on thier that as a member you can watch as often as like. If you find a course you really like, you can purchase it. You also get a free monthly guitar lab course that you download.

Cranky

I’d like an online course focused specifically on the concept of “altered”

guitarjack66

Evo said:

Firstly, before I say what I'm going to say, I fully endorse and completely recommend supporting creators that have provided value to you with any of their content. Paid or free.

That said, most of the information covered in these courses is available to some degree for free.

Now, I have purchased several of Tom Quayle's downloadable courses and found them very helpful as well as excellent value for money. But I also found the following videos to be incredibly well constructed and contain a huge amount of helpful information on the topic. 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iCF7RMt60aM
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dhwix_UAkm0

There are huge amounts of information from absolute titans of the guitar world on YouTube, just search for Robben Ford lessons and you've instantly got a lifetime's worth of study material. 

I have personally found that I learn the most from teachers I enjoy listening to, so my advice would be to find a personality which appeals to you and follow that route.

Best of luck!

David

While you are far more experienced than I am,I totally agree that going for a teacher that you enjoy seems a much better option. I am not keen on Tom Quayle's style of teaching myself from the little I've seen of him but I may now have go back and take a look again. The only thing that I find a bit uncomfortable is that I feel that the popular on youtube teachers have millions of subscribers and I feel like that lack of personalised teaching a bit off putting. I have a personal teacher but cant afford his small fee that often but enjoy our personal relationship and I feel these massively subscribed teachers cannot offer that. I like a personal touch myself that I just don't imagine that personal level can be achieved with.

allen

I have thought about this a lot on my own journey and I think some of it comes down to:

1. Knowing what you want to achieve - personally, my guitar journey is unfocussed. I spend 2 months on SRV, then a month on scales, then something else, etc. Sticking to a clear path helps a lot. Some online courses help with this as they have a pathway built in. Also, some online courses are better for certain things/genres/methods/etc.

2. Getting feedback on your playing - there are plenty (more than plenty) of free resources on the internet, but only a real human being can look at/listen to you and point out where you are going wrong. Imagine trying to learn how to get a basketball in the hoop, but you can't see if it is going in when you throw it. You can watch a million youtubes on how to do it, but if you don't know if you're doing it right you can't make progress*. One good alternative is to video yourself playing and watching it back. There is also at least one place on the internet (reddit?) where you can post videos of yourself playing and get feedback from others. Personally I have found both of these approaches very helpful and have moved my playing forward.

* - being able to listen to yourself very well is one theory as to why some people are way more 'talented' than others.

Other random points:

- I've heard of some people working on one 1 hour video for months (years) e.g. frank gambale thing from the 90s (which can be found on youtube) and there's also a famous paul gilbert one from a similar era.

- it's a good point that paying for things may increase your focus and commitment. 

enjo

Some really good input, thank you all for taking the time to reply! 

So far I have trialed a three video course by Paul Davids (my original front runner) and wasn't as impressed as I hoped to be. I think the initial videos are aimed at real beginners which probably didn't help.

I then started a 7 day free trial of the music is win guitar super system. This felt like a natural next step from the Rhet Shull course I enjoyed. So for now £7 a month is going that way.

I also bought the Tom Quayle solo app to help with learning the finger board. I can really see how that is going to help later on.

guitarjack66

enjo said:

Some really good input, thank you all for taking the time to reply! 

So far I have trialed a three video course by Paul Davids (my original front runner) and wasn't as impressed as I hoped to be. I think the initial videos are aimed at real beginners which probably didn't help.

I then started a 7 day free trial of the music is win guitar super system. This felt like a natural next step from the Rhet Shull course I enjoyed. So for now £7 a month is going that way.

I also bought the Tom Quayle solo app to help with learning the finger board. I can really see how that is going to help later on.

I just can't get past that name name 'Music is Win.' I can't help but think there is a word,or part of one,missing! It messes with my head. 

neilg

guitarjack66 said:

enjo said:

Some really good input, thank you all for taking the time to reply! 

So far I have trialed a three video course by Paul Davids (my original front runner) and wasn't as impressed as I hoped to be. I think the initial videos are aimed at real beginners which probably didn't help.

I then started a 7 day free trial of the music is win guitar super system. This felt like a natural next step from the Rhet Shull course I enjoyed. So for now £7 a month is going that way.

I also bought the Tom Quayle solo app to help with learning the finger board. I can really see how that is going to help later on.

I just can't get past that name name 'Music is Win.' I can't help but think there is a word,or part of one,missing! It messes with my head. 

I can't get past the comment he made in a recent video about The Smith's being a nothing band with nothing songs.

guitarjack66

neilg said:

guitarjack66 said:

enjo said:

Some really good input, thank you all for taking the time to reply! 

So far I have trialed a three video course by Paul Davids (my original front runner) and wasn't as impressed as I hoped to be. I think the initial videos are aimed at real beginners which probably didn't help.

I then started a 7 day free trial of the music is win guitar super system. This felt like a natural next step from the Rhet Shull course I enjoyed. So for now £7 a month is going that way.

I also bought the Tom Quayle solo app to help with learning the finger board. I can really see how that is going to help later on.

I just can't get past that name name 'Music is Win.' I can't help but think there is a word,or part of one,missing! It messes with my head. 

I can't get past the comment he made in a recent video about The Smith's being a nothing band with nothing songs.

They've never heard of Johnny Marr then!

enjo

I haven't watched all of this yet but for anyone else looking 5 Watt World has released a video covering a lot of courses:

Perrygoround

I enjoy the Robert Baker ones. The seem to fit my style, level, and learning goals outside increasing my repertoire (which I work elsewhere on the myriad of free "this song lesson" available on youtube). Also, they are very reasonable priced when picked discounted pre-release or during some kind of promotional time.

thomasross20

Truefire for the win imo. 
Howard Morgen's "Fingerboard Breakthrough" is exactly how I look at the fretboard. 
In fact this is how I look at it.. I know the note names, but not instantly. But you can't think of those at full speed. Knowing the intervals relative to root note so can form any chord in any CAGED position is super powerful. But I don't just think about the chord when playing over chords because you have to link them. And sure, CAGED links them, but it misses all the tones around the key chord notes. So I know the scale to play for any particular mode from any string. E.g. D lydian on 10th fret E string is lydian shape... but on 5th fret it's played over A major scale shape. TBH I am pants at on-the-fly thinking and prefer to spend hours figuring out cool chords and constructing songs, making lines move and having interesting bass & chordal movement lying underneath it. 

joeW

I like TrueFire - usually get annual access in the sales for 70 usd , so it’s great value too.  If you want a bit of theory - can’t go wrong with the Pat Martino course - tho psychoactive drugs may be needed to understand some of its content.  

Am starting ‘advanced jazz guitar improv’ at Berklee today for 12 weeks - great way to start the year 

nero1701

Yep, Trufire here also!

enjo

Update - I cancelled the MIW subscription. 
I didn't find it structured enough and I wasn't learning the underlaying theory that I wanted to.

I'm lucky enough to have a piano and 2 keyboards in the house so... I've decided to learn theory by learning piano with an app called 'Simply Piano' and a few books. My wife has had lessons before and my son is currently learning with a teacher so it makes sense to learn as a family.

So far after a couple of weeks I am enjoying this much more.

guitarjack66

neilg said:

guitarjack66 said:

enjo said:

Some really good input, thank you all for taking the time to reply! 

So far I have trialed a three video course by Paul Davids (my original front runner) and wasn't as impressed as I hoped to be. I think the initial videos are aimed at real beginners which probably didn't help.

I then started a 7 day free trial of the music is win guitar super system. This felt like a natural next step from the Rhet Shull course I enjoyed. So for now £7 a month is going that way.

I also bought the Tom Quayle solo app to help with learning the finger board. I can really see how that is going to help later on.

I just can't get past that name name 'Music is Win.' I can't help but think there is a word,or part of one,missing! It messes with my head. 

I can't get past the comment he made in a recent video about The Smith's being a nothing band with nothing songs.

What difference does it make?