Using online guitar lessons has it’s advantages and unfortunately a few disadvantages. First, you will save a ton of money if you can learn this way. If you paid a local guitar teacher $20 for a weekly lesson, you would be spending $1000 a year or more for what you learn. Even the most expensive online guitar programs are less than $100, some less than $20. Plus, once you buy it, you can keep it and use it as often as you like.

Learning from an online guitar program is mostly about motivation. If you are taking lessons from a local guitar teacher, you have someone that motivates to learn what they are teaching you. For those of you who are still in school, it is similar to when you are in a classroom. For some of you, your motivation comes from your desire to learn. But I suspect for many of you, your motivation comes from not wanting to get into trouble if you don’t do your homework.

When you are learning guitar from ebooks, textbooks, audio or video files there is no one to make you do your lessons and practice what you learn. That’s why you must create your own system for learning and practicing. You must develop an artificial structure around you to ensure you accomplish your goals. Read on to find out how to develop your own learning and practicing system.

Above are 3 examples of setups that are conducive to learning how to play the guitar. You need to be comfortable and able to easily reach whatever you may need. Notice in the 3rd picture there is a keyboard. A keyboard can be very helpful when learning music theory elements such as scales and chords.

Your complete system will include not only a desk setup like above, but also things to remind you of your lessons and things to help motivate you. Reminders can include things like sending yourself emails setup to be delivered at the right time, phone calls from firends and family and scheduling your learning/practice times around regular events in your life.  To develop your own system and structure for learning and practicing, let’s first look at the where and how of it. You need a place to learn and practice comfortably. Find a desk, table or corner somewhere, where you can do your lessons and practice. Make sure your chair is armless. Arms on chairs will get in the way.

Also, make sure your computer and it’s controls are within easy reach. You don’t want to have to keep moving when you have to manipulate your computer. Be sure your printer is also within easy reach. You will sometimes want to print out lessons rather than have to continually move the screen so you can read everything.

If you will be using an online tuner, metronome or another website, go ahead and pull them up and minimize them for easy access. Open a Word document to make notes of things you learn, as you learn them. It’s too easy to forget important things if you wait until you are done with your lesson.

Make a game out of learning and practicing. See how many new chords can you learn today, or by this time next week. It’s fun achieving your goals. You must have elements of fun in your practice routine or you will get bored and quit eventually. Your guitar will become a dust collector.

Practicing hard will produce burn out if you don’t have a compelling reason to practice. Have a picture in your mind of where you want to be in a year, in 5 years, in 10 years. You need something that will motivate you, pull you along and get you through those times when you barely have enough drive to practice or learn something new.

Everybody doesn't need to practice and learn everything. Those who want to have a serious professional career will need to learn it all, theory included. There is no way around it. But if you are one of those who just wants to play around with your friends and you don’t have any lofty goals as a guitar player, then you don’t need to learn music theory. If you want to be a great Heavy Metal player, you won’t need to spend much time on finger picking unless you want to incorporate this in your own style.

• You should be able to see and measure your results, your growth as a guitar player. That’s why I suggest taking notes of your practice sessions.
• Your confidence should be building day by day to the point where you feel certain you can reach your goals.
• Make changes in what you practice to keep it interesting, even exciting. Start with scales one day and chords the next.
• Remember what inspired you to want to learn to play guitar. Keep elements of this factor in your practice schedule and routine. If it was a certain player, keep MP3’s and videos around and listen/watch them on a regular basis.
• Document your lessons, the things you learn, and go back over them at least once a week so you don’t lose any of these skills. If you are learning guitar elements in the correct order, the skills should build on each other. For instance, you need to learn basic scales before you try and tackle lead guitar.

If you look at your practice time the same way you look or looked at school then you need to adjust your view of learning the guitar, or just sell it. You need to put some fun in your practice sessions so you look forward to it. Otherwise, you won’t have the motivation to keep going through the tough times.

How do you put fun in your learning and practice sessions? How soon you forget. Go back and read Part 2 for some suggestions. You can also go online and find guitar and music games you can download doe free. Make up some old fashioned flash cards, invite an friend or family member to do the flash cards with you. Having someone else in the mix also helps with motivation. You don’t want to look foolish or inept in front of someone who knows you.

If there is something you just don’t understand or something you don’t like to do, let it go for a few days or even a few weeks and see if your attitude changes. Maybe you’re just not ready for it yet.

Wouldn’t you look forward to your practice sessions if they consisted of lessons you enjoyed. Take some time and create a structure for learning you will enjoy. This is you guitar career we’re talking about. Get it right on the front end.

Design your own practice program. Write down all the elements you need to learn. When you study guitar, take each lesson one at a time, checking each one off as you learn it.

Keep in mind what inspired you in the beginning. Keep, pictures, MP3s, videos or anything that will motivate you, near you when you practice.

Pay close attention to your lessons. Make sure you understand what you are supposed to learn so you practice the correct elements. Write down what you will learn in each lesson before you start. Then make sure you completed everything before you move on.

Find things to motivate yourself. You might be doing this for a favorite relative or friend, maybe a girl or boy, man or woman. If your goal is to play guitar for a favorite recording artist, put a picture of them on your wall. If you want to move to Nashville or New York to play, keep something around to remind you of that goal. If you want to play like Eric Clapton or Stevie Ray Vaughn, put a picture of them where you can easily see it.

We all need goals in life. Otherwise we would just be drifting from day to day. You need clear goals for your playing while you are leaning to play the guitar. These goals will keep you motivated. Identify what you want to achieve in the end, where you want to be. Keep these goals in the front of your mind, never let go of them. Set small, achievable goals for your practice sessions. Say, “I want to learn G, C and D chords by this time next week.” Or later say, I want to be able to play Layla by June 24^th.” Keep setting goals and they will pull you along.

Keep documentation of your lessons. Write down what you learn with each step. This way you can look back and measure your progress. Doing this can be very inspiring as you realize how much you are learning.

Concentrate on one guitar element at a time. If you are practicing the major scale, stick with it until it’s as comfortable a breathing. Learn it in C, then learn it in all the other keys until you can do it without thinking about it.

It isn’t what you know as a guitar player, it’s more about what you can integrate into your playing to produce great sounds. It doesn’t matter if you can play every scale forward and backwards at breakneck speed. But it is important to understand what to do with those scales and how to create intelligent, great sounding leads using them.

One of the advantages of learning guitar using an online course is that it forces you to be self reliant. You, alone are responsible for doing everything. If you can organize a system and put it into practice, you may be amazed at what it does to not only your playing, but your life in general. Self reliance is a wonderful thing. It gives us strength to do things we might not otherwise have been able to do.

Start creating your personal system for learning guitar today. It could very well be the most important day in your life.

Once you have a handle on the basics of playing the guitar, Youtube and other video website can be a great help when you are learning guitar. First of all, the quality of the information is usually outstanding.

You can find videos from great professionals and learn top of the line tips and tricks. Plus you can almost always find a video on exactly what you need help with. If you are struggling with scales, you can find many videos to help you with that.

Another great thing about online videos is that you can develop your own style based on a favorite player. If you love the way Jimi Hendrix played guitar, you can study his videos until you play just like him.

Once you develop to a semi professional level you can even begin creating your own videos to put on video websites. Never underestimate the value of these video websites, They are probably the best free training you could ask for anywhere.

Do you know what a reference point is? In the case of guitar players who want a career as a professional, it means knowing before hand how good you need to be to survive and do well in a professional environment. Let me illustrate it with a story I read a while back.

There was a man in the Los Angeles area, who had a son that played the trumpet. His son had pretty lofty ideas about where he wanted to go with his trumpet playing. This was back when Johnny Carson still hosted The Tonight Show. The boy would listen to Doc Severenson and the Tonight Show Band every night and dream about playing in that band. His father had a few connections, so he set up a time he and his son could listen to a rehearsal of the band that the boy loved.

The day came and the boy and his father were there in the rehearsal room. Doc came in and handed out a brand new song the band needed to work up for the show that night. Keep in mind that this was a song the band didn’t know and had never heard. Doc Severnson took his baton and counted 1,2,3,4 and the band jumped in on the first note just like they had been playing the song forever. All they did was read the notes on the page. Hearing them play the song that well with no rehearsal gave that young boy a reference point. At that point he understood how good he had to be to play at that level.

I’ll give you another example from personal experience. During my tenure in Nashville, Music City, I got the opportunity to play with some of the artists I grew up listening to. I’ll tell you about 2 of them, Percy Sledge and the band Curtis Mayfield founded, The Impressions. There are a lot of older acts like these two, acts that at one time had hits on the radio. Their hit making days were over but they still toured regularly. Most of these acts didn’t have their own band anymore and would call on Nashville bands to back them up for shows because they knew Nashville musicians could learn their show very quickly.

Well, quickly in these cases is an extreme understatement. We usually got a tape or CD of their music a day or two ahead of time. We would meet them at a rehearsal hall and then we had a 3-4 hours to rehearse with them and get their entire show down. That was it. 3-4 hours to perfect their entire, usually 2 hour show. The next day we would head out on a tour with them. There were other times we didn’t know until the day of a show that we were backing up an artist that night. In another article I will share with you the secrets we used to accomplish this feat (playing professional jobs with little rehearsal.)

For musicians in Nashville, it is typical to get calls to play with a house band because one of their musicians can’t be there that night. To do this you have to be able to play any song they call, right on the spot. There are no rehearsals, you just have to know the songs, whatever they call on any night. You have to show up at the club and plug in your axe. When it is time to play, the band leader will call the song and the key (sometimes) and the drummer will count it off. That’s all the warning you get. Nothing but experience and the practice you put in early on, will prepare you to be able to work at that level. This is where your level of playing will be obvious. If you can’t cut it at this level, you might as well pack up and go back to Tumawatchie or wherever you are from, because no one will hire you.

There is a type of fraternity that exists among musicians in Nashville, Los Angeles, New York or any other major music capital. Becoming a member is easy. You just need to be incredibly good on your chosen instrument. If you are, other musicians will welcome you into the club with open arms. If you are not, you won’t work. It’s that simple. There is no room for mediocre players.

This is the reason practice is a must. You have to learn your instrument and be able to play anything in any style to work on a professional level. There is no way around it. Practice is king! Understand that in the beginning and you can prepare yourself for an exciting career as a professional guitar player.

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