The seeds of change are growing in the guitar teaching fraternity. More and more instructors are being asked to comment and advise students on the differences between conventional guitar tuition and buying guitar lessons online.

As a fairly recent innovation, guitar lessons online would seem to be inferior to enrolling in guitar lessons with a real live guitar teacher. The disadvantages would be numerous wouldn't they? Not so. In fact, from an instructors point of view, a closer investigation shows some rather unsettling results. It seems that guitar lessons online offer many advantages for the beginning guitar student.

Some of the benefits that came to light were:

1. Convenience. Guitar students do their practice at home, with no requirement for lugging guitars around or driving to the teacher's house or studio. This equates to more time practicing and playing the guitar.

2. Immediate start. As soon as the course is paid for, guitar lessons online can be downloaded instantly, and practice can be started any time.

3. High quality course material. Although most of the topics are familiar guitar teachers, guitar lessons online contain new and innovative ways of teaching the material to students. Guitar teachers who are now using these methods find their students are advancing faster than before.

4. Cost savings. Many online guitar courses can be bought for under $200, while enrolling with a guitar teacher can cost anywhere from $25 to $40 per hour. Considering that most online courses can keep a student busy for 6-12 months, it is clear that the online option costs much less.

5. Lack of stress and pressure. Learning to play the guitar at home means no pressure from the teacher to constantly get it right. This can ease the way for younger students to gain confidence more quickly.

It is clear that guitar lessons online are catching on, which is not surprising considering some of their major advantages. No more dragging equipment around, less pressure and high quality learning material for a fraction of the cost to mention a few.

In the words of my guitar teacher friend, "I hope they don't find out, because I'm certainly not going to tell them! (Not unless I get my act together and create a new online guitar lesson course of my own of course!)"

So if you would like to check out a few of the best online guitar lessons you can get your hands on right now, this handy guitar lessons comparison chart might help.

While you're at it, here are some other useful resources for beginning guitar players:

• GuitaroJam News - Articles, resources and valuable tools for guitar players and music fans.
• Guitar Lesson Tips - Tips and articles for learning guitarists
• Guitarman51 - Articles and links for guitar players