Learning how to play a music instrument is a great way to exercise your brain and obtain a hobby all at the same time. There are a myriad of benefits to learning music instruments that have been well documented. If you’re thinking of picking up the guitar for fun or to help your brain, here are some awesome guitar websites to help you out.
1. ShredAcademy
ShredAcademy is a free guitar learning resource that is actually found on YouTube. Included are well over 100 guitar learning videos to get you started. They also have things like “lick of the week” where you can learn some fun techniques and learn to shred at the same time. There are a variety of instructors, techniques, genres, and types of guitar playing you can learn and it’s all totally free (you may have to watch an advertisement here and there). To check it out: go here.
2. MusicRadar
Much like ShredAcademy, MusicRadar is YouTube-based guitar learning. They include a number of genres, techniques, and plenty of videos to learn guitar playing. They also have bass and drums if you’re into that stuff too. Along with all of that, they have shows where people talk about playing guitar, gear demos, and other content to keep you interested and entertained as you practice everything you’ve been learning.
3. Dolphin Street
This channel is run by guitarist Robert Renman and it includes a virtual library of information. A lot of places will teach you the basics and teach you technique. Dolphin Street goes the extra mile and actually teaches things like music theory as well. Sometimes it’s not how you play a note, but why you play the note! There are Q&A sessions that will teach you how to be a better guitarist by stretching your perspective on the instrument as a whole. It’s definitely for the more technical learners but there is a lot of great information there.
4. Jammit
Jammit is the first on the list that isn’t also a YouTube channel. It also has apps for iOS, Mac, and PC if you don’t want to visit the website all the time. This site is fun because it allows you to listen to other musicians play. You can then take that song, slow it down, loop a part, etc so you can focus on one part at a time and learn how to play the whole song. For many players, learning how to play it is simply a matter of copying others until they get the finger motions down and this is a great site for that.
5. Ultimate-Guitar
If you’re more into learning using tabs, then Ultimate-Guitar is the best out there. It’s been around for a very long time, has an amazing selection of songs, and then each song can have multiple tabs done by different people. Users rate tabs based on their accuracy and how easy they are so you know which ones are the best (or at least the closest). You can download and print tabs all day long free of charge and that’s a good way to help yourself learn. You can also learn your favorite songs which helps keeps struggling newcomers motivated!
6. Justin Guitar
Justin Guitar is a popular website for guitarists. It includes over 700 lessons for beginners, novices, and experts. Alongside those are fun things like exclusive interviews with guitar virtuosos. You can get lessons in video, audio, ebook, DVD, and in mobile app form so there is also a lot of options for the beginner. In this day and age, options are good!
7. BobbyCrispy
BobbyCrispy’s YouTube channel contains a bunch of (free) lessons and is a cornucopia for music learning. There are over 300 lessons in total that goes over everything from the basics to learning how to play specific songs. In the video above, he shows you how to play 40 songs with only three chords. His videos also have tabs overlaid into the videos so you can see what he’s playing and play along. It’s a different approach that combines at least two elements of guitar playing (showing and tab reading) and a lot of the songs he chooses to teach people are good ones.
8. Guitar World
Guitar World is a veritable mess when it comes to what they offer. Once you learn your way around, though, there is a lot of amazing guitar stuff there for people to learn. There are conversations on music theory, lessons for beginners, novices, and experts. There are also some lessons from famous guitarists. Some videos are just ridiculous, like this guy playing two guitars at once. It’s a fun channel with a lot of awesome guitarists showing you how they do what they do.
9. JamPlay
JamPlay is a music “school” of sorts. There are lessons that are brought to you by a bunch of different guitars from a lot of different genres. They even have the guitarist from famed metal band Mushroomhead as an instructor. What it lacks in instructor-to-student participation they more than make up for with sheer content. If you’re learning how to play guitar, this is a website you should be on.
10. ArtistWorks Guitar Campus
Last on our list is called Guitar Campus and it’s actually a sort of school for guitarists. You pay a certain amount of money (between $200-$300 per year) and then instructors teach you how to play the guitar. This is unique because these other services are pretty much exclusively a “watch what I do” sort of place with very little interaction between instructor and student. This is not like that. If you’re wondering if the instructors are any good themselves, the video above is a song called Scarified by Paul Gilbert who teaches rock at Guitar Campus.
Featured photo credit: CMT via cmt.com
