The Internet

I'd like to talk about the effect that the Internet is having on the way that some people are learning to play the guitar.

First of all, let me say straight away that I'm one of the Internet's biggest fans. I was an early adopter, way back in the '80s. This was before the world wide web, browsers and search engines. It was also long before broadband. I used to use a modem plugged into my telephone line to look at bulletin boards, newsgroups, and to send and receive email. Today I'm an enthusiastic user of Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, SoundCloud and of course Blogger. I also develop and maintain my own website.

Above all, I love the way that the Internet is a source of information. A year ago, I developed a problem with my left thumb, disastrous for a guitarist. My local GP was clueless, so I did some online research and successfully diagnosed myself. I went back to my GP, told them what treatment to give me, and within a few days my thumb was back to normal again.

Anyway, about learning the guitar. It's pretty easy to find free guitar tuition online, as well as music theory, and chord charts or tabs for songs. This can be immensely helpful to someone learning how to play. I wish these riches had been available to me back in 1972 when I took up the guitar.

However, some people are using the Internet as their main, or only source of teaching material, and this is causing them problems. In recent years, I've had quite a few new students come to me for lessons, who have been playing perhaps one or two years, learning from the Internet, and who can't credibly play a single piece of music.

If you pick and choose what online information to use, you can miss out on the essentials. Like how to sit and hold your guitar properly. Like how to position your fretting fingers correctly, so that you can play notes and chords clearly, without fret buzz, muffled strings, and with the minimum of effort.

It's very easy to learn chord shapes from online sources, but simply knowing which strings and frets to play doesn't teach you the best way to change from one chord to another. Many guitarists are learning inappropriate chord fingerings, and are missing vital information about which strings to miss out when they strum particular chords.

And then there are the overreachers. it's all too tempting to study intermediate and advanced material before you've learned even the basics. Let's face it, if you can't strum a first-position D chord with four down strokes to the bar yet, you should not even be looking at sweep picking and barre chords!

So many guitar students rely on chord and tab websites. They don't realise that an awful lot of the charts and tabs online are just plain wrong, sometimes laughably so.

The Internet won't watch you playing, or monitor your progress, or give you advice tailored specifically to you and what you want to achieve. It doesn't have ears or eyes, so it can't tell you to move your fingers closer to the fret-wire to stop fret buzz, or to press a string down with your fingertip to avoid muting the adjacent string, and it can't remind you not to play the sixth string as part of a first-position B7 chord.

A website can certainly teach you how to play an A Pentatonic Minor scale. But it's not that good at advising when it's appropriate to use that scale. Information on music theory is certainly out there, and some of it is very good, but all too often new guitarists see it as "that boring stuff", and skip it. Avoid theory at your peril, or your solos will sound terrible!

A whole generation of guitarists is developing bad habits that hold their playing back, sometimes for years. Bad habits are extremely difficult to break. What's the point of buying a beautiful guitar, gig bag, strings, capo, amp, leads, effects pedals, picks, and a clip-on tuner and then spending hours and hours trying to figure out what to do, only to realise two years later that you're really not that much closer to being able to play?

The answer is obvious. Guitar lessons with a professional tutor! Either face-to-face, or online via Skype. Preferably one-to-one, so that you get individual attention.

So use the Internet wisely. There is a wealth of information online, but you need a teacher's advice to sift through the mountains of irrelevance and find the material that suits you, and that you're ready for.

Don't forget my own range of free video lessons, and backing tracks for improvisation on my YouTube channel.