Hi there, I'm Tomas Michaud from Real Guitar Success. Over the years I've
learned from many different sources about how to play guitar. When I started
out it's pretty much copying friends and of course listening to records and
trying to copy what I heard on records. I even would watch the guitar player when
I went to a concert and see if I could go home and figure out what he was doing.
As time went on, I added books and DVDs when they became available and
eventually my path led to going to the University and studying music as well as
a variety of private instructors. The newest source of learning has been for
me online courses and I've learned not just music but a variety of things. All
of these have played a vital role in my ability to enjoy creating music and
playing guitar today. In this video I'm going to talk about two of the most
common paths to learning guitar that would be private lessons one-on-one with
a professional instructor or online courses. I want to help you make the best
decision for yourself. Now the private lesson is usually a one-on-one with a
person. You either go to a music studio or sometimes to their home. It's usually
once a week and you have a lesson basically they send you home to practice
for a week and then come back, correct things and send you off to practice
again. Now when I say online, many people think of going to YouTube because that's
how a lot of people first are exposed to learning guitar online anyway. Now I'm
not talking about that. YouTube doesn't have any order or systematic approach
and you can easily get something that's too hard or in the middle and with no
sense of progression. What I'm gonna be talking about is paid for online courses
that are actual professional courses systemize learning much different from
YouTube. They have a systematic approach. They have many other resources including
play-along videos and often opportunities for feedback as well. Like
all things,
there are benefits and disadvantages to each that's what I'm
gonna discuss in this video. I'm gonna give you a pro and con of each. I like
that when I go to Amazon reviews. I like to see the pros and the cons and then of
course you decide what's best for you. Let's start with the private one-on-one
lessons. The first pro is some level of flexibility. In other words an
instructor can see how you're doing and make decisions about giving you
something easier or harder and can adjust the path based on your interest
and your particular needs. The second and I considered a big one is accountability.
You know you're gonna come to that teacher hopefully every week and have to
show what you've done. Now it's kind of embarrassing quite honestly to go there
and not have practice but even more so when you go to an instructor and you
show what you've done you get some feedback and say "Yeah, you did good" and
of course a person that's sitting there can correct things right then and there.
If you're not doing it right or you put your finger in the wrong place or they
see some tension they can tell you "relax", "loosen up', "let's do it again". And finally,
a good teacher can give you support, encouragement, help motivate you and keep
you moving forward because of that relationship that you have with them. Now
the number one cons of private lessons are they're expensive. Any good
instructor is gonna charge a good amount of money for their time. And if you're
short on funds and try to scrimp and get a lesson top instructor you're
actually doing yourself more harm than good and that leads me to #2,
quality. Not all instructors are created equal as a matter of fact as the
owner of my own music school and the person who hires instructors I find
they're actually very few compared to the people who apply that I would even
consider hiring. And I'm talking about people who play guitar fine but they
don't really have the understanding of how to teach in a methodical manner or
necessarily the passion to really help people learn. Now of course there's that
scheduling thing. Any good teacher is gonna have a full schedule and you
kinda have to fit into their time slot. Yeah, if you find somebody will just move
around and do it whenever it's convenient for you, you're probably not
gonna get the best teacher. And finally there's travel. Any good
teacher is going to teach in a place where you have to go to and then you got
traffic and travel time and all that. A half an hour lesson can easily take an
hour to two hours. Now you might think it's convenient to just have them come
to your home. Well any good teacher is gonna have to account for that time
either they're gonna have to get paid more for that travel time or they're
gonna give you less quality which is often the case. It's usually beginning
teachers that'll travel all around to people's home.
I find often good teachers start there and then they figure out over time "This
is not the best arrangement". Okay, let's talk about online lessons now. The pros
the first big one is obvious. You don't have to go anywhere. It's available there
in your home and you can go to the lessons anytime you want. And of course
connected to that is flexible schedule anytime you want. Day, night, 2:30 in the
morning you're thinking about some guitar get over to the computer and play
along with my lessons. With online lessons it's easy to review. You can go
back to a video anytime stop it, watch it again, watch it again
and if you forgot how to do something you go back to the video and watch it
again. And in general, it's less expensive
online. Well the other side of that is you can get a really good instructor who
will create lessons online and because a lot of people are watching them for
you and ends up being less money but if they were to charge for their time it
would be on the top of the scale. Now for the cons of course the most obvious one
is there's no feedback online. You can watch a video and nobody's gonna reach
through the video and say "No, put that finger a little bit over there." Now
there's also a downside to learning in your own home of course it's convenient
to be able to go to a lesson at any time but the downside is there might be a lot
of destruct ions or might just be hard to get in focus point of really
concentrating on a lesson because it's your home. With most online courses
there is less accountability then with a private lesson because you don't
actually have to tell somebody "Hey I practiced or I didn't practice" or show
them what you've done. Of course it also means that you can kind of go more at
your own pace without that pressure something for everybody.
And finally there's kind of a one size fit all not exactly but for the most
part you don't have the flexibility of a private teacher that you can talk to and
say "Gee this is really a struggle, what can I do to improve on this?" or go a
little faster because it's easy for you or to some different material
that's more suitable for you. Now that's a basic summary of the pros and the cons.
You might be asking which would I recommend. I believe there's incredible
value. If you can afford it with having a personal relationship with
a professional enthusiastic systematic instructor however I would
choose quality systematic online lessons any day over an incompetent unorganized
instructor at any price and that said there's always the possibility of
combining the two and getting the best of both worlds. As the owner of my
own music school Starland School of Music, I've been hiring and training
instructors for over 35 years. Hooh! Time flies. I've created a blog post with
pretty much everything I've learned over the years about finding a good
instructor and I want to share that with you, no charge.
I even included a download with a checklist that you can print out and
keep handy when you're looking for an instructor. I'll put a link somewhere
down below so you can access that. Thanks for joining me.
I'm Tomas Michaud from Real Guitar Success. I hope to see you again soon
either in the next video or over on my lesson site realguitarsuccess com.
Bye for now