How to Learn Guitar at Home [What’s the Best Way?]

🎸 The question is: How to learn guitar at home? With so many options choose from, here are some of the best resources modern methods have to offer.

Interested in Learning Guitar at Home? Let’s Look at Some Great Options

Before you ever pick up a guitar, learning to play the instrument has a number of obstacles for you to overcome.

Finding the right guitar or package in your budget, setting aside the time to learn and practice, and finally, settling on a learning guitar online vs in person can be tough decisions for a beginner (or the parent of a beginner) to make.

With the wealth of options online and the prevalence of technology in today’s world, many people wonder if a real, live instructor is still the best option for learning guitar.

Not All Guitar Instructors Are The Same

First off, many instructors cost quite a bit even for an hour or two of lessons a week. Regardless of whether you’re seeing the instructor in person or or using a remote remote connection service such as Skype lessons, the cost of learning adds up when you consider the price of the guitar itself and all the accessories.

Even if money isn’t an object, will the instructor be able to keep the student engaged in the hours of daily practice needed when they can’t be there 24/7?

Concerns like these have led to more and more students to learn guitar at home, usually from online resources, sometimes supplemented with books or live lessons. So, this begs the question, how does one go about learning guitar from home in an efficient and enjoyable manner?

Thanks to a huge number of YouTube videos, apps, and subscription websites it has become significantly easier for you to access quality guitar lessons in your home.  While the options may be overwhelming and numerous, let’s go through some of best ways to learn guitar at home.

YouTube Guitar Lessons

Despite being well known for humorous web shows and conspiracy theory documentaries by younger crowds, YouTube has quietly become a hub for awesome guitar content. From gear demos and music reviews to song lessons and technical videos, YouTube has something for everyone.

A quick search for “intro guitar lessons” will show you dozens of highly rated lessons and personalities that will teach you how to learn electric guitar at home, or how to learn acoustic guitar at home.

Pages like “GuitarJamz”, “Marty Music”, or “Justin Guitar” have millions of views for a reason, they make it easy, fun, and accessible to learn guitar at home for free.

Justin Guitar is an especially good option, as the YouTube channel links to his own website, Justinguitar.com, where you can find hundreds of free guitar technique, song, or genre lessons from Justin himself.

In addition to these traditional, beginner lessons you can find hundreds of song lessons and covers including tabs, musical notation, and gear recommendations from amateurs and pros alike.

While YouTube vidoes can lead you down a distracting rabbit hole, there is a wealth of guitar and music information available to help you find the scales, chords, gear, or strange techniques that make your favorite songs sound the way they do.

Guitar Lesson Subscription Sites

One of the biggest guitar related developments of the 21^st century, subscription sites have come a long way in quality, affordability, and options.

While some YouTube personalities like Justin Guitar have developed websites to partner with their free YouTube videos, some sites offer a vast number of beginner, song, or technical lessons for a small free ranging anywhere from $9.99 to $19.99 per month.

One of the easiest to access is legendary guitar company Fender’s “Fender Play”, which typically comes for 6 months free with every new Fender or Squier guitar.

With thousands of new students every year learning on Squier Stratocasters or guitar packages, this site has helped teach many students in recent years and provides strong incentive for you to continue along with their “My Path” lesson plan or hundreds of song and riff lessons.

While Fender Play is only $9.99 per month, other sites like Guitar Tricks and JamPlay charge around $19.99 per month but feature more lessons, songs, genre-specific options, or famous instructors.

JamPlay offers dozens of lessons in the rock/metal sphere with famous musicians such as Tosin Abasi, Lita Ford, or Robb Flynn.

Many of the differences between these sites are based around their structure of lesson plans meant to take you from beginner to shredder, as well as differences in quantity and diversity of song lessons or web page features.

Tab Websites/Forums

While video lessons and famous instructors are the core of early guitar learning, as you advance as a player you may begin to start looking for new topics to learn about. One of the first things most students move on to is learning new songs from guitar tablature.

Tablature, or tabs, are numerical representations of what fret or note to play on each string to play a chord sequence, riff, or complete song.

Tabs are widely available on the web, created and moderated by a loyal collection of amateur and semi-pro players, with the best-known website being Ultimate-Guitar.com.

By searching either with your preferred web browser, or within the site, you can find hundreds of thousands of tabs and chord sequences for songs that can be sorted alphabetically, by user rating, or by popularity.

Sites like these truly help you learn any song you could ever want to know and could be the best way to teach yourself guitar after learning the basics.

Once you’re ready to dive into the world of advanced techniques, guitar gear and tone, or recording tips you may move into the many guitar forums, blogs, or news websites that populate the web.

Many of these, though not dedicated lesson sites, feature huge numbers of tips, tricks, and demos that can help you grow from a beginner into a fully functional player.

Final Thoughts on How to Learn Guitar at Home

If you’re a student interested in learning from the comfort of your home or the parent of a student, hopefully you better understand how to sort through the volume of options and find the best guitar lesson sites that fit your needs.

While having a live instructor provides the familiarity and interaction that has successfully taught many a guitar hero, the internet has provided students with more lesson options than ever before. It is surely a great time to learn the guitar, so why not jump on in now from the comfort of your own home?