The internet’s premier video platform may not be your best bet at guitar mastery.
When it comes to learning guitar, there’s a bunch of options to choose from. One of the most common methods people use is to learn guitar through YouTube. Millions of aspiring guitarists turn to the wisdom of YouTube videos to learn guitar every day. But is the common way really the best way? According to a statistic given by the CEO Offender, nine out of ten guitar players quit within the first year. This high drop-off rate ultimately begs the question: Is YouTube a good place to learn how to play guitar? The short answer; it depends.
The question doesn’t have a simple answer. It’s like asking someone, is reading a book a good way to learn information? Well, if you’re trying to learn how to build a house and you pick up a book about the history of railroads, then no it isn’t.
Since the dawn of YouTube, millions of guitar lessons and tutorial videos have been uploaded to the platform. Each one with their own distinctive style and teaching methods. Even videos covering the same topic, such as learning the pentatonic scale, can have radically different ways of teaching and talking about the subject.
With so many videos to choose from, where does a new guitar player start? The overwhelming number of options will flood your mind with questions. What should I learn? In what order should I learn techniques in, and how long should I practice each one for? Am I going at the right pace, or should I have already been able to do this by now? If you’re just trying to figure it out yourself, you’ll be left without answers.
Realistically speaking, it isn’t possible for somebody to watch every guitar lesson available on YouTube. Even if you were to watch one video per hour for the rest of your life, you wouldn’t even get through half of them. You may never even see the best guitar learning videos that YouTube has to offer.
On the flipside, you might end up watching videos that aren’t right for you. Most people don’t realize that they’re climbing up the wrong ladder and moving backwards in terms of progress. How do you know the lessons you’re watching now, aren’t setting you to up to get stuck later? Without proper guidance, new guitarists may find themselves confused and going in circles.
That’s why YouTube is such a dangerous rabbit hole for guitar players. It’s easy to get stuck jumping from video to video, not making the progress that you want to make. Before long you might get fed up and tired of watching unhelpful videos, and you’ll get so frustrated that you’ll want to put the guitar down. You end up getting “ex-inspired,” and you’ll feel bad because you really wanted to learn how to play guitar. Keeping your ambition for guitar alive is a key part in learning the instrument.
But it’s not that YouTube is necessarily a bad guitar teaching tool. It just depends on the way that it’s used. If you expect to become a great guitar player by aimlessly navigating through YouTube videos, then it’s pretty much impossible.
However, if you know exactly what you’re looking for in terms of lessons, then it’s a different story. For instance, if you’re trying to learn how to play a specific song or how to do a particular technique, then YouTube can be a great resource. Options are great when you know what you want to improve and how to choose which one is right for you.
Related: 7 Best Ways To Learn Guitar At Home
But if you don’t know exactly what you’re doing or where you’re going, then YouTube can be an extremely dangerous tool. Especially for newcomers to guitar, proper guidance and structure are essential to progress and growth with the instrument.
If you’re interested in taking your guitar to the next level, we have a Free guitar course that we want to give to you. It’s going to help you discover how to freely express yourself on guitar without endless amounts of scales and theory. So, check it out and let us know what you think.
