Rating: 9.3 out of 10
Guitar
Tricks Review: 45 Guitar
Instructors For Less Than The Price of One?
In the late 1990’s Jon Broderick searched the internet for online
guitar instruction and came up empty handed. His frustrations lead
to the creation of the
Guitar Tricks website for which he claims to have pioneered
online video guitar lessons. His guitar course covers fundamental
lessons for students that have never touched a guitar as well as
more advanced specialty lessons for experienced players.
About The Instructors:
At this point in time there are about 45 different instructors
delivering over 3000 video lessons. Each instructor is an
experienced guitarist and many are naturally gifted teachers. While
some are less comfortable than others on camera they all seem to
present an orderly logical progression to the lessons. To the credit
of
Guitar Tricks each instructor seems to be following an outline
which serves to give a certain thoroughness and continuity to the
lessons.
Who Will Benefit Most From These Online Video Guitar Lessons?
There are guitar courses for beginners that have never touched a
guitar. There are also courses for intermediate to advanced students
that cover most major genres of guitar music, techniques, popular
songs as well as the individual style of many famous musicians.
Are These Lessons Designed For Electric or Acoustic Guitar
Players?
The lessons are designed for a wide range of acoustic and electric
guitars.
Tools Included
Full access subscription members have access to the following
downloadable guitar tools;
The Ultimate Chord Finder – select a chord and hear how it sounds
while seeing how it is fingered in several different places on the
neck.
The Ultimate Metronome – It does 2 things well. The first is to help
you keep a steady beat. The second is to let you start practicing as
slowly as you want while gradually and automatically speeding up the
tempo until you can accurately play a song or lesson at full speed.
The Reference Tuner – simply plays reference sounds for tuning a
guitar in standard tuning or 5 other common non-standard tunings.
The Video Quality is adequate to excellent. This variance
depends on when the video was made. The more recent lessons produced
after 2005 seem to be much sharper than earlier ones.
The Lessons are organized in the following way:
Fundamentals: teaches all the basic skills that every guitar
player must conquer from the parts of the guitar to how to play
chords and more. These lessons are designed to turn a complete
rookie into an intermediate player.
Courses: Blues, Country and Rock.
Genre Studies: Acoustic, Bluegrass, Blues, Classical,
Country, Funk, Jazz, Metal, Rock, Rockabilly, Surf and World Music.
Technique Studies: Alternate Picking, Bending-Country,
Bending-Rock, Double Stops, Finger Picking, Hammer-Ons,
Harmonics-Pinch, Harmonics Natural, Hybrid Picking, Legato, Palm
Muting, Pull-Offs, Rolls, Slapping, Slide Bottleneck, Strumming,
Sweep Picking, Tapping, Touch Technique and Vibrato.
Artist Studies: A.C. Jobim, Al Di Meola, Albert King, B.B
King, Brent Mason, Carlos Santana, Chet Atkins, Django Reinhardt,
Eric Clapton, Jack Johnson, Jeff Beck, Jimi Hendrix, Joe Pass, John
Mayer, Mark Knopfler, Ray Flack, Richie Blackmore, Stanley Jordan,
Stevie Ray Vaughn, The Edge and Zakk Wylde.
Songs: Guitar Tricks offers lessons in how to play popular
songs from classical all the way to metal. It’s important to note
that these lessons are not taught “in the style of” but are taught
to be exactly like the original songs.
The Negatives
-
The videos had trouble running
smoothly without stopping. It appeared that sometimes they just
couldn’t load fast enough to keep up with the playback. Changing
the video to the lower quality setting drastically reduced the
number of times it would stop without making a huge difference
in the picture quality.
-
Guided Practice sessions, where
the instructor actually practices with the student in order to
teach the discipline of professional practice techniques, could
be stronger.
-
I wish
Guitar Tricks would offer a DVD set that contains all of the
current lessons. This could avoid the time consuming task of
downloading the videos for those that wish to view them offline.
The Positives
-
Guitar Tricks seems to make a
significant effort to continually add new lessons and articles.
-
At this writing, Guitar Tricks
covers more styles of guitar music than any other online
company.Their website is logically organized and very user
friendly.
-
The video lessons can be
downloaded directly to your hard drive if you prefer to view
them without using the internet. This is especially helpful if
your internet connection happens to be running slowly on a
particular day.
-
With over 45 instructors, you are
not limited by the strengths and weaknesses of just one teacher.
-
The price of $14.95 is charged
once a month but you can start and stop at will without penalty
if you don’t have the money every month.
-
The lessons are well thought out,
consistent in delivery and structure.
Support
Guitar Tricks supports its subscribers with a newsletter, a GT
Channel which is a video lessons and tips newsletter, a forum with
over 200,000 posts for asking questions of fellow students and
instructors. There is also a support phone line and email address.
Guarantee: There is a 60 day, no hassles, money back
guarantee.
Price: At this time, the subscription service is $14.95 per
month if you pay month to month. It is only $10.75 per month if you
pay $129 USD in advance for an entire year.
The Bottom Line
Guitar Tricks is an easy guitar lesson program to recommend for
beginners and for more experienced players looking to refine their
techniques, understanding of music theory or just to add a new
playing style like Rockabilly to their repertoire.
I do still slightly prefer the
Learn and Master Guitar DVDs
for beginner guitar students primarily because Steve Krenz is my
favorite video guitar instructor, the lessons have a little better
detail and they offer guided practice sessions. However, Guitar
Tricks is still a good number 2 choice for new players.
The bottom line is that no other guitar course offers as many
options for instructors that teach so many genres of music, so many
diverse techniques, so many studies of the famous guitarists and
their songs all for only $14.95 per month. No matter which guitar
lesson program you decide for your primary source to learn beginning
guitar, this should be seriously considered as a companion study for
everyone. Without a doubt Guitar Tricks ranks highly on my short
list of recommendations. If you would like to take a test drive with
over 24 free video lessons just click the link to the
Guitar Tricks website below.
For more information, testimonials and 24 free sample lessons or to
subscribe to Guitar Tricks click here.
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