DVD Guitar Lessons and Recommended Video Guitar Courses

My second choice in DVD Guitar lessons

Guitar Course Materials
* Beginner book
* Intermediate book
* Beginner video lessons on DVD
* Intermediate video lessons on DVD
* Lead guitar book
* Advanced guitar lessons on DVD
* Chord Book and DVD
* 26 Beginner to Intermediate Jam along Tracks
* 29 Lead guitar Jam along Tracks
* Acoustic Guitar mini course book and video DVD
* 26 Acoustic Jam along Tracks
* Ear training mini course (integrated into the lessons) and audio CD
* How to Tune the Guitar book
* Guitar Tuner Pro - guitar tuning software
* Jayde Musica Pro learning software
* Guitearit ear training software
* TMG Metronome
Additional bonuses
* Advanced Learning Techniques for Guitar
* Audacity multi track recording software

Here's a video message from the Team method guitar team.

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Guitar lesson Books, DVDs and CDs
WITH INSTANT ONLINE ACCESS
Price $209 + $14.95 S&H

DOWNLOAD VERSION
INSTANT ONLINE ACCESS ONLY
Price $97

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Who can learn to play guitar?
Most people should be able to learn guitar. It's a lot easier to start playing songs on a guitar than most other instruments I know of.
Once you have the beginner chords down and a little bit of strumming technique, there are thousands of songs you can play.
A guitar teacher once told me that woman are naturally more talented with music, and learn things really fast, but guys who are talented generally take guitar playing a lot further.
If people ask me whether I think they'll be able to learn, I have a favorite saying:
"If you can hum a tune and tap your foot to the music, you can learn to play guitar"

It really comes down to the simple fact that, unless you're tone deaf with no sense of timing whatsoever, you should be able to learn to play the guitar.
I hate to sound clichéd, but it really is 10% talent and 90% effort.
People say "But you're so talented, I could never play like that", but a little investigation shows that they just didn't put in the same effort.

Beginner guitar lessons are applicable to both acoustic and electric guitars. At a later stage in your learning, you might want to branch off into rock and lead guitar, but the fundamentals remain the same.

What you need to know before you learn to play guitar
Recently, a close friend of mine came to me about his son wanting to learn to play guitar.
His son wants to play electric guitar, but this father wants to get him an acoustic guitar. Now you could be forgiven for thinking that an acoustic guitar is more convenient to learn to play on.
It just looks that way, but here are the facts;

1.) Learning to play on an electric guitar is much easier on the fingers than a standard steel string acoustic.
The reason it's easier on the fingers is because you can use lighter gauge guitar strings, and you can adjust the string height quite easily.
The problem I have found with most acoustic guitars, whether it's for a beginner or not, is that most of them have a fixed bridge that's set way too high, with no way of adjusting the string height. This makes it very uncomfortable to play with no relief in sight. It was for this reason alone that I very quickly got rid of my first guitar.

2.) Learning how to play on an electric guitar means you won't have to go out and buy an extra guitar in order to carry on learning more advanced lessons.
Of course this is assuming you're mostly interested in electric guitar music.

3.) Modern music is very electric guitar oriented, and the music electronics industry is constantly trying to get them to make acoustic sounds as well, but failing that, the transition from electric to acoustic guitar is an easy one to make, once your fingers are accustomed to the guitar.

If you really must play acoustic guitar
or if you've already got an acoustic guitar, and you just want to get started on that for now.
Here's what you might want to do, to make things easier on your fingers.
This is mostly for steel string acoustic guitars.
Take your guitar to a luthier, for very little money, he'll sand the bridge down as well as level and crown the frets, so you don't have to suffer more than is necessary.
This process will bring the strings down closer to the fretboard, and eliminate a lot of unwanted fret buzz.
Any guitar, electric or acoustic, will benefit from having the frets leveled and crowned
You can also buy the lightest gauge acoustic guitar strings possible, and put those on the guitar instead.
The lightest gauge acoustic guitar strings I've found - I think they're called "Ultra light", have a 1st string thickness of .010 of an inch. The 1st string is the thinnest string on the guitar.

A few Beginner guitar lessons to kick off with.

The reason I've put these guitar lessons here is mostly because some people like to be sure if they'll be any good at playing the guitar, before spending any money on lessons.

If you don't have a guitar yet, then borrow one for a while.

Tuning the guitar:
If you're ever stuck without a guitar tuner, here's how you tune the guitar to itself.
1.) Find a reference note for the E string, or just tune it to as close to E as you imagine it should be.
The 1st string and the 6th string are both tuned to E, but the 6th string is the low sounding one.
2.) Do the following:
Press the 5th fret on the 6th string and tune the 5th string till the notes match.
Press the 5th fret on the 5th string and tune the 4th string till the notes match.
Press the 5th fret on the 4th string and tune the 3rd string till the notes match.
Press the 4th fret on the 3rd string and tune the 2nd string till the notes match.
Press the 5th fret on the 2nd string and tune the 1st string till the notes match.

Technically speaking, your guitar should now be in tune with itself.
Don't be too hard on yourself if it's still out. A little bit of practice with this and your ear will improve so you can hear when the notes match up perfectly.

Here's a picture to illustrate the tuning process.
The notes with the same color should be at the same pitch.

How to hold the plectrum.
I hold the plectrum so that just a small piece of the plectrum is showing past my fingers.
I generally use a medium thickness plectrum. If you buy Sharkfin plectrums, it's the white one.

Here's what it looks like.

A very short guitar lesson on strumming
To strum the guitar properly, think of someone using a hand held fan. You know those ones you see in the old movies - not an electric fan obviously.
Anyway, strumming the guitar is pretty much like that.
With the palm of your hand moving parallel to the guitars body, you simply do a fanning motion.

A final guitar lesson for this page - Your first 3 chords.
I know I've got a whole page of beginner guitar chords, but I just thought I'd give you three guitar chords to work with sort of as an orientation exercise, just so you can gain a little confidence on the guitar and know that you can learn to play guitar.

These are the first three chords I learned on the guitar.
Fool around with them. Make some of your own rhythms, and practice changing from one chord to the other.
It's good exercise for your fingers.

The X means that you don't play that string, and the numbers in the yellow dots are to indicate which finger is used to press the note.
The 1 or 1st finger, is the index finger on your left hand, so if your left hands palm is facing you, you get the thumb on the left, then 1st finger, 2nd finger, 3rd finger and 4th finger.

A guitar Chord
D guitar Chord
E guitar chord