Josh, I only have experience with face-to-face guitar teachers in group settings and for me those courses weren’t very helpful, because obviously the guitar teachers didn’t have the time to concentrate on each student individually.
Somewhere in your initial post you are implying that money is not the issue. So how about you give both ideas a chance? Working together with a private mentor and trying remote lessons with one of Justin’s approved teachers? In the end, only you can decide what works best for you
Going with what you typed, I think an in-person instructor would be good for you. However, the issue is finding the right one. Much like finding the right material on the internet that resonates with you, finding the right in-person, or internet-based instructor can be quite the process. Though I am back playing after a hand injury, I will be finding an in-person or internet-based instructor in about six months.
Here is what I would do. If you want an in-person, find one who knows and is familiar with Justin and have them teach and augment those lessons. But before that, give one of Justin’s internet-based instructors a try. Don’t commit, just try. You have to find what works for YOU, as long as YOU will settle on something that works.
Missed this earlier, I will look at that! Just with the practice routines it says to go play a song to practice the chords, so that was what was getting to me, having to learn the songs chords first then actually practicing the chord, but I will try that and work on getting it down. I for sure have the dedication, just not sure about the patience. I want to be playing like a rockstar tomorrow and am nowhere near. There is just so many songs I have sung my whole life without music, I would like to add the guitar to it, but once I found out songs I sung actually aren’t very easy to play on guitar, it’s an eye opener. I can sing better than I can play guitar. Who knew?
I think you are over thinking here a bit. A much simpler way for me was to practice by just using common chord progressions.
For example, using I, IV, V progression start with a 6th string root and play it down the neck. Then switch keys and do it again. you could then try playing the same progression up the neck. From there, practice with the I on string 6 and the IV and V on string 5. And so on.
From there just pick another progression such as I vi IV V so you can add in a minor shape.
If you’re unfamiliar with chord progressions there’s lots of info here in the community.
Yeah, sounds like you need to come up with a solid practice schedule and be realistic with your self and your goals. Alot of these things can take years to master correctly. A good teacher will surely help. A slower pace is always a better option till you get perfect slowly. Practice perfectly, because practice makes permanent. Oh and of course practice, practice, practice, play songs play songs and play more songs TO YOUR ABILITY. Make it fun! So hard to get this one right. Still practice those other harder ones. But way smaller sessions till you get the basics down packed. Those other songs will become easier the more of a solid foundation and muscle to brain memory you have. I swear it’s true!
Learning how to dial in tones with your amp and your guitar is important. But it’s important to realise that you will never sound exactly like Clapton (or any other artist) for a range of reasons.
“Gear” is one of them. I put gear in quotes because it’s not just about the amp and the guitar (although they are important). There’s a whole lot going on as well: microphones, preamps, and the room they record in for a start.
Consider that any studio recording is often being recorded on valve amps costing thousands of dollars with speaker cabs the size of a piece of furniture, in a large, specially designed and treated room. It’s recorded through expensive microphones that have been carefully placed by expert sound technicians, and then recorded through expensive pre-amps.
Also, recorded tones sound very different from the amp in the room: the microphone and pre-amps will colour the sound a lot. Many guitar players will record their parts in the control room for this reason, as they hear the recorded tone from the microphones, rather than in the room with the amp.
Exactly this!
And this!
There’s a whole load of post-production that goes into a track and, if you strip back a recorded track to its constituent parts in isolation, the guitar tone is often quite surprisingly different from what we perceive when mixed with other instruments. Some guitar tones can sound quite bad in isolation, as part of the skill of mixing is to make the guitar sound good in context with other instruments, which involves stripping out frequencies that overlap.
I would focus on how to get nice tones from your gear, rather than trying to sound like someone else. Learning how to do that is important, but trying to replicate an artist’s tone from a record is a bit of a fool’s errand IMO.
It would not be lost – good players invest in their playing. I’ve purchased Justin’s courseware and songbooks, as well as TrueFire and other subscriptions. Playing guitar is not that expensive compared to a bunch of other hobbies.
I have used a mixture of private teachers and Justin’s online course. I think it helps to work backwards from what you want to achieve as a musician or guitarist. I found Justin’s guitar courses good for theory and explaining the why we do certain things. I found face to face lessons good for learning songs and area’s that I don’t have time to research. I really enjoy playing guitar but sometimes there just isn’t enough hours in the day to read books or google around for answers, and that is where a face-to-face teacher come into their own. A good teacher will also spot bad habits and correct them before they become permanent and hard to reverse out.
Would you do in person lessons at like a local guitar store, or through an online website somewhere?
I am just not sure my local guitar center with the younger guys would be the way to go as beginnerish I still am in the journey. I agree memorizing and researching songs within correlation to where I am in the journey is the tough part for me.
I don’t think that the local guitar shop is a good idea, they most likely have zero teaching experience and probably are those who want to teach you just songs you want to play rather than teach you to play guitar. If you learn to play guitar properly you will be able to play anything you like within your skill set Don’t try to put the chicken before the egg, it requires patience and diligence to achieve what you want.
I think it’s already been mentioned, the teachers on here are seasoned musicians who have been through all of the facets of Justin’s course and if there’s anything they haven’t will be happy to sort it out for you. In the time you’ve spent here you should have a feel for the standard of knowledge, put it simply you’ve got nothing to loose giving it a trial and everything to gain if it works for you.
This has not been my experience. My teachers always had relevant tertiary degrees in music, Australian Music Examination Board (AMEB) qualifications and in many cases played multiple instruments.
If you use swimming as another example. Sure, you can head down to the pool and splash around and try to learn out of books or off the Internet, but having someone trained in teaching the correct technique and critiquing you along the way is only going to assist.
I have found Justin explanation around the theory and having everything written down and in videos very beneficial and believe using Justin with a private tutor an excellent option.
