Learn how to find the best guitar lessons free of charge online as well as how to keep yourself organized for independent learning.
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In this free lesson you will learn…
- The best places to find free guitar lessons
- How to stay organized for more effective practice
- Tips for finding the best instructors for you
- The different types of free guitar content online
Here Are The Best Ways To Get Guitar Lessons Free Of Charge
So you’re looking to learn the guitar, but you don’t know where to start.
Online instructors charge money, but you’re not sure if you want an instructor just yet.
Courses seem confusing at the outset, and perhaps not yet worth the money.
So, what’s the solution?
It’s time to start looking at some free options. Thankfully, there are lots of them!
In this lesson, we’re going to look at the best ways to seek out guitar lessons free of charge online, as well as how to stay organized with your free lessons for the most effective practice routine.
Why Should We Want To Find Guitar Lessons Free Of Charge?
Paid lessons are not for everyone, especially for those who are just picking up the guitar for the first time.
There’s a sacred period of time when we first pick up the guitar where we explore it in its entirety before we turn our education over to someone else.
In this time, it’s important to explore all of the guitar lessons free of charge on the internet and just get a feel for the guitar in general.
We need to give ourselves a bit of credit and let ourselves be curious before committing to organized lessons.
Many musicians will tell you that you absolutely need a teacher right away if you want to see any amount of success on the guitar, but that’s simply not the case.
If you’re the type of person who is:
- Curious
- Willing to read
- At least somewhat organized
Then you can take full advantage of the guitar lessons free of charge that you’ll find all over the internet.
We live in an amazing age of information where people are more willing than ever before to teach what they know to everyone using platforms like YouTube and even their own websites.
It only makes sense to take full advantage of those guitar lessons free of charge that are posted around the web. You’ll end up making a tonne of headway all on your own.
But what do we need to know first?
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What You Should Know Before Seeking Out Guitar Lessons Free of Charge
If you’re going to strike out on your own as a beginner guitarist, there’s one thing we need to talk about first:
Organization.
Although it’s true that you need to be organized to learn anything effectively, it’s even more so the case when learning on your own using the guitar lessons free of charge that you find around the Internet.
If you want to learn on your own, we recommend downloading resources wherever possible and either printing them out for a binder, or keeping a folder on your computer where everything is kept organized.
Pro Tip: It’s worth mentioning at length that not all guitar lessons free of charge are created equal.
When it comes to music, there are multiple ways of explaining the same concepts. This can lead to some serious confusion. Here are a few tips to help you stay on the right track with free lessons:
- Read/watch everything thoroughly (& more than once) – It’s not enough to simply skim for information when you don’t have another person in the room to explain it to you. Reading in detail or watching attentively means that you will absorb information more clearly.
- Make notes on everything you learn, in your own words – Just like different teachers explain concepts differently, you can make your own explanations that you yourself will understand more easily.
- Don’t be afraid to ask questions – Not only do those who create guitar lessons free of charge love to explain their concepts to their readers and viewers, but so do their readers and viewers! If you find a YouTube video with a concept that you’re trying to understand, post a comment and you will quite often receive a response, either from the creator or a resourceful fan.
- Keep your folders, binders and notes organized – If you’re keeping a folder of downloadable information that you’ve found, make sure to organize it into folders to keep everything tidy for your brain. Here are a couple recommended folders or sections for your binder or computer:
- Chord Lessons
- Scale Lessons
- Song charts
- Song lessons
- Techniques
Now, let’s explore where we can find guitar lessons free of charge online!
Guitar Lessons Free Of Charge: YouTube
If you’re looking for lessons on just about anything, chances are you’re going to be starting your journey with YouTube.
This platform offers plenty of guitar lessons free of charge, including 70+ videos of our own that you can find by clicking here!
YouTube hosts a large variety of content creators with spectacular insight into beginner guitar lessons and beyond.
Pro Tip: To really harness the power of this platform, get yourself familiarized with searching for specific keywords in order to narrow your searches more effectively.
For example: Instead of searching “C major chord,” try searching for “C major guitar chord for beginners.” You will yield more accurate search results and spend less time searching for the right video.
Pro Tip: If you really want to get ultra-organized with your guitar lessons free of charge, start by using Google Docs! You can create a document where you collect links to specific lessons that you like so that you can reference them whenever you need a bit of clarity on something.
You can also “Favourite” videos straight from your YouTube account, if you have one.
Video content is one of the best ways to learn a new instrument, because you can visualize the same way you would with a guitar teacher in front of you. With new advancements in animation and video editing as well, guitar teachers are getting a lot more clever and practical with the way they offer video guitar lessons free of charge on YouTube.
So, what else is there to learn from?
Guitar Lessons Free Of Charge: Written Lessons/Blogs/Articles
As much as video content is fantastic for learning, sometimes we need the help of the written word to really guide our hands.
If you’ve been around our website, you know that we have a lot of written lesson content.
Online blogs, lessons and articles are wonderful ways to teach lessons to students practically through written explanations. They’re also one of our personal favourite ways to offer guitar lessons free of charge to all of you.
One of the huge perks of written lesson content is that everything is written plainly for you, usually with playable examples to help you further your playing.
So, how do we use these written guitar lessons free of charge to our advantage?
- Bookmark useful pages
- Copy explanations that make sense to you into a document (and reference where you found them to come back to them later)
- Make notes of your favourite websites that have explanations that work for you
Written content is one of the most predominant forms of guitar lessons that you will find online next to video content, so make sure to make good use of it!
Pro Tip: Much like video lessons, written lessons can be best found by using accurate search terms on search engines. Try asking your favourite search engine a guitar-related question!
Of course, you could always just hit up our website for a huge tonne of beginner guitar lessons free of charge, from us to you.
Guitar Lessons Free Of Charge: Mailing List Content
Most online guitar lesson creators have a mailing list that you can subscribe to, and you definitely should.
Although the concept of receiving emails on a regular basis from someone you don’t know might sound a little weird, these emails are usually chock-full of valuable content that can help you become a better guitarist quicker!
Mailing list content from esteemed guitar teachers makes for some of the best and most focused guitar lessons free of charge that you’ll find online.
This is because these email blasts are often solution-based, providing innovative ways to get around common problems that beginner guitarists and beyond run into.
Mailing lists can be awesome tools for getting guitar lessons free of charge; but once we’ve subscribed to a couple, our inbox will start to pile up.
So, what’s the solution? Get organized!
Pro Tip: Make a folder (or multiple folders) in your email inbox to send the mailing list guitar lessons that you receive.
You won’t have to deal with the stress of a dozen or more unread emails each day, and you can reference them when you’re ready to practice.
If you’re interested in getting your mailing list subscriptions started, click here to register for ours. It’s full of juicy guitar lessons that will get your fingers moving, as well as a bunch more amazing stuff.
(Also, we promise not to spam you!)
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Guitar Lessons Free Of Charge: Free Downloadable Content
This is another method for getting fantastic guide points for guitar at no charge.
Most online guitar instructors (ourselves included) have a plethora of different pieces of downloadable content that they offer from time to time.
In one way, this helps benefit those instructors by giving their potential students a glimpse at their teaching style. In another way, it helps the students by providing them with practical guidelines for guitar playing that will help just about anyone on their journey.
Whatever way you swing it, downloadable content from reliable guitar instructors serve as some of the best guitar lessons free of charge that you can find.
It’s important to note that most guitar instructors will ask for your email in order to send the downloadable content somewhere specific. Most often, this will result in you being subscribed to their mailing list like we mentioned above.
Just make sure to stay organized and you’ll be able to benefit from all of these wonderful guitar lessons free of charge.
Your ears and your wallet will both be happy!
So this all begs the question: How do we know what’s good versus what isn’t?
Evaluating The Value of Free Content Online
It’s important to determine a few good, reliable spots on the internet to collect your information from.
Although all the guitar instructors of the internet have extremely valuable insight into the instrument, not all of their approaches to teaching will jive well with your approach to learning.
It’s important to evaluate the teaching and presentation style of each instructor or online music school in order to determine what approaches make the most sense to you.
Everyone’s understanding of music is a little bit unique, and although that’s one of the best parts about music, it also makes it a bit more frustrating when you’re first learning how to play.
Determining Your “Reliable Sources”
There are a few key questions we can ask ourselves to figure out where we’d most prefer to get our guitar lessons free of charge online.
We made a checklist for you for finding the best lessons most suited to your style of learning:
- Does the instructor make sense of subject matter in a detailed and easy-to-understand way?
- Are their lessons well structured and thought-out in a way that makes them easy to digest?
- Do you feel confident in the subject matter after having read through all of it?
- Does the instructor leave you with more answers than questions, or the other way around?
- Do you feel excited to learn with this guitar instructor?
Remember: Learning shouldn’t be an uncomfortable process.
The best guitar lessons free of charge online are ones that make sense to you.
Not every website, blog, mailing list or YouTube channel will give you the exact information that you’re looking for; but the ones that do should be bookmarked for future reference.
It’s important to be on top of your research game if you’re going to find the best online guitar lessons and pool those free resources together, but it’s definitely well worth the effort.
How To Stay On Top Of Your Resources
To recap, you should absolutely make sure to keep yourself organized when taking advantage of all the free content on the internet.
It can get overwhelming rather quickly otherwise.
When it comes to free content, we like to think we’ve got quite a bit to go around. Check out the links below for more guitar lessons free of charge from your friends at the National Guitar Academy.
Recommended Resources
If you enjoyed this article on where to find free guitar lessons, you’ll love the free guitar lessons we’ve got for you below!
- 3 Easy Ways To Play The C Chord
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