Top 5 Teaching Aids When Learning to Play the Electric Guitar

Learning to play the Electric Guitar can be a significant investment in time and money, and many choose paid lessons rather than independent study. Lessons taken in this way are expensive, and progress is often slow. There are many alternative ways to learn to play the electric guitar that teach at the pace that an individual wants to progress, which still provide rich teaching and practice experiences. If one wants an easier way to beginning this often difficult but entertaining path, then it means investing in an instrument and understanding some of the ways to learn the skills required to play it.

1. Chord Buddy

For would-be musicians looking to learn to play the electric guitar, the Chord Buddy kit is a perfect teaching aid for learning those all important first chords. Invented by Travis Buddy, the Chord Buddy is a plastic collar that fits around the fretboard on the guitar. It has four tabs that press the strings to create the four most widely used chords C, D, G and E minor. The kit comes with this object and a number of other accessories, and there are other aids that one can purchase separately.

Chord buddy
Presses strings for four different chords
Included

DVD
Demonstrations and lessons
Included

2-month lesson plans
Lesson plans to take students from beginning to playing without chord buddy
Included

Song book
Chords and lyrics for songs to accompany lessons
Included

Clip on tuner
Helps tune the strings on a guitar
Extra

The Chord Buddy kit contains everything, apart from the guitar needed to teach students to play chords using their fingers independently, and at the end of the program, the goal is for students to create the chords independently, without additional aid.

2. Fretlight for play the Electric Guitar

The Fretlight guitar is a revolutionary way of learning to play the Electric Guitar. Traditionally, students would learn to play chords by looking back and forth from charts and books to the fretboard on a guitar. The Fretlight guitar construction includes LED lights within the fret board that light at the correct time to instruct students where to place their fingers to play a chosen chord, scale or song.

The guitar has a USB connection that plugs into a PC or Mac, and the LED lights for a given lesson or song light up for the student to follow. Where a particular sequence is proving difficult to master, the software that comes with the Fretlight allows you to slow down or even loop a sequence to learn at an individual pace. Video lessons covering a wide range of guitar skills such as strumming, picking, rhythms and chord progression techniques come with every guitar.

3. Gibson Learn and Master Guitar Course

Gibson is one of the best known names in the world of electric guitars, and their Learn and Master Guitar Course is a professionally produced and presented series of DVD and Video tutorials. Recognized as the most complete course available, it won the Acoustic Guitar Magazine Players Choice Gold Award in 2011 and an AEGIS Award for Excellence in Education. The course consists of 20 professionally filmed, high definition videos with more than 40 hours of tuition that accompany the lesson book, which has more than 100 pages. The Learn and Master course is not for the faint of heart. It is a detailed approach to mastering a full set of guitar skills and provides a more thorough introduction than most other home learning teaching aids.

4. Guitar Chord Theory

Some students prefer to learn theory as well as practice. And the Guitar Chord Theory website is a perfect online learning aid for this type of student. The website teaches using the fretboard, intervals, and notes (F.I.N.) system. Presented in 11 different sections, lessons include learning the fretboard, chord shapes, and chord transformations. Each section contains lots of detail and theory about reach lesson.  So there is plenty of reading to accompany the exercises. The Guitar Chord Theory website is free to access. And contains hot links to a range of sites selling useful guitar and music accessories.

5. The Blues Learning System

The Blues learning System is a DVD-based guitar course that teaches guitar fundamentals as well as blues guitar styled techniques. It teaches fundamentals by guitar teacher Christopher Schlegel. And multiple camera angles and clever on-screen notations make learning basic lessons easier. Once students have mastered the basics of knowing how to play the electric guitar. They progress to the section on blues-style techniques. Anders Mouridsen presents lessons that cover a range of techniques such as 12 bar and 8 bar blues playing. Anders also teaches techniques. Such as slide guitar and how to use intors, licks and riffs to great effect in blues playing. The Blues Learning System also comes with detailed lesson layouts in two workbooks for both sections of the course. It also includes some 200 minutes of CD guitar playing, which is perfect for jamming as a way of practicing and improving newly learned skills.

Check Out Some Apps To Learn To Play The Electric Guitar

If you have an iPhone, iPad, or Android phone or tablet, you may want to check out some of the applications available for learning how to play the electric guitar. Many of these apps can sense your pitch and provide feedback on whether or not you are playing the correct notes and chords. While it may be possible to find a free guitar app, most of them are paid apps, although they do vary in price and each one offers a different set of features. You can use Fender Play, Masterclasses or Skillsare.