My seven year old son is learning to play the guitar at school and so when I read about the launch of “academy of guitar studies” I thought I’d take a look. I have been playing guitar on and off myself for about 25 years and this year decided to learn lead guitar, having been primarily a chord monkey so far. The press release suggested this website would be a resource for anyone learning or playing the guitar and so I thought it would be useful to both of us.
One of the most useful resources for learning to play guitar is YouTube. I know a number of people who log in to view video lessons that show how to play different riffs and chord sequences and providing you can either read music or use tabs then you can get pretty much everything you need with a bit of diligent searching. The problem is that you have to wade through a lot of irrelevant stuff to find the good. I have also used About.com:guitar which provides a wide range of resources and through this website you can access a range of additional websites that provide video guitar lessons, product information, and much more.
So back to the grandly named “academy of guitar studies”. The site is a dissapointment as it is essentially an online shop dedicated to books about learning to play the guitar. The homepage doesn’t communicate what the website proposition is at all other than through the misleading tagline “your one stop shop for guitar education and accessories”. Clearly it isn’t.
It is handy to have all the books in one place and the menu structure has some interesting categories in it that assist you with finding music for special occassions or different types of music, but there is no search function. Also, you have to sign up to see a newsletter rather than get a look at why you might want to sign up (I didn’t). The price check I did against Amazon came out on par so if you are a regular Amazon customer I can’t see any reason why this website might make you order from it. Search yes; order no.
So not a one stop shop unless all you need is a new book and you are having trouble finding something specific.
Hi,
I teach a lot of free video guitar lessons on YouTube which people seem to like. But I recently launched a site that teaches lead guitar using a series of step by step courses – it’s an actual series of courses that includes learning the CAGED system to visualize the fretboard, and gets into using chord tones to solo over chord changes. Lots of videos and forums for you to ask questions. Sorry for the ad pitch but you might want to try and let me know what you think, what you might like to see, etc.
Will
Hi Will,
thanks for the comment and link to your website. On first pass it looks pretty good and I particularly like the clarity of your proposition on the home page. It speaks directly to people like me and I’ll be sure to try the lessons. I’ll let you know how I get on.
Paul
Learning to read music is certainly not for everyone. It takes many hours to learn to read music and most people just want to get on with playing. Fortunately there is an easier way to learn. Reading tablature is a method a lot of folks really like. Most people find reading tablature to be a better way to learn.