Learn and Master Guitar

If you want to start learning the guitar right from the basics through to mastering sight reading music, this is probably the course for you. It is the most demanding of the courses that I follow.

L and M is by no means the cheapest course available - in fact it could well be the most expensive - but in terms of value for money it is second to none. The quality of the material is outstanding, the lessons are perfectly structured and no aspect of playing the guitar, whether acoustic, electric or classical, is left out.

This is a complete and comprehensive treatise on how to play the guitar and it is very much designed for students who intend to take the whole business of learning to play seriously. There are no shortcuts, but there is plenty of fun and I was playing simplified versions of tunes such as Ode to Joy within the first few days.

I was also learning a huge amount from the very lively forum that is part of the course, where students exchange ideas, playing tips and advice on the best equipment to buy and so on. There's a short promo video you can watch below. It runs for about 2 minutes and features some actual students, some of whom I know through the forum.

The course is made up of 20 excellent dvds, a lesson book plus a further bonus manual. It also includes five discs containing high quality jam tracks for all the songs in the lesson book at varying speeds and played by professional musicians.

If you haven't guessed by now, I highly recommend this course but let me add one note of caution. It's a course for those who really want to both learn and master guitar. As such, it requires considerable work and dedication and a lot of repetition, as well as music theory.

For most people, therefore, my top recommendation would be Jamplay.

If all you want to do is learn to strum and play guitar songs, then in my opinion either Jamorama or Guitar Tips will probably suit you better than both.