By Nicholas Anderson
There is one sentence I’ve never heard from a student who came to me for a free trial lesson. “I went on YouTube and it really helped improve my playing.”
I’ve never heard that. Not even once.
This is what I hear all the time. “Well I tried learning from YouTube and it just didn’t seem to work for me.”
I’ve lost track of how many times I’ve heard that.
Now, don’t get me wrong. There IS really good stuff on YouTube, but for the most part it is only in bits and pieces, and if you’re a beginning guitarist, these bits and pieces might give you a little something to play, but it won’t help you improve your overall ability, nor will it lead you on the right path toward reaching your musical goals.
The biggest problem I see with YouTube is not so much with the quality of the instruction (though that is a big problem in some cases), it is because a student does not know what he does not know.
Many students know that they have problems with their playing that they need to solve, however, they do not know the cause of the problem, nor do they know the solution to the problem (they wouldn’t be searching YouTube if they knew all of this). Therefore, when they go on YouTube and search for a solution, they usually do not get the correct one (if you do not know the real problem and the real cause, you cannot find the real solution). This may not seem like a big deal, but it more often than not leads to:
- A lot of frustration
- The student developing bad habits
- The student feeling like they’re “not talented” because they can’t “get it”
All of these lead to even more problems that they need solutions for…do you see how this compounds on itself?
The second problem I see with YouTube is that the student is making educational decisions for themselves that are often wrong or not optimal. To illustrate this, imagine you’re building a house, but you have no experience building houses. Instead of starting with the foundation, you decide the most important thing about a house is the roof, because without a roof you won’t be protected from the rain, wind, snow, etc. (sounds logical, right?) From there, you conclude that you need walls (also logical), so you build some walls and then place the roof on top. Now you have the beginning of a nice house with walls, a roof…but no foundation.
Eventually, the house is going to fall over.
This is what happens to many, many guitarists who try to learn from YouTube, friends, and even some instructional books. They want to be able to play songs, so they start learning chords. Sounds logical, but it’s actually not the right place to start if you want to learn songs! There’s a better place to start, which I teach to my students right from the beginning so that they can play real music (often in their first lesson), and it doesn’t involve complicated chords that are often difficult for beginners.
Sadly, the vast majority of guitarists who quit do so within the first year, many of them because they didn’t make good progress. The lack of progress is because they’re “building the house” without a foundation. If these guitarists had built a solid foundation – while also having fun – they would not have quit so easily and many of them would still be playing to this day.
Again, I’m not saying there’s no good information on YouTube – there is. I’m simply cautioning you against trying to use it as your sole source of learning. If you want to build a rock solid foundation for your guitar playing, have fun, and have a teaching, coach and mentor who is dedicated to your success, click here to apply for admission. I’d love to help you reach your musical goals!