Online Classical Guitar Lessons: Pros & Cons of Virtual Lessons

What are Virtual Guitar Lessons?
Are Online Guitar Lessons Worth It?
• Pros
• Cons
How Do Virtual Guitar Lessons Work?

When it comes to learning to play guitar with a teacher, there’s two ways to do it: online or in-person.

I used to teach all my lessons in-person. However, when the COVID-19 pandemic took over the U.S. in Spring 2020, I moved all my private guitar lessons online.

Although I love the personal experience of being able to play guitar in the same room as someone else, I’ve found that online guitar lessons have proven to be an effective method for teaching new and advanced guitar students alike!

Now it’s easier than ever to book an online lesson with me! Click the button below to get started:

What are Virtual Guitar Lessons?

Virtual guitar lessons are online guitar lessons, usually taught through a third party platform like Zoom, Skype, Facetime, or Google Hangouts. If you want to learn classical guitar, online lessons could be a convenient option for your.

My virtual classical guitar lessons are typically one hour long, and Zoom is my preferred platform.

Please note these lessons are much easier to view when you use a device with a larger screen size, like your computer or laptop, rather than your mobile device. That being said, Zoom does have a mobile app so it’s totally doable on your phone too!

Are Online Guitar Lessons Effective? Pros & Cons

You might be wondering, do online guitar lessons work?

If you’re interested in learning guitar, online lessons can be effective and efficient! However, there’s also some disadvantages worth thinking about too. Below is a list of online guitar lesson pros and cons.

Pros

Virtual guitar lessons can offer several benefits:

• Save you time and effort
• You can be in a more comfortable environment
• Reviewing materials can be more convenient

Save Time and Effort

Virtual guitar lessons can save you time traveling to a home studio. Plus you won’t need to carry all of your materials such as your guitar, music, and guitar support.

Comfortable Environment

You also have the luxury of being able to practice and learn in your own home. I have several students who aren’t exactly morning people (neither am I), so I wasn’t surprised to hear some of them tell me that taking guitar lessons online at home has actually been a huge plus for them!

In addition, I know sometimes it can feel intimidating going to an instructor’s studio. By taking guitar lessons online, you may even find that this helps you avoid the jitters!

Convenience

Taking guitar lessons online can also be convenient if you’re like me and you don’t like to deal with a lot of paper resources like sheet music.

In most cases, I prefer to have the sheet music accessible as a PDF on my computer. You can simply open the PDF in whichever program you prefer, resize the window so you can see the full document, and move the video to the corner or side of the screen that allows for the best visibility.

Cons

In my opinion, as long as you’re learning guitar and putting in consistent effort, you can’t go wrong! However, there’s still a couple of disadvantages to online guitar lessons worth pointing out:

• Both guitarists can’t play music at the same time
• Software glitches and Internet issues
• Finding the right camera angle
• Lower sound quality

Unable to play at the same time

I feel this is the strongest drawback to online guitar lessons. As good as the virtual meeting platforms are, you still won’t be able to hear the other person when you play a guitar song or piece simultaneously.

Instead, I have to shift to more of a “show and play” format. In other words, I demonstrate a musical phrase and then the students plays it afterwards. This is still effective, but kind of a bummer if you like jamming!

Software & Internet Issues

Some elements are simply out of our control. If the internet gets spotty on either end or if the third party platform suffers a crash or server delay, it’s possible for the session to crash.

These things happen occasionally, but I’m patient and will always send a new link if needed and account for the time lost by going longer than the one-hour.

Getting used to the awkward camera angle

This is kind of a funny one, but throughout the lesson there will likely need to be some adjustment of the camera to get a better vantage point of the right or left hand, placement, etc. But there’s no need to feel awkward about this, it’s just part of the process!

Lower sound quality

Nothing can match the sound of hearing guitar in person, and the audio quality on most laptops and mobile phones isn’t amazing. *Sigh*

Nothing beats the feeling of hearing music live. However, if you have a stable internet connection, the sound shouldn’t be interrupted too often!

2023 Update: Zoom now has an “Original Sound for Musicians” setting! Make sure you enable this setting so your instrument will sound clear during the Zoom call.

How Do Virtual Guitar Lessons Work?

All teachers have their own styles and methodologies for teaching online lessons. Here’s my step by step process:

1. Book an online session
2. We have the online lesson
3. I send a followup email

Step 1 – Book an online session

You can book an online session with me at a time that fits your schedule by clicking the link below:

Once you book your lesson, you’ll receive a confirmation email. On the day of the lesson, I’ll email you the resources we will cover. This should give you some extra time to print the material or review them on your own.

Step 2 – We have the guitar lesson online

Once our session starts, you can join the Zoom room and we’ll have an awesome lesson!

Step 3 – Followup email

After each lesson, I’ll send you a followup email with text, photo, and/or video summaries and examples of everything we covered in the lesson.

If you ever have questions about the material we cover, you can reach out any time!

Conclusion

These are just some of the factors we have to deal with when having to host guitar lessons online. But don’t get me wrong, I’m extremely grateful that the technology exists to allow for virtual guitar lessons to be as easy, effective, and fun as they have been so far.

In my experience, virtual guitar lessons for beginners can be very effective. I promise to always provide the best online classical guitar lessons possible to my students near and far.

I’m also grateful to all of my students who started taking lessons from me before the pandemic began and have continued to take lessons during the transition online.

If you have any questions about virtual guitar lessons, or suggestions, I’d love to hear about it! Feel free to leave a comment or book an online session today!