Musician and songwriter, Brian May once said, “The guitar has a kind of grit and excitement possessed by nothing else.”
Whether you are learning the guitar professionally or as a hobby, you can’t deny the versatility of the guitar. It can be enjoyed as a solitary activity or a group activity with family and friends.
A recent study revealed that almost 16 million people learned to play the guitar during the first two years of the pandemic, whereby they relied on various online learning resources to practice and enhance their skills.
In this article, we're going to look at several mobile apps that you can utilise to kickstart your guitar learning journey and also how to make progress as a guitar player with the right online tools.
Mobile Apps To Kickstart Your Guitar Learning Journey
One of the most common ways to learn to play the guitar online is through a series of mobile apps. They are a great resource if you’re teaching yourself to play the guitar. The advantage of a mobile app is that you’ll always have access to it, unlike a tutor, whom you’ll see once or twice a week.
That said, your mobile phone is probably always in your pocket or within reach. Furthermore, many apps remind you when it’s time to practise! Your phone can become a coach to ensure that you're playing guitar regularly. You can learn to play the guitar while having fun, too!
Let’s start with our first recommendation.
Virtual Guitar Practice Made Perfect — iReal Pro
The iReal Pro app was developed by New York-based musician, Massimo Biolcati.
It offers a real-sound band simulation as you practice the guitar and allows you to curate some of your favourite song chords collection and access them whenever you want.
The major key features of iReal Pro are:
- Offer a wide range of practice with various amazing backtracks
- The availability to download close to 1000s of chord charts
- Personalise your tempo, key, instrumentation and music style
- Providing interactive scale diagrams for different musical instruments including the guitar
- Create or edit your one-of-a-kind chord chart
Optimized for mobile phones and tablets, it’s available on Android and iOS as well as Mac and PC.
Photo by Soundtrap on Unsplash
Fingertips Guitar Exploration — Coach Guitar
Don't go it alone! Use your smartphone and start learning to play the guitar. (Source: Free-Photos)
The Coach Guitar method is visual, fun, and interactive. The app is aimed at beginners who have no knowledge of music. This means you don’t need to know anything about music theory like reading sheet music or even reading guitar tablature to get started!
Each finger is allocated a colour to make playing easier and there are animations showing the student where to play on the neck of the guitar.
Coach Guitar shows you step-by-step how to play your favourite songs on the acoustic or electric guitar.
Here are a few songs that you can learn with the app:
- Bob Marley - No Woman No Cry
- Rihanna - Diamonds
- Eric Clapton - Tears in Heaven
- Metallica - Nothing Else Matters
- Eagles - Hotel California
- Daft Punk - Get Lucky
- Pink Floyd - Wish You Were Here
- AC/DC - Back in Black
- And over 500 others!
There’s free guitar content for the basics and a few HD video courses. After that, you’ll have to pay for the app.
The subscription isn’t the cheapest but it isn’t the most expensive, either. It’s available on both Android and iOS so it doesn't really matter which device you have.
You may also learn a few guitar riffs by watching videos...
Become A Dedicated Musician — Yousician Guitar App
You can start playing the guitar with the Yousician application. The app offers step-by-step exercises based on your level as well as feedback on how you’re playing and your timing in real-time, thanks to the microphone on your device.
It saves your progress and you can check how you’re doing at any time. There are 1,500 levels to complete, taking you from a beginner to an intermediate.
While there’s no real guitar teacher, you can still improve with your feedback from the app. Yousician also includes thousands of songs to play along with. If your favourite song isn’t there, you can also download it.
Not only that, you’ll also get reminders on when it’s time to practise. It’s available on Android and iOS for free and there’s also a paid version.
However, the app offers so much more than just that. The interface is clean and elegant. The search function is intuitive and you can filter your searches, which is great for beginners.
Beginners can also listen to basic chords. In the paid version, there are also colours showing you the intervals.
The app is also a tuner for guitar, bass, banjo, ukulele, or mandolin. Again, this is an app available on Android and iOS.
Develop Playing By Ear Skills — Perfect Ear: Music & Rhythm
This app isn’t technically an app for guitar learning but it is useful to take your skills to the next level. Whether you are learning to play the acoustic guitar or bass guitar, you might encounter moments where you need to play a melody spontaneously and this is where the importance of playing by ear comes in.
Many people think that this skill is something that you are “born with”. But that’s not really the case.
Photo by DAVID NIETO on Unsplash
This app can help you to enhance your play-by-ear skills and also learn more about musical composition. The interface of navigating this app is very simple and divided into several categories:
- Rhythm
- Pitch
- Intervals
- Scales
- Chords
And subcategories:
- Recognising chords
- Reading rhythms
- Melodic dictation
The more you practice with this app, you’ll notice that the exercises get gradually difficult to match your learning pace and learning needs. If you ever need to check your pitch (yes, even for your voice), you can even sing and the app will detect if you’re in tune. It’s a great way to learn more about music theory and the app also has plenty of sight-reading activities. There are also mini-exams to check your learning, the results of which are saved into the app to keep track of your progress. Isn’t that amazing?
Significance of Building Your Guitar Vocabulary
If you’re going to learn guitar, you’re also going to have to learn a bit more about the language or lingo used before you start strumming your instrument.
Since knowing the terminology will help once you start learning how to play the guitar, we've included a few terms in each of our articles on learning how to play the guitar and different guitar resources. If you want to become fluent in guitar, you're going to have to just read them all!
Here are some examples to get the ball rolling:
Bend
A bend is a guitar technique where you push or pull a string enough to change the pitch of a note
Capo
A capo is a small device that clamps onto your guitar neck and presses against the string to play chords in a higher position.
Diatonic
This is the opposite of chromatic, a diatonic scale only includes notes proper to the key.
Legato
Legato, from Italian, means in a smooth flowing manner. This means that the guitarist should play the notes smoothly so that there’s no silence between them.
Now discover all of the digital resources for learning how to play the guitar.
Learning the Guitar with Superprof
Apart from making the best out of the existing mobile apps, you can take your passion for guitar learning to the next level with an experienced tutor. The Internet is another great place to find guitar instruction.
Whether you are looking for a physical tutor or an online tutor, Superprof’s got you covered!
All you need to do is head to the Superprof Malaysia homepage and follow these three simple steps.
First, start your tutor searching process by reviewing the profiles of different guitar tutors. Take your time to go through their basic information like their teaching experience, teaching qualification, reviews, teaching mode, hourly rates and so forth.
Next, once you have made up your mind about the desired tutor, you can proceed to contact him or her via the inbox messaging feature via their profiles. Do take note that the average response time of the tutors is 4 hours, so you should be able to get a reply from them in a swift manner.
Finally, you can proceed to organise and schedule your upcoming guitar lessons with your desired tutor once you receive a reply or finalise the whole discussion.
Currently, there are more than 14000 guitar tutors (offering different specialisations) that are available to offer face-to-face and online lessons in Malaysia.
Image by tonodiaz on Freepik
Having said that, when it comes to online lessons, you can be certain of the benefits that you will reap throughout the whole learning session.
It’s more cost-effective and time-effective in the long run as there is no need to travel. You also get to learn in the most comfortable and conducive environment, aka your house. Furthermore, online lessons at Superprof are generally 20% cheaper than physical lessons.
If you prefer to take face-to-face lessons, you can always locate a guitar tutor that is based in your city, such as:
- Johor
- Kedah
- Kuala Lumpur
- Negeri Sembilan
- Penang
- Perak
- Sabah
- Sarawak
- Selangor
See, learning to play the guitar has never been easy!
We hope this article has enlightened you on the various platforms to have an exciting and effective guitar-learning experience.
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