You have probably seen some of the popular online guitar courses for beginners. However, you have difficulty making the right choice as you are worried of wasting time and money on an incomplete course. You are looking for one that will show you everything step by step and explain in details with videos. Yet you do not know what a complete guitar course consists of.

As guitar beginners, you will likely to be clueless of the contents that should be taught. Find out what are the 5 components of a complete guitar course:

1. Full Beginner to Advanced Lessons – The course should provide a series of lessons from beginner, intermediate to advanced level. It should start off with the basics such as holding your guitar, sitting and standing positions, holding a pick and learning the frets. Next, it should cover all the major guitar techniques (like strumming, alternate picking, bending, finger picking, hammer-ons, pull-offs, slide, vibrato, legato, palm muting), common chord types (major, minor, dominant seventh, minor seventh, major seventh and suspended 4) and major styles of music (like rock, metal, blues, jazz, country). Reading tablature is also one of the important skills to be included as it enables you to learn almost any song you like. The lessons should be in sequence where each module is built on the previous one. A play along track should be included within each lesson so that you can practice what you had learned so far. A structured course will enable you to see the improvement and feel the satisfaction each week.
2. Video Lessons – The guitar lessons should be complemented with high quality video demonstrations. They will make learning new skills easy with built-in animated chords, progressions and strumming patterns. Both hands and notation are shown so that you can see clearly where to place your fingers on the fretboard as well as how to strum it.
3. Chord Book – A complete guitar course would come with a chord reference book. Chord changes is the most difficult skill to master for beginners. Remembering the chord shapes is not easy either. Hence, a good chord book will come in handy as and when you need reference to it. The chords should be presented with clear diagrams and accompanied with high resolution photos to help you visualize and grasp each new chord. There are different variations for playing each chord. Moving from one chord to another can be really hard and sometimes all you need to do is to change the way you form the chord. It will be great if the book includes different variations for each chord. You can experiment the different chord formations and find the most appropriate shape to each progression.
4. Guitar Care and Maintenance – A guitar course would be complete with information on setting it up and maintaining it. As guitar players, we should have basic knowledge of how to clean our guitar, protect it from moisture and heat, buy a new one to suit our style of playing, select new parts to improve its sound, change the strings, check the intonation, tuning it and cleaning it.
5. Games – Besides the main course materials, it will be great if effective games are added to improve your guitar playing. They will make learning fun and challenging. The ability to recognize chords simply by hearing them and reading music are essential skills of a guitar player. Games enable you to revise what you had learned and will also speed up your learning process.

A complete guitar course consists of beginner to advanced lessons in a combination of digital books, videos and games, as well as a chord book and information on guitar care and maintenance. It is designed in an effective way of teaching yourself guitar so that any beginner can follow through the course easily.