Have you ever fantasised about picking up a Stratocaster or Telecaster and playing before thousands of followers? Names such as Jimmy Page, Duane Eddy, Mark Knopfler – guitar greats with legions of admirers – how did they achieve greatness? They all decided to learn to play, and these fantastic guitarists all started in the same place we all have to start. At the start. Learning guitar and plucking single strings, easy guitar chords, power chords and guitar scales – everyone starts here.

A guitar beginner can follow 4 paths to learning guitar:

• - Guitar instruction video lessons online
• - Private guitar lessons arranged locally
• - School-based music lessons can often be arranged
• - Learning guitar at a Rock School

Online guitar lessons are easy to find on the internet. Downloading free videos can be a waste of time, since these videos can be very poor. Beginners find it difficult to judge whether online video content is technically good.

Purchasing lesson videos is also risky. The lesson quality will often be an improvement, but whether you actually get good value is difficult to decide, especially for beginners.

You can decide to pay for lessons with a local guitar teacher but aside from the cost, there are problems with this approach to beginning guitar lessons. Private lessons are focused on theory and playing technique, playing guitar solo rather than learning and jamming together with other students, which is a more effective way for teenagers to learn to play guitar. Kids get inspired when they learn to play alongside their friends. Children learn more, more quickly, and are inspired by learning with their friends jamming and playing in a band.

You may have considered enrolling for guitar lessons at a local school. The success rate from these classes is quite low, because most students leave the class after just a few months of school music lessons. The environment is wrong (how can you have fun in a “school”?), the music teacher is an aging Mr Smith, unfashionable with patches on the elbows of his tweed jacket, and lastly – what children want to do when the schoolday ends is to get off the school premises as fast as possible!

Rock schools are without doubt the best way for beginners to learn guitar. Children respond well having fun whilst learning, and jamming with other children. The cost is usually less than a private teacher, and the peer-pressure of a regular jamming session means that parents don’t have to cajole them to practice at home – they want to anyway! Some Rock Schools have only one or two teachers covering an entire class, so do your research before joining – the perfect ratio is one guitar teacher to two guitar beginners.

You should ask about the following questions when deciding on a Rock School to learn the guitar:

• - Teaching on a ratio of 1 teacher to 2 guitar students
• - Guitar teachers should be good role models, of clean appearance and technically good players
• - A written course syllabus should be provided to parents
• - Weekly or monthly progress reports should be provided
• - Introductory free trial guitar lessons

If you are lucky enough to have a Clivesmusic Rock School in your district, then this should be your first choice. The most successful schools belong to the award-winning Clives Rock Schools national network, having taught over 10,000 students since 1981. Visit www.clivesmusicbrighton.com to discover the secrets of Rock School success.