How to Play Guitar - A Short Introduction of a Number of Great Books and Youtube Channels

I'm now playing the guitar for about fifteen or sixteen years. I started playing with a concert guitar and my teacher taught me to play stuff from various composers like Leo Brower.



He also introduced me into the basics of Jazz and Blues music and after about 5 years of playing the nylon guitar I decided that it's time to stop with his lessons and join a band.

Well, this was the beginning of my self-education career. I bought a number of books, read a lot of stuff and tried to learn as much as possible. For everybody who wants to play the blues I can recommend three books from John Ganapes:


Blues you can use
More Blues you can use
Jazzin' the Blues

I'm not really through with the last two books, but I learned so much concerning techniques and theory, because these books are not only written to be understood easily, they are also optimized for self-education.

Another great source for guitar players is like you can imagine youtube. Channels which I really recommend are:

• Dave Weiner  A great musician and teacher, discussing different techniques and concepts
• JazzGuts  Here you can learn how to combine and fusion Blues and Jazz
• Next Level Guitar teaching different techniques, sometimes very useful, sometimes very funny 
• Gregor Hilden  it seems like he only want to sell great guitars, but from his demonstrations you can learn a lot about phrasing and improvising, especially blues 
• Berklee College  you can find some interesting stuff there, not only about playing the guitar, but also about the business

 So, as a guitarist I try to learn as much as possible to create my own style. The videos and lessons on youtube helped me to receive an extra input and I think having this opportunity of visualizing some of the techniques helps really to improve my playing skills.