Free guitar lessons are available on the internet so that beginner guitar players can get an idea of what is involved with learning to play the guitar. There is so much for people taking up the guitar to consider, like how hard is it to learn to read music and tablature, how long do you need to practice each day, and how long do you need to learn before you are able to play songs and instrumental pieces. The big question in all this is about how good an introduction to the guitar is a course of free lessons?

The principal function of free guitar lessons is to inflame the interest in the potential student. Once the beginner guitar player has learnt a few chords, discovered that learning to read music opens up all kinds of musical opportunities, and has found the thrill of strumming simple chords and playing simple melodies, he or she will want to explore their new hobby more deeply. If you have ever had the pleasure of learning to play a famous guitar riff from tabs, you will know how free guitar lessons work.

Learning licks and riffs is another simple way of awakening interest in the hearts and minds of potential guitarists. Most riffs are fairly easy to play. The beginner guitarist can usually pick up a riff like, for instance, Smoke On The Water in one sitting and, with a little daily practice, be playing it with some confidence inside a week. Some guitar teachers write tabs and mp3s for well-known guitar-based songs, and sell them as single guitar lessons. This ideally suits the guitarist who just wants to learn to play stuff instead of having to learn a bunch of musical theory first.

YouTube features many videos posted by guitar teachers showing the world how to play popular songs either as a way of introducing a paid guitar lesson course or simply to share their love of the guitar with as many guitar enthusiasts as possible. The quality of these video guitar lessons varies but some are excellent quality with the camera showing both the left and right hand parts, with some even supplying you with tabs for the tunes.

It is very easy to assume that beginner guitar players will not go very far by learning a few chords and riffs. It is natural to think that they will lose interest when they run out of easy material to learn. It is true that many people who start their musical studies with a conventional course of study quite often carry on their love of music for many years, but this phenomenon of free videos is too new to make a serious judgement. The moving picture medium has the power to excite interest and might conceivably be able to keep amateur guitarists' interest alive long enough to carry them into the realms of serious guitar playing.