As you may know, I’m a big fan of the online guitar courses on the Udemy platform. If you’re looking for a guitar course, or indeed a course on virtually anything, Udemy most likely has one, or two. The interface is smooth and very user-friendly, and you take your chosen course(s) on any device. This definitely beats trying to read, download or transfer PDFs on your phone, or wasting time looking for the good stuff on YouTube, avoids distractions and allows you to get on with racking up some new skills in your chosen craft. As you would expect, Udemy is choc-full of courses for musicians and guitar in particular, so here are four more guitar-related Udemy courses worth checking out.
1. Music Theory Comprehensive Complete (Levels 1, 2, & 3)
There comes a time in every guitarist’s life where they have to suck it up and learn some music theory. In my experience, this is best done away from the guitar as music theory is a universal set of concepts that transcend any instrument. Where most guitarists come unstuck is learning music theory through a guitar-only method like the CAGED system, which is all well and good but doesn’t allow you to communicate (well) with other musicians when it comes to arranging, reading and writing charts. This is the college course you should have taken, and is well worth it for the skills boost it gives you if you’re serious about guitar and making a career out of music.
2. Guitar Technique Booster for Lead Guitar
In the previous round-up, we looked at Tyler Larson’s Modern Rock Techniques Guitar Course, but if you’re looking for a more player-focused course, Guitar Technique Booster breaks down the inner workings of some of the greatest technical guitar players such as Yngwie Malmsteen, Tony McAlpine, Paul Gilbert, Nuno Bettencourt and many more. The focus here is on picking techniques, which is of course fundamental to having building breath-taking chops on guitar and should keep you entertained for a while with its easy-to-follow sequence and great explanations.
3. Five Exotic Guitar Scales and How to Use Them Effectively
If you’ve already taken any of Tyler Larson’s Guitar Courses, then you won’t be disappointed by this in-depth look at 5 exotic guitar scales, but not the done-to-death ones. Tyler does a great job of actually showing you how to effectively use exotic scales in your playing, which is invaluable to holding your interest in learning new patterns and really getting something out of them. The scales covered in this course are the harmonic minor, the Japanese scale, the gypsy scale, byzantine and whole tone scales. Tyler manages to make this information, which can be overwhelming, very relevant and usable to anyone wishing to incorporate exotic scales into their playing.
4. Learn How to Improvise on Guitar in 30 Days
Don’t let the clickbait title of this course put you off, it’s actually very good and is aimed at beginner level guitarists taking their first steps in improvisation. I honestly think it’s a much better investment of your time (and money) to get a course like this if you’re just starting out with improvisation than waste the hours/weeks you could be using to practice trying to find free stuff online. What I like about this course is that it covers what most beginning improvisers overlook: how to form the chords you’re improvising over! So, this course gives you the scales you need to improvise plus the all-important knowledge to understand where and when to use them.
BONUS COURSE: The Professional Bass Masterclass
We all know there’s nothing worse than a guitarist who thinks he can play bass, so if you don’t want to be that guy, and you have a bass laying around, this course will have you playing bass like a bassist in no time. Learning another instrument, especially bass, infinitely widens your musical perspective and makes you a better all-round musician in general. Plus, if you’re going to make a living out of music and already play guitar, it’s a useful skill to have because a) guitarists are ten a penny, bassists are not; b) someone always needs a bassist; and c) ‘filling in’ on bass can be quite lucrative if you’re good at it. The Professional Bass Masterclass is so in-depth, it’ll probably be the only bass guitar course you’ll ever need, plus it does a great job of combining music theory with learning an instrument; something that’s not particularly well-done on guitar.
