Don't waste money on guitar teachers!

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Do you spend $80 to $100 on a guitar teacher each month? That's a whole lot of money for two hours of lessons. 1/3 of the lessons are getting tuned and warming-up. You're basically paying for 1 hour and 20 minutes (or less) of guitar instruction because who knows how many students your teacher had during the hours before you. You spend time talking about other things outside of guitar playing too.

This leaves time for what? Learning one song or technique for $100 per month?

A great guitar teacher can be good for a Rock guitarist as a beginner or someone who plays in the other styles like Jazz and Classical. But in my opinion, if you can learn how to tune, change your strings, learn your chords and scales on your own, there's no need for a private instructor at any stage.

Instead of having one over-paid private guitar teacher, why not have several guitar teachers for less? For $20 or more you could invest that money into guitar lessons DVDs created by some of the most skilled guitarists today like Yngwie Malmsteen, Joe Satriani, John Petrucci, and Michael Angelo Batio. Not to mention older videos by top pros like Joe Pass and Frank Gambale. Also, you can get instructional DVDs about theory, chords, soloing, scales, and about playing in any style or using any technique you want to learn.

You could go online (recommended for better selection) or to your local music store and put that $100 per month into 4 or 5 guitar lesson videos with all sorts of teachers, jam-packed with several lessons. I assure you that the teachers in DVDs are far better than your guitar teacher. No offense to him, but you're overpaying that guy. Unless your lessons with your teacher are lifechanging, consider investing in videos instead.

What else is there?

Not only are there DVDs featuring some of the best guitarists ever, there are plenty of method books with audio created by top names like Hal Leonard and even Berklee College of Music. Funny thing is most guitar teachers hand you one of these method books and teach you from it. If you've already learned the basics, good technique, and how to read tablature or notation, I recommend you buy good guitar books and learn it yourself. The methods explain everything brilliantly. And don't forget about all the digital method e-books and online programs.

You also have the option of joining up with a guitar lessons membership site where you can learn from a variety of great teachers. Combing instruction DVDs, method books and audio, and using a membership site where you can often interact with teachers, you'd have 100s of lessons per month benefiting from tons of different guitar teachers, and you'd be paying the same as for 1 hour and 20 minutes of lousy private lessons.

Anything else?

Oh yeah. There are free guitar lesson videos on YouTube and free-to-use forums where you can talk to guitarists who are way better than you about any question you might have. There are tons of free guitar lesson sites, guitar teacher blogs, and anything else you can think of.