Like many teenage boys, my 15 year-old son loves the guitar. He used his birthday money a couple of years ago to buy himself a guitar. He started off with it like gangbusters, learning cords and practicing...but then, he sort of hit a brick wall. There is only so much you can teach yourself by noodling around on the Internet. Now the guitar spends most of its time hanging on his wall, which frustrates me because I know he really enjoys it; in fact, he is obsessed with music of all kinds. Enter my lifesaver - Guitar 360 Method's Semester 1 Bundle (including 5 weeks of Absolute Beginner bonus content + the 13 weeks of Semester 1).
Teacher Krisz Simonfalvi is a guitar teacher in real life. He really knows his stuff, and that comes through in everything he says and does. Whether you know some guitar, or none at all, you can benefit from this course. Best of all, Mr. Simonfalvi seems to understand that many people who want to know how to play the guitar want to learn the skill so that they can have fun with it. People learning the guitar are not learning classical piano. It's often not so much about mastering a concerto as it is learning what to do so that you can "jam" with your friends. These lessons are taught with that idea in mind. It is absolutely a legitimate music course. You learn music theory and you learn about the guitar. There are scales galore (because you can't learn music without playing scales, right?). In fact, Mr. Simonfalvi says at the outset that he wants to teach students how music *works*. It is learning how music works that you can really make the skills your own. He strikes the exact right balance between teaching music and teaching songs. I have never seen a course that does that before. We have used a course that teaches music and we have used a course that teaches songs and licks. We have never used a course that does the second through doing the first, though. I think that balance is what makes this course the best one we've seen. And Mr. Simonfalvi makes it seem so simple! Music is not easy, but he makes you believe that it is. He instills confidence. Additionally, he is just so personable. He looks and sounds like the kind of guy you would want to jam with.
Now, my son is a perfectionist. He wants to do everything right. The beauty of this program is that, because your purchase means you own it, you can do things as many times as you need to in order to get it right. Do you have the kind of kid (or are you the kind of person) who wants to move ahead quickly? Who doesn't read all the directions before jumping in? You can do that with this course, too. It's not the kind of course where you have to demonstrate mastery before moving on. You can go at your own pace, and if that pace is a quick one, you always have the option of redoing lessons. That freedom takes a lot of pressure off parents. It puts kids more in the driver's seat.
This course (including the three week beginner course, the 13-week first semester, and two Bonus Song mini-courses, usually costs $149, but with the coupon code HOMESCHOOL20, you can bring that cost down to $119.20! Because this course is not a subscription, you can keep it and use it as long as you need it! The content is yours after you purchase it. That makes it a tremendous value, given the cost of in-person music lessons, which are out of reach for many homeschool families.
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