Don't Waste Your Money

A Guide to Not Getting Ripped Off When Buying a Guitar Book or DvD

As a Working Musician and Music Instructor for over 20 years and a Player for 30 I'm going to briefly enlighten you to the wicked world of Music Method Sales.

Avoid at All Cost

• Anything that wants you to belive your going to learn to play the guitar or any other instrument overnight.
• Anything that tells you in a week you'll be jamming in a band.
• Anything that tells you you'll be shredding in no time.
• Anything that puts too much of an emphasis on Easy.
• Anything that tells you all your problems you have with say, chord transitions, will swept away in a few mere days.
• Anything that tells you they know The Short Cut.
• Anything that tries to Sell you a collection of illegal Powertabs and calls it a lesson. How theses items are even allowed on Ebay is beyond me as its quite obvious exactly what they are. Do yourself a favor and don't buy illegal copyright violated tabs. One, cause it's the right thing to do and two, because you can actually find them for free if your resourceful.
• Anything that tries too hard to convince you how great there product is.
• Anything that sounds "Too Cheap" or Stresses just How Much They Could Charge You :)
• We could go on but you get the point.
• Anything that offers Resale Rights to Copyright Protected Music
• Anything that is nothing more than a collection of Copyright Violated Tabs
• ANYONE WHO STRESS HOW MUCH CHEAPER THERE BOOK/DVD ETC. IS THAN A REAL LIFE TEACHER. I Just Love that one. Of course it's cheaper as it's hardly the same thing. Nothing takes the place of a Real Live Trained Instructor. Books/DVDS are great and some are very useful, but they can not and will not ever replaced a skilled Teacher in a one on one Situation. Avoid anything that stresses that there product is more valuable than a private lesson with a trained teacher. Again Good Books/Dvds etc. can be a very valuable asset and I strongly encourage you buy them. Just bear in mind a Book or Dvd, no matter how good is not a Teacher. Also bear in mind not all teachers are created equal and cheaper is often what cheaper is. Just like anything else, you often got to pay for quality :)  

Bottom line: Being good at anything takes work. No one would want a brain surgeon working on them who just learn crash course brain surgery from a "Learn Brain Surgery in 5 Easy Mins" Dvd. Likewise, no one wants a 5 min Guitar Player either. Cause guess what. After 5 mins you still can't play.

You may be jamming in a band in a week but I'll guarantee it ain't a quality one. Notice they didn't say a kick but band, the simply said band. Any 4 people can get together call themselves a band, it dosen't mean they can actually play.

Shredding in no time, hmm... silly rest of the guitar world spending hours on end with that silly little metronome, when all they really need was a few minutes with your wonderful product.

Easy, well it ain't got to be hard, but you have to put forth and effort. You have to practice and you must know how to practice. And as far as making your problems like chords go away. Sure, if the product actually breaks the problem down for you and teaches you how to actually practice to resolve the issue, and you seriously apply the concepts and let nature take it's course. Meaning: Yea that much may be true, but they left out the part that it may take several weeks or months to get really proficient with the trouble spot.

There are no short cuts, magic tricks, secrets. There's simply better and worse information. And don't you get just a little leary of anyone who tries "Too Hard" at convincing you how wonderful they are. Simply state what you got, why you belive it's essential to the customer without ramming it down there throat. I've seen products go as far as to say. "We Have a U.S. Copyright". Well, big deal I have several U.S. Copyrights. Anyone with $45 bucks and something to copyright can have a U.S. Copyright.  

And well, cheap is as cheap does. Sure there's deals. Sure there's competitive pricing. But when you see a hundred people selling a wonderful collection of brilliant lesson books for dirt cheap, what springs to mind.

BTW There's a Very Common 6 book set floating around that is very cheap for good reason, yet the sellers all claim they got 50-100 bucks worth of books. Not to mention at least one of the books in the set is hot as they come (as in stolen). And did I mention 99% or more don't even know how to hold a guitar let alone play one. Sorry, but anyone with a quality product wants as much as they can get out of it. Not to be misanthropic but, anyone who tells you it's out of the goodness of the're heart is probably waiting for you to turn around so they can pinch your wallet. Then's there's the other side of cheap, as in it's cheap cause it's not my work, it's cheap cause I don't have to pay all the publishing fees, it's cheap cause it's stolen. There'a a lot of that going around. The saddest or funniest (depending on your perspective) is the fact they actually have a Disclaimer on there ite page stating how They Own the Resell Rights! Yea, the Resell Rights to Sweet Child of Mine, Sweet Home Alabama, and Under the Bridge etc. are Yours to Give Away. Sorry! But no. You do Not Own Resell Rights to Someone Elses Song. Nor Can You Provide LEGAL PROOF upon request. You may have a cheesy paper stating you own the resell rights, but IT AIN"T LEGAL! Furthermore, Do Not Fall For This as You May Wind Up In a More Trouble Than You Know What to Do With. See avoiding serious legal issues.

Definately avoid theses.

Not Worth Your Time

• Giant Chord Books: While a simple basic chord book is just fine. No One needs 800 or 1,600 pages of chords they can't play. Once you understand a few basic shapes and how to move them, the songs you play will dictate what other chords are important to your style and a little music theory will help you build any chord you ever need. Besides chord books don't generally teach you how to play chords, they just show you where your fingers go. That's great if your fingers are clunking around killing the notes. Now you got 800 chords that sound bad.

• Giant Scale Books: While knowing a few basic patterns is alright. Knowing how to actually use the scale, move the scales, build the scales is what you need. Which is to say a lesson in chord/scale theory and some practice application. Not to mention some basic tech so your fingers can actually play the notes clean and your can actually cross between the strings with the pick.

• Songbooks/Tab Books: There value depends on what you intended to get from them and how well they are put together. Many so called Song Boks are written rather poorly for Guitar and Tab Books can vary in terms of quality. If you really can't play, theses books aren't really going to teach you what they need to know. In fact they really Teach you nothing. They simply show you the song. If you can play then that's ok to a point, but if you can't do basic task on the guitar you ain't gonna learn by struggling your way through the song. Even if you can play, you gotta have some basic understanding of how to practice the information and ultimately you need to be able to develop the ability to pick the songs of the Album/Radio Etc. yourself. That is: You must learn to develop your ear. Serious gigging guitarist don't use tab books (there can be exceptions), they get handed a Cd and have a few hours to a few weeks to learn the songs and be up on stage playing them. If you want serious work as a player you must be able to learn quickly by ear. As I said there are exceptions such as a Steve Morse tab book where the music is extremely complex and the players using the song as a practice device to improve there all round musical chops. This would certainly be one case where many professional players may have use for transcribed music. Of course there's a fair portion of this stuff they have also banged out themselves.

• The other thing with some of theses Song Lessons or Tab Books or even Backing Tracks that you see all over the place are: Most aren't professionally done, they were stolen from various Powertab Sites. Therefore they are illegal in two ways the most serious to you being they are copyright and publshing right violated material. They also range from pretty close to pretty bad in terms of being correct. Not to mention the fact they are all readily avaiable for free. Same with a lot of backing tracks where the seller claims they recorded all music so no copyrights have been violated. Wrong! You still must pay the proper publishing and performance fees for the song. Again maybe you think this dosen't affect you but we'll discuss that below.

Avoiding Serious Legal Issues

• If it sounds to good to be true it is. 5000 tabs for 10 bucks or less. Sorry but no one can afford the publishing fees on 500 songs and sell it for less than 10 bucks. Theses are called rip offs. Most this type of junk are stolen Powertab files. Some even toss it this wonderful program. Yea, that anyone can download free. The program but no longer the files as the MPA has forced them to shut down there free tab sites, though several are still around . Which brings us too all the copyright infringing items that pop up that not only sound to good to be true but could get you the buyer in serious trouble. Legally the Seller is the most accountable, however any publisher wanting to push it hard enough could very well after the customer. After all they don't just arrest drug dealers. So yes buying an illegal product can put you at risk. So use common sense if it sounds too good to be true...

• If you've been scammed in the above manner there's not much you can do about your money but you can get even. Just type MPA into any search engine and go to the links to forms. Right there is a downloadable Pdf file to print off to report Music Publishing Violations and you don't even have to give your name if you wish to remain unknown. You can also contact the publisher of the song, generally BMI or ASCAP, as well as the Harry Fox Agency and the RIAA.

• There's several DVDS going telling you how your gonna learn the main parts of theses great songs, which judging by the price tells me, no fees have ben paid. There's a few others with links to a few sample clips and let's just be kind and say you really don't wan to learn to do what they're doing. Sorry but playing over a backing track with total disregard to the chord changes with virtually no sense of phrasing and weak vibrato and intonation is not going to make you a great player :)  

Well hopefully you've picked up some pointers on how to learn the guitar without wasting lots of money on unnecessary junk. Not to mention being duped into buying illegal products that may get you in trouble, or worse yet falling for the Almighty Resell Right Scam that will get you a Hefty fine in not Jailtime or both.

I can see judging by the ratings that at least of one of the illegal sellers has read this guide. I'm a little surprised it hasn't got slammed harder by those pushing the illegal items. But that's ok, it's here for a reason: To help you the Buyer not blow your hard earned money on Junk or get into serious legal trouble.