If you already play, you’ll find Guitar Coach really firms up your technique and all round musicianship, and gives you lots of new and interesting music to work on. Levels 1 and 2 go over basics that you may already be familiar with, but the rest of the lessons go through interesting aspects of technique and basic classical guitar, as well as open position chords and some excellent fingerstyle and strumming songs.

Level 5 Lesson Guide

‘Workout’ is a Technique lesson that looks in detail at 2 strum hand techniques and takes you through 3 extended exercises that will help to keep your playing in shape. One of the exercises is based around a scale and practising it with the metronome will help you build up good speed and fluency. The other two exercises are based on a chord and an arpeggio. These will help you maintain clean and accurate articulation and help you develop a good string sound.

‘Mixing Styles’ is a classical lesson though it uses both strumming and fingerstyle techniques as well. You learn two songs in this lesson, ‘Malaguena’ and ‘La Bamba’. Malaguena is a classic and very popular Spanish guitar piece. It’s an exciting solo so once you can play it you’ll find it makes a splendid party piece. La Bamba is also very well known. In this version you learn the famous intro motif and practise it with the help of fizzing fingerstyle and strumming accompaniments.

‘Chord Shapes’ looks at how to take common chord shapes and move them around the guitar to make interesting new sounds. Some of the shapes are used in Malaguena and the technique studies from Level 5.

Fingerstyle ‘Off-beat’ shows you how to create a stylish Latin fingerstyle pattern that you can use to play lots of songs. It’s brilliant to play and you practise it by playing along with the La Bamba tune which you learnt earlier in Level 5. Though it’s quite a complex strum hand pattern, the fantastic video view, which is taken from inside the guitar looking out through the soundhole, gives you the detail you need to master it quickly.

Strumming ‘Complex’ is a bit like the Fingerstyle lesson in that you learn a Latin style pattern. This time though, it’s a complex strumming pattern that involves hitting the guitar to get an excellent percussion sound. Again you practise it by playing along with La Bamba.

If you've been playing a long time and feel your technique and general fluency around the guitar is pretty good, then Guitar Coach may not stretch enough. It’s been our experience though that even people who have felt pretty comfortable with their playing already, have got a lot out of this product. It unlocks so many aspects of guitar technique in particular to fingerstyle technique, that it’s difficult not to learn lots of new things. With our experience of having kept in touch with thousands of people who've used and enjoyed Guitar Coach, we feel we can be very confident about recommending to you.