Tips for using video lessons?

[Dawsie]

I can't seem to take to video lessons. I find it off-putting and a bit clumsy, watching someone explaining one thing then moving on to the next before I've learned the first part.

Are there are any ways to use technology to make video lessons easier, maybe by looping or slowing down the part of video that I'm trying to learn before moving on to the next part.

Or, maybe tabbing out what the person in the video is doing would be a good part of the learning experience? How do you, others guitarists, learn from video lessons?

[BrianEgert]

Remember that with video you can rewatch as many times as you need too. If there is a 10 second part of the video that you are having trouble understanding, you can rewind and listen to it a few times till it sticks. You would also hope that the instructor would release the tabs for each lesson.

You also have to remember that you may have to pause the video and watch the rest of it a different day. Everybody learns at a different pace.

I love video when it comes to learning. For example, if I'm trying to learn a particular fingerstyle song, I can watch where the guitarist is putting his fingers and than listen to the notes he's playing. A combination of watching and listening is how I process music the best.

[imwjl]

I've used Transcribe (http://www.seventhstring.com/) to slow down and watch video segments.

I do extensive use of Youtube's account settings where I make playlists. You can make your playlists public or private and make notes about them when you save or edit them. I have them divided by genre, technique, instructor, tips, theory etc... it helps me get to what I want for the moment and not be wasting time or lost looking for stuff.

Remember that common free players like QuickTime and Windows Media slow down and keep pitch. That said Transcribe will slow down and help you find specific notes and chords.

[byrd]

Originally Posted by Dawsie

Are there are any ways to use technology to make video lessons easier, maybe by looping or slowing down the part of video that I'm trying to learn before moving on to the next part.

It's not a free lesson site, but Jamplay.com has a built in loop feature on their video player. You simply mark the start and end of the loop in the video, and let play. I've used it quite a bit. It's much easier that strategically placing your mouse over the progress bar of a video and continuously clicking back in the video each time you need to repeat!

Jamplay and others (as well as some free tab sites) have Guitar Pro files available. Guitar Pro 6 has a speed trainer that you can loop any section of a song. You can start the loop as slow as you want, and have it progressively speed up a little at a time after each loop.

I haven't heard of any video player that lets you slow it down, but that would be nice too. I suppose you could use something like DownloadHelper (Firefox addon) to download youtube videos onto your computer then use your own software to slow it down.

[slinco]

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