Beginning Guitar - Paul Baloche Intructional DVD (DVD)

 Review

Hi. My Name is Jeremy and I am a...um...well, I'm a beginning guitarist. Wow, it feels really great to finally admit that. You see, for a few years now I have been pretending to be this adequate player, but the truth is I have been faking my way through with very little knowledge and awful technique. At first I quickly learned how to play many of my favorite worship songs in the key of G - easy enough. But I quickly became bored of that. I tried to learn some stuff in C, but I didn't want to take the time to get that pesky "F" chord. And don't even get me started on those horrible barre chords (I'm a pianist/keyboardist so I'm not used to an instrument requiring me to abuse my finger tips and hand muscles). Then I was introduced to a little friend called the capo. The capo allowed me to play any song using chords from my native key of "G" and have the pitches come out in any desired key. The instant gratification of playing any song in any key without learning many chords was enough to extinguish any drive that I had to learn more and more about playing the guitar. Eventually I (and my worship team) became tired of the limited sound of my guitar playing and I decided that it was time to dig in and learn how to really play the guitar. So I turned where any worship musician would turn when they need help with music training - Paul Baloche.

Paul Baloche's "Beginning Guitar" DVD is an instructional video that teaches you how to play the guitar while showing how to play some of the well-known worship songs of today. As with all of Paul's videos "Beginning Guitar" is fun and easy to follow. A few years ago Paul released his "Acoustic Guitar" video which teaches existing guitar players really cool information and techniques to help them dress up their playing. But this latest DVD focuses on teaching folks that know very little to nothing about playing the guitar. Starting with how to tune your guitar, how to hold the guitar, hold a pick and other various bits of basic guitar knowledge, Paul skips nothing as he gets the novice ready to begin learning.

Paul takes his time as he demonstrates how to play the most basic of chords, pointing out trouble areas for each chord. Eventually, he teaches enough chords to start putting a song together. With each new set of chords come new songs to learn. This is a great feature since the best way to retain knowledge is to immediately put it into application. He also takes time to teach you different strumming patterns for the songs. At various points in the DVD Paul takes time to encourage the weary student with scripture and encouragement.

I can tell you first hand that this "Beginning Guitar" DVD is a great learning tool for those that want to get the guitar basics down once and for all, or to learn how to play despite having no prior knowledge of music or the guitar. Paul's clear, concise teaching style and huge heart to resource the church always makes learning a pleasant experience. I still have a lot of practicing to do before I become a guitar virtuoso, but "Beginning Guitar" has me well on my way to doing it the right way.

Review by Jeremy Dunn