10 Great Guitar Blogs: Guitar Friendly

By: Dr. Matt Warnock

During the second half of the 20th century, the guitar has overtaken the piano as the instrument of choice for households and individuals across America. Gone are the days when the family gathered around the piano after dinner to sing their favorite songs. Now, if there’s an instrument in the house, or if you ask anyone if they play an instrument, odds are that it’ll be a guitar. With the guitar’s popularity skyrocketing, it is no coincidence that an entire industry has grown out of teaching people how to play the instrument.

Though the guitar instructional market was dominated for years by the three big publishing companies, Hal Leonard, Alfred and Mel Bay, the global availability of the internet has changed all of that. It wasn’t long after the internet became a household appliance that “Learn to Play Guitar” websites began popping up across the web. With so many sites to choose from, it’s often tricky to find a site that provides well-written, easy to understand, and most importantly, free guitar lessons.

One of the most interesting and comprehensive guitar teaching websites on the map today is Guitar Friendly. Run by Brett, who is a fine performer and accomplished teacher in his own right, the site is a treasure trove of information geared towards making you a better guitarist, while not charging you an arm and a leg to do so.

A multi-talented guy, Brett divides his time between playing guitar and designing and developing websites. Building and running a guitar teaching website seems like a natural bridge between these two passions. As Brett tells us, “Guitar Friendly started out of a desire to blend those two passions (guitar and website design) together, providing an online resource for others that would help them become better guitarists. “

Notice how the words profit, income and money are not in Brett’s mission statement, this selfless attitude is reflected in the copious amounts of free information that can be found on the site. Of particular note is the series of articles dealing with Beginner Guitar Lessons, which has a great index of 11 Easy Guitar Lessons for Beginners.

While the guitar is a relatively easy instrument to pick up and get the basics down quickly, if one doesn’t have a qualified teacher or reliable guide to help them, bad habits can form quickly and easily. Brett has alleviated these concerns with a well-written series of articles that nails down the basics in a fun and easy to follow manner that guitarists of all backgrounds and tastes can use to kick-start their playing.

The site’s lesson material covers a wide range of styles and experience levels, though as Brett puts it, he designed Guitar Friendly and the site’s content to “provide detailed and easy-to-follow guitar lessons for beginner and intermediate players.”  By focusing his attention on beginning to intermediate guitarists, Brett can cover a serious amount of material, while keeping his focus solely on providing informative articles for these two groups of players, another reason why Brett has achieved his goal of “providing an excellent free resource for people to become better guitar players.”

Though the site has become a go-to resource for guitarists looking to better their craft, running Guitar Friendly has also posed challenges for Brett as he moves forward with the site. Finding time to create content and keeping that content flowing is something that all Bloggers deal with, including Brett. “As someone who does blogging mostly on the side, it can be hard to carve out time and energy to produce content with a high frequency while still maintaining a high level of integrity with the quality of the content. It’s a hard balance that I know I’ve missed at times. “

Struggling to create quality content and maintain a steady stream of posts is challenging indeed, but Brett has found ways to maximize the exposure each article receives. Thinking about current trends in online publishing, Brett has “looked at the growth of Guitar Friendly over the past few years and I can attribute to a lot of its growth to social media sites such as Twitter, Facebook and Youtube.” Sites which Guitar Friendly maintains accounts and updates frequently, allowing readers to keep up with new articles no matter which platform they prefer to use.

This is an important aspect of Guitar Friendly’s success as “people are looking for the highest quality content, and ultimately, content that’s worth being shared with others. If the content isn’t worth being shared with others, then it’s going to be overshadowed by the hundreds, if not thousands, of other websites offering better content.” By focusing on creating solid, share-worthy content, Brett’s site has become the overshadower rather than the overshadowee.

With his site growing every week, and his content being enjoyed by thousands of players from across the globe, Brett has reaped some of the rewards that running a teaching website can bestow upon its owner. Some of his favorite moments in the site’s history have come from “seeing others grow in their abilities.” Brett also finds it “very rewarding to see the light bulb go off for people, and it’s especially rewarding when I was a part of that process.” Guitar blogs are often a labor of love, but with experiences like this, it’s no wonder publishers like Brett work so hard to bring their articles to the guitar-loving public.

It also helps to have help from those around you when running a website, something Brett has taken notice of and shown his appreciation for. Over the site’s lifetime he has “found the community of guitar bloggers to be one of the most welcoming and generous communities,” and has shown his appreciation to that community by creating the Guitar Blog Awards, which were given out for the first time this past August.

As an avid reader of guitar blogs I have to take a moment to thank Brett for creating these awards, not only because Guitar International won an award, but also because I was unaware of many of the award-winning sites until I found them on Guitar Friendly. Kudos to Brett for creating these awards and for showing some love to the guitar blogging community.

If you’re looking for a one-stop site that will give you enough lesson material to last a lifetime, than Guitar Friendly is the place for you. Stop by, browse around the site and enjoy the many written and video lessons that Brett has written in recent years. You will no doubt learn a thing or twenty, and have fun while you run through these well-written articles.