GuitarTricks

Carrie Widder / Staff Writer / The USD Vista

This week’s website is guitartricks.com, and its tagline is simple: “Teaching guitar online since 1998.” This is ridiculous because I think the Internet was just starting to become available at this time, so I’m going to go ahead and assume these guys know what they’re doing since they obviously figured out the world wide web at the same time as Google, and since Google rules everything, ipso facto, so does guitartricks.com.

Back in my younger years, in the midst of dominating the monkey bars and kicking ass in multiplication tests (thank you, Kumon), I got my first guitar, a Baby Taylor, and started taking weekly lessons at the Guitar Shoppe in Laguna Beach to hone my skills. I was actually doing some good things with it too, and at one point envisioned myself on the road, writing symbolic songs about my hands, a la Jewel. I played fairly religiously until about my junior year of high school when guitar took a backseat to my other creative interests.

This past weekend I went home and, in the corner, I spied my favorite six-string Martin (I had moved up from the travel guitar). I decided that there’s no better time than the present to pick up where I had left off, and brought it back with me to San Diego to start playing again.

Guitartricks.com offers 24 free guitar lessons at the start-up, a free membership, and you can learn to play by style or by musical inspiration. So I will be occupying myself this week by venturing back into my old hobby. I’m not expecting big things, but I am expecting to fall back in love with creating music, which I’m sure everyone can appreciate. So wish me luck, or even better, come and jam with me.

The site looks and seems legit, but only time will tell if it is really capable of providing me with the skills to be the next singer/songwriter. Also, it loses a lightning bolt because, despite everything, guitar lessons are just better in person. You get to ask your instructor about their crazy hippie days being in a one-hit wonder band and how long they’ve been growing out their ponytails. Guitar teachers are interesting beings with cool stories. Trust me.