What’s The Difference Between Private And Group Guitar Lessons?

Private guitar lessons are one-on-one sessions with a teacher. You’ll get to learn anything you want to learn and you can choose to focus on the topics you love most. This is ideal for students who are wanting to niche down on a particular area – such as fingerpicking, improvising, or music theory. If you want complete control over every lesson, and are unwilling to learn anything other than what you choose, then this is definitely the best option for you. Private lessons can still follow our Ultimate Guitar Method course, or any other learning curriculum that you might like to choose from.

Group guitar lessons are small classes that consist of between two and eight students. They’re lower in cost for the student, so ideal if you’re on a tight budget. They typically follow Ultimate Guitar Method, which still allows for students to choose the songs they want to learn. Because it is a group environment, it may mean that students will learn songs and components that they may not necessarily have chosen. To some, this might sound like a bad thing, but it’s actually very beneficial, because you’re learning a wider variety of content which generally helps you become a more well rounded guitarist. Classes also consist of students that are at slightly different skill levels, because no two students stay the exact same skill level for very long. This means that there may be some repetition in your learning, which again is actually beneficial because it means you are learning more thoroughly. After all, repetition is really the only way that we learn.

We’re big believers that iron sharpens iron, so learning with other similarly skilled students helps you learn faster.

The class environment also allows for groups to learn and practice ensemble pieces – this is where various guitarist are assigned different roles within the same song, and they play it together – quite similar to how an orchestra works. The video below is one of our practice videos that we use for teaching. You’ll notice that there are several layers of guitar in the video, which is a good example of what playing an ensemble piece is like.