Table of Contents
About The Fender Play Course
Fender Play is an online guitar lesson course from the world’s most famous guitar brand: Fender.
The course offers four instruments to learn: acoustic guitar, electric guitar, bass guitar, and ukulele. Each instrument then offers genre ‘paths’ specific to it.
Musical Paths
Both electric and acoustic guitar options offer the same five genre paths: rock, blues, folk, country, and pop. For bass guitar, it offers rock and funk. The Ukulele category offers only one general Ukulele path.
Picking a path lets you follow a set series of lessons geared towards your chosen instrument and genre path. Each path has five levels of difficulty. With the program, you can improve your skills, whether you’re a beginner or a self-taught pro.
Video Tutorials
The video lessons feature an expert instructor who guides you through songs and techniques.
To help with practicing, Fender Play provides a high-quality video with multiple camera angles. One thing we loved in the Fender Play review is that the videos include the view of the guitar from the student’s perspective.
Useful tabs, chords, and related content listed below the content help guide you as the video plays above.
Practice Modes
Between various instructor videos are ‘practice modes.’ These modes give you the chance to practice techniques solo.
The practice mode uses auto-scrolling tabs and adjustable tempo with a built-in metronome to help with your technique.
Who Is This Course For?
This course starts right at the beginning at a reasonable pace, making it ideal for beginners.
Imagine buying a new shiny Fender guitar without any idea how to play it. Why not learn to play the guitar you bought from the company that made it?
Fender Play shows that anyone can pick up the guitar basics at their own pace. It is not, however, suited for anyone familiar or in any way adept with a guitar. Fundamentals are the focus.
Why You Should Enroll
The main reason you should enroll should be a desire to learn the basics in a relaxed way. Practicing times and lengths are up to you as well as what style and songs you want to learn.
Not ready to dive into the deep end with 30-minute long in-depth music theory videos? Our Fender Play review recommends this program for you. The content focuses on learning basics and simple songs in the genre you pick.
Advantages of Fender Play
Fender Play offers numerous advantages. It makes sense that you would get high-quality instruction from one of the world’s leading guitar makers.
Standardization
The first advantage relates to standardization. Anyone learning music online will know the frustration of trying to piece together information from various free lessons. Different instructors use different techniques and jargon to teach.
Fender Play uses coherent language and notation across all videos, even if taught by different instructors. This consistency makes progressing from simple to more complicated concepts much more straightforward.
In-Depth Instruction
Another advantage stems from how in-depth the lessons go. Videos on Fender Play take you slowly through the techniques and explain it as you follow along.
They explain scales first before any riffs or patterns based on those scales. The same goes for chords built on those scales. Every lesson sets the foundation before explaining new concepts. Videos begin with a review of previous lessons to achieve this.
Wide Selection of Classics
Lastly, Fender Play boasts a good selection of classic songs. You will find in their library the most popular songs beginners want to learn on the guitar.
Lessons progress to let you play more challenging songs, and every skill learned applies to a song. All your work will feel worth it when you can play a new song.
Disadvantages of Fender Play
Most disadvantages of Fender Play relate to the advantages listed above with some caveats.
Limited Paths
As a complete beginner, you will find the lessons at a helpful pace. But if you progress past most lessons in one path, there remains little the program can teach you in any other path. Guitar Tricks offers a little more variety in their learning paths.
The courses are excellent for the short burst of initial learning, but most people will quickly outgrow the platform with regular practice. This disadvantage may disappear as Fender uploads new content, or else players may want to move to a platform for more advanced players, like Truefire or Jamplay, once they outgrow Fender Play.
One Key
Musically, Fender Play presents a couple of problems.
First, genre paths often focus on one key. So long as you stick to songs within the most common keys, you will be comfortable. Stray outside these standard keys (E, A, G, etc.) into more challenging ones (Eb, F#, Ab), and you will quickly feel unprepared.
This issue stems from the song-focused approach of the platform. Music theory teaching seems only to prepare players for standard keys, not an overall understanding of keys, scales, and chords in general. Players may want to look into Jamorama as a supllimentary course to learn more music fundamentals.
If any of these things are a problem for you, you can check out some other options over here where we compare the best online guitar lessons
Verdict
If you want to play classic songs at an affordable price, Fender Play stands high up on the list of platforms.
The clarity of the lessons, the expert instructors, and the program’s pace makes it perfect for beginners. Also, the free trial period means that it’s easy to try if you have any interest at all.
Those looking to build a solid foundation for creative and advanced music may desire a less song-focused program. But the lessons are not meant to replace attending an advanced music theory school. They cater to the guitarist in the making who wants a respectable repertoire of popular songs.
With the free trial, nothing stands in your way to checking out Fender Play. Anyone with an interest in playing guitar should test it out for themselves.
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