How to Make a Guitar Video Lesson: It's Fun But Not Easy

If you are a new-millennium guitarist you are undoubtedly familiar with the concept of home videos. After all, it's been 6 years since YouTube's first video, and for some reason I might explore in a future post, guitarists of all kinds have flocked to this now legendary website.

So I'm very excited to report that I've just posted my first video lesson. The video counterpart to Melodic Sequences (posted Dec 27, '10) is up and running on the Tube. YouTube, that is. To be fair there are many, many other video-sharing services on the 'net (ever heard of Vimeo? Revver? Or Daily Motion?). A good list of them--both free and not--is available here.

But honestly I have to recuperate from the guitar video lesson I just did.

Don't get me wrong, I thoroughly enjoyed it. But it took a long time to do, a very...long time. By the way this hasn't been my first video (here's my YT channel) but it was the most involved.

In general I've learned many things while making guitar vids. And I'd like to learn more technical aspects of the process--what's a codec, for example?--but for now I can share some of the practical knowledge I've gleaned:

When doing a guitar lesson video...

• Be patience. I meant to write "be patient" just now, but that Freudian slip (I didn't know he wore those...) is truer than my correction would have been. Yes, that's right. Be patience. Embody it. Personify it. You will need it.
• Have the idea of the video firmly in your mind. It's fun to make videos, and because of that it's easy--very easy--to be distracted by the video you're in. That's right, you'll be smiling--or grimacing, depending on your 'vibe'--in front of the camera, doing your coolest licks for a half an hour (or hour and a half) before realizing this simply isn't your best video lesson effort.
• Be warmed up before the video, not during. With fam, composing, blogging, checking out the latest who's who in YouTube guitardom, I simply can't put in the practice/noodle hours I used to. So I need to do that before making a video presentation.
• Have decent equipment or better, and know how to use it. I love using Windows Movie Maker--without boasting, I am a notch or two short of being a WMM wiz--but the quality of Mac's Imovie is just better. I can't go back now, even though using a Mac has posed many shortcomings and takes me longer--way longer--to do a movie. Plus the GUI is just awkward. And you can't save. Ok I wont gripe about Macs here...
• Get a nice backdrop so your viewers don't see your cat or unfolded clothes fresh from the dryer, etc., while your in teacher mode. It could be cool, but then it will distract some people so I think the possible coolness is overridden. If you check out my first YT lesson you'll see what I used, and I didn't even iron it. A backdrop can be a poster board (preferably blank) or a large piece of material. But if you're against all of this just Green Screen it.
• Dust/polish your guitar of choice for the video. Unless, of course, you are the Felix (from that way-old sitcom, remember?) of guitardom and do this everyday. And unless your axe is beat up (how manly) and you wont have it any other way. That rhymed but I didn't mean it.
• Figure out how to use helpful tools such as fretboard diagrams, and notation / TAB in your instructionals. Plenty of stuff available for free on the 'net...just Google it.
• Spice up your presentation with cool images (highly suggested by me but not mandatory). I love nice-looking guitars--among other things--and make sure to put some in my vids since I'm not into people gazing at my face, even if it is a pre-recorded image. They are getting absolutely nothing out of that. I'm not making lesson vids to covertly model, I'm there to teach something.
• Be to the point. I had trouble with this and am learning to cut down the verbiage. Now if I could only do it off camera...
• Pick a good title. For example, I knew melodic sequences was a very niche-topic (a topic not many know about, at least by that title). So I put it as the subtitle and centered the title around the words guitar and scale. People are going to be much more likely to punch in "guitar" or "scale" than they are "melodic sequences" into a search engine
• Last but not least, Do It. Don't worry about the seemingly endless number of guitar players--with more coming to the shredded shores of YouTubedom everyday--who can (or at least seem to) outplay you. That's how it is as a geetar player. Well, unless you're Chris Broderick. 

So, I've said enough. Get thee from off of thine chair (or couch, whatever) and maketh thee a guitar lesson video the world will find hard to forget. But if you're already a guitar-vid guru, what were some of the challenges you faced? How did you overcome them? What are you doing to make your guitar lesson videos better?

-6SV