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Many years ago I asked a good friend of mine who is now a very successful professional musician, what my next step in learning was as a musician. I was so surprised with the fact that he could play anything he heard without fumbling for notes; and not only on the keyboard, but also on the bass, the guitar and several other instruments.

He told me that the most important thing a musician should learn is HARMONY. Now, I fully understand why:

When you study harmony, you are not only studying guitar, but all instruments at the same time. Harmony is notes and chords in their context. You start to understand the relationship between note intervals and scales, scales and chords. You know what will work effectively in a musical situation and what will not. You can consciously combine genres (i.e. fusion).

Once you've started learning harmony, you literally 'take off' musically. You have so many directions you can go that you'll never get bored. There's always something new to discover once you get 'out of the box'.

But the problem is which direction to take, what to learn first and what to leave for later on. When people are looking for online jazz guitar lessons; are they just looking for information, or how to put the information to good use?

If it were just a matter of information, the web is filled with hundreds of sources to find out what the Lydian Mode is, for example. Wikipedia itself has the definition and an explanation for anyone interested in knowing about it. But how to put it into use effectively is an entirely different matter.

Good online Jazz guitar lessons are well structured in a step-by-step manner and this takes the guesswork out of your learning. You learn step-by-step through watching videos and seeing it written in musical notation and TAB, practice it and consolidate it by playing along with backing tracks so you get the right feel. By learning in this way, you can clearly see how much you've progressed; and being able to play exactly what you hear is one step closer every time.

Ruben Cardos has been a non stop studio and live musician as well as sound technician, electronics technician and sporadic guitar teacher for well over 25 years. Learn more about the #1 recommended "Play What You Hear" guitar method for learning harmony and improvisation by Chris Standring at BandSuccess.

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