WHAT IS THE BEST PROGRAM???????

I don't think that there is the holy grail of music lesson books or software.

Everyone has their own way of learning and their own level of competence, which may or may not coincide with the methods and assumptions of the lessons. This is one of the main reasons for everything getting mixed reviews - it is not necessarily that the lessons are not good, just that they had a poor fit to the experience and learning methods of the reviewer.

Do you have any suggestions???

I've got a few tapes from the Homespun series ( http://www.homespuntapes.com ) that I find really helpful - the beauty of their site is that you can view a little bit of the lesson on the site to get an idea about if you like their presentation and content, they also have four or five different levels and various styles to choose from. You can also get them from the Amazon and your local music shop can order them in for you.

I've just ordered two more - 'The Power of Delta Blues Guitar with Rory Block' and 'the Blues of Keb Mo', I'll write a little review when I've been through them, if there's not already one here.

Presemtly I'm working with Bob Brozman's 'Hot Guitar Techniques from folk to Jazz - it's a little bit difficult for me, but I'm learning a lot about moveable chords, different finger picking techniques and how to get more interesting chord arrangements. He's also a great presenter. :)

Charanga Electric guitar coach pc cd rom is brilliant They do an acoustic version and an intermediate for more progression.
I had never picked up a guitar before and within minutes i was playing a simple but affective solo which made me want to progress and really nuckle down
Honestly I can not praise this program too much it really is worth the money and covers every kind of playing using audio and video, tab and notation

Violet,

You mentioned that you could preview the tapes/CD's on the Homespun site, before you purchased them.

I didn't see that option. Did they change that feature or did I miss something?

Qrious

You could also go to http://www.truefire.com and trawl through there vast vaults of CD Rom's / Video's / DVD's and also get free sample downloads.
They will also send you a free lesson sample CD after you have registered, (registering costs nothing and is well worth while.
I have purchased many of there excellent tutorial dvd's and books, the range and quality is astounding.

Hi,
I have the Playpro interactive guitar software
http://www.playprosoft.com/index.html

This seems to be very good and covers everything. You get 2 cd roms 2 cds and a book with a ring bound spine you can lay flat. It seems a lot of thought has gone into it. Probably the best feature and this is unique to this course is that you can plug your guitar (or Bass) into the computer and it scores you on how well you have copied a section. I don't think for one second that this could replace a teacher, but if you have to learn on your own (I do) then this is probably as good as you could find. Guitar playing experiance 1 week!! BTW the course is quite expensive 60 pounds UK, time will tell whether it was worth it
Blackrat

I think the About Guitar program is pretty good, I learned the basics from it, and it's free. The lessons here are good, and if you go to http://www.acousticguitar.com they have some free lessons from the magazine Acoustic Guitar Magazine.
guitar.about.com is the adress for the About. I hope this is somewhat what you were looking for. Good luck...

You could also go to http://www.truefire.com and trawl through there vast vaults of CD Rom's / Video's / DVD's and also get free sample downloads.
They will also send you a free lesson sample CD after you have registered, (registering costs nothing and is well worth while.
I have purchased many of there excellent tutorial dvd's and books, the range and quality is astounding.

An interesting site with an interesting video/cd setup for showing you what's up. I like the two views at once of the playing so you can see the fretting hand and the picking hand. The videos look impressive, the forum looks very sparsely inhabited though. I did sign up for the sample cd so I can see through a bit of a lesson longer than the 15 seconds in the preview. Might be worth the purchase of instructional videos from them. I wish they had something in the way of bluegrass the way they have the blues stuff though. Thanks for the link.

Hi,
I have the Playpro interactive guitar software
http://www.playprosoft.com/index.html

This seems to be very good and covers everything. You get 2 cd roms 2 cds and a book with a ring bound spine you can lay flat. It seems a lot of thought has gone into it. Probably the best feature and this is unique to this course is that you can plug your guitar (or Bass) into the computer and it scores you on how well you have copied a section. I don't think for one second that this could replace a teacher, but if you have to learn on your own (I do) then this is probably as good as you could find. Guitar playing experiance 1 week!! BTW the course is quite expensive 60 pounds UK, time will tell whether it was worth it
Blackrat

And this link has ceased to be. "The domain http://www.playprosoft.com which you are trying to access is currently unavailable. This may occur for several reasons -- the name may have changed, or it may have moved to a new location. Please try to access the site later, or contact the site's administrator."

AH, that was some time ago. I still like truefire.com and have picked up a thing or two from the David Hamburger series. Interesting little flash player which works better and faster if you install all the files of it to your computer and my big complaint about that is that it stays one size, you can't enlarge it bigger which would be a plus for these tired old eyes. truefire is starting online lessons like at workshoplive but I haven't had a look at that yet.

I also like the GCH Guitar Academy software, a very nicely done package with lots of clear information http://www.guitar-academy.com/ You can download a lesson or so and see if you like it, they have a free tuner, metronome and other things you can get there and the price is reasonable. Also with left hand edition which I imagine might be interesting if you were left handed.

And for online lessons I like http://www.workshoplive.com . Cheaper than a real instructor, you can use it whenever you have time and seems to me (as a less than a year with a guitar kind of guy) to be helpful and smooth working. And it keeps track of what you've accomplished or at least at the lessons that you've listened to through to the end.

Then there is Guitar Pro 5 (the latest iteration) which is a program strong on tab creation, music creation really , as well as a large library (which is elsewhere online) of song tabs of popular songs and unpopular songs I guess. Users create their own 'tabs' of songs and are found online at http://www.mysongbook.com/ - well they used to provide tabs created by users of popular songs, I've just surfed over there and as I suspected (and wisely purchased early) they would be forced to stop providing those. You could still find the compiled collections of same online if you look hard enough. And also they can't stop you from transcribing tabs you find in magazine or in the books you buy to the program for your own use.

Those are the best ones I can think of right now. I haven't bought any from Chris Rupp as of yet, I'm sure it's good stuff. There's also the Dan Denley stuff over at http://www.amazingguitarsecrets.com/ who advertises here at guitar noise.
With all of these instructional videos and programs and such, your milage may vary depending on what clicks for you. I just wish I was smarter and able to click quicker than I do. :-)

i have learned alot from the rockhouse method dvds- http://www.rockhousemethod.com