5 Websites Every Classroom Guitar Teacher Must See

The nice thing about being a musician these days is that you can find so many resources online. You can buy your instrument online, get lessons online, jam with people online, upload your songs and videos, etc. You name it, it’s online. That said, there’s a lot of junk out there and sifting through it takes time. That’s where we come in!

We know that Classroom Guitar Teachers are busy! You need sheet music now, you need to know if it’s right for your class that starts in 10 minutes. You need lesson plans and a curriculum yesterday! Well we cut through the forest to find you five great sites which are sure to help out.

Led by Bill Swick, the Chair of the NAfME Guitar Council, ClassroomGuitar.com has some great treasures for guitar teachers. There are four years of guitar curriculum going from beginner to advanced classes. There’s also a student Guitar Handbook that even has a parental consent form at the bottom. Not to mention loads of information, footage, and photos about Bill’s classes from the Las Vegas Academy where he teaches.

GuitarCurriculum.com was started by Matt Hinsley and the folks at the Austin Classical Guitar Society. They go to schools and teach teachers how to start classical guitar programs (kinda like us, with a different approach). However, there’s not much ensemble repertoire for classroom guitar teachers, so they put together their own! They added a lot of value by labeling parts according to playing ability (appreciating the fact that not all guitar students play at the same level). They also include a lot of articulation; ACGS believes that students should play a piece “musically” from the beginning. A one year subscription will run you $150, but you can check it out for free if you want to dip your toe in. The subscription features tons of sheet music, videos, as well as a comprehensive Teacher’s Manual.

GuitarDownUnder.com has a great collection of resources for guitar teachers. To start, they have downloadable pieces for classical, finger-style, and ensembles. They will even teach you how to strum and notate it! There’s also a bunch of “Free Lessons”, but it all seems to be free as long as you don’t mind looking at ads.

ForrestGuitarEnsembles.co.uk does not look like it has had a redesign in forever, but it’s got a lot of substance as far as we are concerned. They have tons of free music to download from solo pieces on up to guitar orchestras! The pieces are all graded (try grades 7 – 9 at your own risk!) and there’s a lot of mixed grade pieces. Some of the pieces even have audio files attached, which is nice.

I wish the GuitarEduNet forum was this popular! ClassicalGuitarDelCamp is an exhaustive forum with hundreds of thousands of posts about everything involving classical guitar! If you’ve got questions, there are answers here. If you want lessons, you can get them on the forum! Want to list your show or find a classical guitar performance – check here. If you’re not on this site, you’re not part of the classical guitar community. Beware!!! It’s easy to spend a lot of time on this site.