Beatles To A Tee Video

What you will get out of Learn to Play The Beatles To A Tee Instructional Guitar Video is going to be dependent on you. Oh, I know that this sounds contrived, but let me explain.

First off, I have to admit that I tend to learn more from books than from videos. You can talk with a book, much like you can with a teacher. You can mark them up, effortlessly move from place to place. Most importantly, you can study and make sense of them even when you are far from your guitar.

Videos, by their nature, have their work cut out for them. You already feel removed because you are a spectator. There is no immediacy in your lesson. True, you do have some measure of control – in fact you have more control than you ever would in a real lesson. All you have to do is use your remote. The teacher can’t tell you not to!

But “remote” to me is the key word. “Distant in space or time,” my dictionary says.

This video, brought to you by TAT Video Productions, is quite ambitious. Host Rob Taylor walks you through no less than sixteen Beatles songs (fifteen Lennon/McCartney tunes and one cover, Till There Was You), taken from the whole timeline of the group’s career. And while he definitely knows his stuff, you really have to know yours as well if you wish to learn.

In the very first song, Please Please Me, for example, Mr. Taylor explains that George’s lead comes from the harmonica line and that it is done in octaves – he even explains what an octave is – and then he shows you the lead and the song. But the problem is that he only shows you. He never tells you what the notes are (and there is no notation or TAB); he doesn’t even tell you what the chords are. So unless you are really good at being able to play simply from watching someone, you are going to run into some problems.

The kicker is, though, that Mr. Taylor is very good at explaining things. At various points in the video he takes the time to discuss techniques such as creating feedback (I Feel Fine), Paul and John’s different fingerpicking patterns (Yesterday, Blackbird, Julia), string muting and the use of capos. On I Feel Fine, in fact, he painstakingly takes you through each stroke of the guitar pick. But all the camera shots are mid-range, close enough to guess but not close enough to be certain. And unless you know what notes he is playing, you are at a loss. Again, on Julia, Mr. Taylor walks you flawlessly and patiently through John’s fingerpicking pattern and while he tells you it will change according to the chords, he never tells or shows you what those chords are.

This is a good video, though. If you are familiar with the songs or take the time to have both chord charts and TAB (for the solos) handy, you can learn a quite a bit from it. If you are unfamiliar with how bands arrange music, you will get a lot out of the split screen technique, which allows you to view all the guitar parts being played at the same time. Rob Taylor knows his stuff concerning the Beatles and is a very good guitarist. It is obvious a lot of time and care went into the making of this video.

As I said at the start, what you get out of this will be up to you and the effort and patience you are willing to spend on it. If you are a beginning guitarist, or even an intermediate, you’ll need to get some form of the written music in addition to the video in order to get the most from Mr. Taylor’s lessons.

Peace