[devellis]

I'm another who never found lessons all that helpful. Teaching guitar isn't easy. First, the person needs to know how to play. Second, he or she needs to know how to teach. Third, the teacher needs to know how to teach in a way that works best for the learner. Fourth, the teacher needs to have familiarity with material that the learner wants to learn. Getting all of that right isn't that easy. I suppose it's easier if what you want to learn is stuff that's widely popular. Playing chords for singing, for example, is what a lot of students are after and I suspect that's a lot easier to teach than some other styles.

Tabs are abundant and often free but can be pretty baffling. Often, there's a chord shape that is the foundation for which fingers are playing which strings. That may not be obvious from a tab and going after individual string locations in isolation can be a lot more daunting that realizing that if you play a particular chord shape, the right strings and fret positions are already selected.

DVDs can be great. You see and hear what's going on. You can repeat the material over and over. Often, the tune is played through once at speed and then broken down. This gives you a couple of versions to look at and listen to in the event that one isn't clear for some reason. The key here is to find a DVD that teaches music that you want to learn and that is at an appropriate level of difficulty. That can be tricky. Also, some instructors will just be better at teaching than others and so their DVDs will be more helpful. It's not uncommon for an instructor to demonstrate a passage and then repeat part of it or all of it. But unless they're clear about what they're repeating, it can be difficult to assemble all of the bits and pieces into a coherent whole. It goes a lot more smoothly if the instructor provides lots of guidelines, like maybe teaching a new measure and then demonstrating how that measure and the one that preceded it go together. I've noticed that some instructors are getting visibly tired by the end of a long DVD lesson and start omitting some of those helpful guides. But all-in-all, I think a good DVD is a great learning tool and can be an excellent value compared to paying for the number of individual lessons that a DVD would equate to.

A way that individual lessons have worked for me is to go in for just one or two longer lessons to review fundamentals and make sure that I haven't learned bad habits. Some instructors understandably like that less than having someone they walk through the entire process week by week, but others are fine with it.

Ultimately, no matter what methods you use, progress won't be linear. As you gain more skill in one area, you may find that stuff that made no sense earlier on suddenly seems a lot less challenging. On the other hand, some things will remain a challenge for a lot longer than it seems they should. And one way of doing something that was demonstrated to you may need to be done differently because of your particular skills, dexterity, or even hand geometry.

Keep at it and you will learn. Stop, and you won't. Everybody struggles in the beginning. Those who persist improve.