Guitar Lessons in San Francisco

San Francisco is chock a block with guitar players and people trying to sell lessons, but what are the best resources of the bunch? Let's take a look.

The Blue Bear School of Music is one of the most popular local choices for not just guitar, but all types of instrument lessons. On the guitar front, however, they offer both acoustic and electric guitar lessons. Acoustic guitar is taught in a series of up to eleven progressing courses, with a variety of different instructors. Other stand-alone classes in the acoustic realm include "The Country Side of Rock", "Acoustic Jam" and "Guitar's Greatest Hits With Bill Spooner." On the electric guitar side, up to eight courses are offered starting with absolute beginners and progressing upwards from there. Johnny Nitro also teaches a separate blues electric guitar class and there's a formal class for bands made up of students to assemble and work up to playing live at various venues in San Francisco. Most classes are $200-300 but there is a sliding scale if your income is low that may discount the class an extra $75. Blue Bear's locations are at 271 Dore Street in San Francisco and the Julian Morgan Center for the Arts in Berkeley.

The City College of San Francisco offers elementary and intermediate classical guitar and guitar workshops. This is a California community college and thus tuition is only $20 per unit, with most classes consisting of 3 units and thus $60 or so per class.

The Community Music Center of San Francisco offers private lessons in both acoustic and electric guitar. You can opt for twelve week sessions in the spring, winter and fall, or eight week sessions in the summer. Each session is thirty minutes long and meets once per week. For the twelve week sessions is it $312 for 30 minutes, $468 for 40 minutes and $624 for 60 minutes per week. The shorter summer sessions are a little less costly at $208 for 30 minutes, $312 for 45 and $416 for 60. They also have all sorts of other lessons in other types of instruments and vocals.

The Jazz School in Berkeley is a non-profit institution that offers all sorts of instrumental lessons with a jazz focus. For guitar players, they have an intensive summer course in jazz guitar, beginning acoustic guitar, blues and swing guitar, jazz guitar for beginner and intermediate players, and guitar comping techniques. Workshops in the guitar realm include flamenco, electric flamenco guitar and an exploration of jazz guitar.

Exploring Music is a music shop in the Richmond that also offers lessons in guitar. Four one-hour lessons will set you back $140, or you can take four half-hour lessons for $85. There's also an initial registration fee of $30. There's no formal schedule of classes though, it generally depends on if they have a teacher checked in and available when you are looking for lessons.

Finally, you'll notice flyers tacked up in the laundromats and on telephone poles everywhere offering lessons, usually for low prices. But how do you know the quality of any of these teachers? A good place to look for flyer ads is around the local guitar stores. Usually the staff will know who put them up and can give you the scoop on them.