“Our goal is to further support and enhance the learning experience”: Fender launches Play 1:1, a learning platform offering personalised online and on-demand guitar lessons with its top teachers
Fender Play 1:1 puts guitarists at all levels in touch with the brand's best teachers to offer one-to-one lessons, practice plans and interactive support and feedback
Fender has launched a new personalised online guitar lessons service that puts beginner players – or anyone looking to get better – in touch with the top instructors from the brand’s Fender Play platform.
Fender Play 1:1 is just that; it offers players one-to-one tuition for $24 per session. Those sessions can be taken live online or on demand, with personalised coaching plans to help players get the most out of their practice.
The idea is that this will build on the Fender Play model and deepen players’ engagement with their instrument, be it acoustic guitar, electric, bass guitar or ukulele.
Having offered over 100 million lessons, reaching 2.5 million guitarists, many of those coaches will be familiar faces. Simply choose your coach and set up and intro call. There you can share your experience, aspirations, and the kinds of things you want to learn.
“Since launching in 2017, Fender Play has helped millions of new players learn to play guitar,” says Fender CEO Andy Mooney. “By adding direct one-on-one instruction and coaching with Fender Play 1:1, our goal is to further support and enhance the learning experience for beginners and for players who want to advance their musical journeys.”
The Fender Play 1:1 platform was developed in partnership with Blayze, which has a lot of experience in the one-to-one online lessons format, albeit through hosting digital lessons for motorsport athletes.
Players can upload videos of their playing and get feedback from their coach, or message them directly on the platform for advice. Dark night of the soul? That tricksy 7/8 time signature has you losing sleep? Worried that your holding that guitar pick all wrong? Well, you can DM your coach and get some pointers.
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And those pointers are not just delivered via text. When you upload a video, the instructors can offer visual feedback, annotating the footage to highlight problem areas with your playing, such as picking angle, fretting hand position, that sort of thing, or to simply show you what you are doing right and to keep up the good work.
As anyone who has gone through the beginner-intermediate learning process will tell you, even just the act of videoing yourself practising and hearing it back is a lesson in itself – often a chastening one, but valuable nonetheless.
Fender Play 1:1 is online and accepting students now, available with a welcome offer of an intro call, one live online personal lesson or two on demand, all for $29. Lessons packages start from $39 per month, which gets you 10 to 20 coaching sessions per annum. Average price per lesson is $24.
For more details, head over to Fender Play 1:1.
Jonathan Horsley has been writing about guitars and guitar culture since 2005, playing them since 1990, and regularly contributes to MusicRadar, Total Guitar and Guitar World. He uses Jazz III nylon picks, 10s during the week, 9s at the weekend, and shamefully still struggles with rhythm figure one of Van Halen’s Panama.
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