First is the “I just want to rock, dude. I don’t need to know all that technical stuff.”

My answer: Well, the truth is that if you aspire to mediocrity you don’t need to know theory. But if you want to be good you want to understand everything there is to know about the music you are trying to play.

Understanding how the notes work together, how they each play a particular role in a melody, how they work together to form chords and keys and chord progressions, will be instrumental in learning the music of others, in composing your own music, and is absolutely essential when it comes to improvisation.

The second excuse is the “I’m afraid it will ruin my style” argument.

My answer: That is absolutely ludicrous. Music theory is information; it is a system of understanding how music is constructed. In what other endeavor can having more information that directly pertains to what you are trying to do decrease your mastery?

If you actually have a style, an understanding of music theory will help you identify and develop that style.

Understand that I am not talking about learning to read music. Learning to read is a good idea, it will help you to be a better musician, and it is a skill that might get you some good paying gigs that otherwise would go to a more qualified musician. But a basic understanding of music theory is possible without reading one note of written music.

The problem is that most theory books are geared toward those who are studying formal classical music in a college setting. But there are a few good books and other resources available for the average guitar player.

On of the best books I’ve found is Music Theory For Guitar, by my friend, Marc, who also writes the 100 Blues Licks blog.

What I like about it is that it’s practical. You don’t have to read to understand music, or to understand this book. He cuts out all the theoretical stuff you don’t need to know, and makes everyting applicable to what you do as a guitar player.

He also throws in a great book about playing lead guitar that ties back to the music theory book, and all of this for only $10!

Seriously, this package will save you years of lessons and lots of money.

So if you are trying to improve your guitar skills you can’t go wrong with Music Theory For Guitar.

1. www.premierguitar.com

Everybody loves guitar magazines. Premier Guitar is a great online magazine complete with gear reviews, videos, excellent interviews, lessons and more. Be sure to sign up for their Backstage Pass to have a free digital version of the magazine delivered to your email.

2. Fretboard Warrior

How well do you know all the notes on the guitar? Fretboard Warrior is a free game that helps you learn the notes. Dots light up on a map of the fingerboard and you have to select the notes. How many can you get right in 90 seconds? And for $15 you can get Fretboard Warrior Plus which allows you to limit the game to one string, or one position. There is also a version for bass.

3. www.guitartricks.com

Guitartricks has been on the web since around 1999. By web standards that is a very long time! And I have to say it it one of the best guitar lesson websites out there. They have video guitar lessons for every level, every style, everyone. Full access membership is only $12.95 a month…much less than the cost of a single half hour lesson with a private teacher. They also offer a free basic membership so you can check it out yourself.

4. www.ultimateguitar.com

Thousands of guitar tabs, lessons, interviews, music news, reviews and more, www.ultimateguitar.com is a huge website that has it all, and it’s 100% free.

5. www.guitarHQ.com

If you are like me you could drool over cool guitars for hours on end, wishing that you owned each and every one. And no little fact is too trivial, from the date of production to the materials used to build it, to who played it on what record etc. Whether you are a vintage guitar fanatic or you just want to figure out what year that beat up old relic in the attic was made, this site is not to be missed. GuitarHQ.com has been online since 1995. The site could use a facelift but the content is simply awesome.

6. www.justinguitar.com

A really cool guitar lesson site by a guy from London, England named Justin Sandercoe. His friendly approach is refreshing and his lessons are intuitive and clear. Free, but if you can please make a donation.

7. www.singlecoil.com

Ever wonder how to mod your Strat with a 5 position switch to get 7 sounds? Or how to cascade several amps just like the stars? Would you like to learn the method to make any single coil guitar silent? How do you wire your Les Paul to get that authentic vintage sound?

You will learn how to do all these things and much more at this very cool and absolutely free site that features lots of guitar mods, amp mods, effect mods, tips and tricks.

8. www.power-tab.net

A really great tab editor for PC. Power Tab has an easy to use interface, good help files and is truly as fully featured as some non-free programs. It hasn’t been updated in a while, but it works fine on my both my Vista and XP machines. And Power Tab Librarian helps you organise your tabs on your computer.

9. www.tabbasket.com

tabBasket is a free online tool that allows you to organize your tabs. Since it’s online you can access your tab collection from any computer.

10. www.guitarchords247.com

A really good free chord site. Once you register you can create chord sheets. You can save, organize and print them. There are a lot of chord voicings in their database, but it’s not perfect. A search for Ebmaj7 only returned one result, but Emaj7 returned 63 results. I mean it’s only 1 fret off. I would also like to see fingerings in the chord diagrams. Nonetheless, this is a very worthwhile resource.

So there’s 10 guitar websites out of 205,000,000. What are some of your favorites?