If you have ambitions to become the next Gary Moore or Eric Clapton then you need two things. Firstly, you'll need a guitar. Secondly, you'll need someone to show you how to play it. The first bit is relatively easy - there are plenty of guitars available to buy either new or second hand either online or in the high street. The second point might be a little harder though, and unless you happen to know someone who's very accomplished at playing the guitar, and who has plenty of time to help teach you the right techniques, then you have three choices.

Either you use books and manuals to try to work out the fingering, and then judge by ear how well you're doing. You could pay a hundred pounds or so every month for a music teacher to teach you how to play guitar. Or alternatively you may well choose to take advantage of the many online video guitar lessons available. A quick search online reveals millions of guitar video tutorials, which seems like good news. After all, they're free, and it's usually much easier for people to learn how to do something as complex as playing a guitar by watching how someone else shows you what to do.

But there's a problem with this third option, because whilst it certainly is a great choice, as a beginner you really have no way of telling whether the person who's teaching you how to play guitar really knows what they're talking about. I saw a guitar tutorial the other day and the person was talking about holding down the frets, which of course you can't do - you hold the strings down on the frets.

I saw another video which recommended that you put superglue on your fingertips to help strengthen them up for playing guitar for long periods, and someone else who recommended wearing ear plugs and ear defenders to begin with so you weren't so picky about the quality of sounds, and just got on with the physical mechanics of playing a guitar. It's not a good thought to think that impressionable, enthusiastic and very keen beginners will follow this kind of advice.

This isn't to suggest that there isn't some great advice out there - there is. In fact many professional, accomplished and highly experienced guitarists covering a whole range of genres have happily submitted free online video guitar lessons, and these really do make compelling watching and the best way of learning the right techniques easily. The real difficulty is trying to work out which videos are the ones to avoid, and which are the ones to follow avidly. Ratings aren't always a good indication, as are the number of views a video has. After all, I saw a fantastic online guitar video the other day which only has a few thousand hits despite being first rate, and just a while later I was watching a video of a dog with hiccups that had already accrued over six million hits. You just can't account for it sometimes!

However, if you are keen to learn guitar, and you want to learn how to play guitar the right way, then there's a better way of finding the right online video guitar tutorials rather than heading to sites such as YouTube which have virtually no means of weeding out those videos of poor quality. Instead, do a search for websites which specialise in creating and publishing their own online video guitar tutorials. There may not be as many, but the videos will all be of great quality, teaching you tips and tricks which really will enhance your playing, and help you enjoy the experience of learning to play a guitar even more. And you won't even need the super glue.