Online communities are one of the greatest things about using the net, and as a musician I’ve heavily used a bunch over the past decade. I thought it might be useful to point you in the direction of some forums that you may not have come across before. They all have long-standing populations of musicians that are usually very welcoming of newcomers. I’ve found that forums like these can solve a lot of problems as well as being a great source of advice for those looking to buy new or used musical instruments. I also learnt on one of these forums that one can suffer from GAS – Gear Addiction Syndrome.

In no particular order:

1. Musicplayer Forums

Run by the US company that publishes EQ, Bass Player, Guitar Player and Keyboard magazine, these forums cover all the bases. If your forum post makes a particularly original or interesting point, it also can end up in the magazines. Disclosure: I do moderate one of the smaller forums (for free) and have been a contributor on the forums for nearly ten years.

2. Gearslutz

This community is focused on the recording musician, and it shows in the number and breadth of topics covered. Plenty of options for the newcomer to computer-based recording.

3. Harmony Central

Arguably one of the bigger communities online, there’s an enormous range of sub-forums including some high traffic off-topic forums. I find the signal to noise ratio can be high but the size of the community means there’s no shortage of interesting discussions going on.

So jump in. Forums sometimes get overlooked in favour of social media, but all three examples given show there are huge communities doing the do with not a Like button in sight.