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So you want to take some online guitar lessons, but you don't know where to begin.
There are so many platforms to choose from. And they all seem to either be some kind of game designed for children, or they're a super-premium platform with way too many features and way too steep of a price tag.
Enter Guitar Tricks. The original online guitar lessons platform since 1998 is still the gold standard for what online guitar lessons can and should be. Their seemingly endless trove of engaging, instructive content is a wellspring of information for guitarists, from complete beginners to advanced players.
And at $19.99 a month, the definitive online guitar learning platform is actually more affordable than many of its imitators.
Playing guitar doesn't need a game to make it fun and interesting. And you really don't need to pay extra for celebrity instructors just to teach you guitar fundamentals. Learning guitar, distilled to its essence. That's Guitar Tricks.
Now, let's dive deeper and find out whether Guitar Tricks is the right online guitar lesson platform for you.
Guitar Tricks Review: What Is Guitar Tricks?
While it may seem like online video lessons would be a relatively new phenomenon, Guitar Tricks has been producing online guitar video content since before YouTube was a glimmer in its founder's eye.
Founded in 1998 by Jon Broderick and Sanjay Sharma, Guitar Tricks has always had one goal in mind: to provide affordable, fun guitar lessons to anyone with an internet connection.
25 years down the line, the platform boasts an expansive content library containing over 11,000 online lessons. Guitar Tricks' huge hoard of lessons covers a wide range of musical styles, techniques, and music theory, as well as beginner lessons, advanced lessons, song lessons, and more.
Guitar Tricks features a user-friendly interface as well as some highly advanced learning tools. The platform offers an impressive set of interactive features, including slow-motion and looping functionalities, backing tracks, metronome tools, and printable tabs.
The platform also includes features to track your progress, enabling you to monitor the development of your playing skills and celebrate your achievements as you advance in your guitar-playing journey.
What Does Guitar Tricks Cost?
A Guitar Tricks Full Access membership can be yours today for $19.95/month, billed monthly. Or better yet, you can opt for annual billing and save 25%.
And not only does a Guitar Tricks subscription include a 14-day free trial and tons of free lessons on their platform (as well as many more on YouTube). They also include a 60-day money-back guarantee if you're not having fun learning guitar on their platform.
All in all, it's a pretty great value considering the massive array of content you'll have access to.
What You'll Need to Get Started Using Guitar Tricks
To get started using guitar tricks, all you need is a guitar (either electric guitar or acoustic guitar is fine to start), a computer, and of course, access to the internet. The Guitar Tricks platform runs off the Guitar Tricks website, so there's no need for any tricky software installation or anything like that.
However, Guitar Tricks does have a great mobile app that's accessible via Apple iOS or Android, which we definitely recommend downloading if you're more of a phone person.
Guitar Tricks Review: What's Included in the Curriculum?
There are few better ways to bolster your guitar skills than actually learning songs and playing guitar, and Guitar Tricks' curriculum was designed just for that purpose. Guitar Tricks' lessons are focused on learning songs, riffs, and licks that will help you establish your guitar playing skills in a wide range of genres.
There's a wide variety of video lessons, from guitar fundamentals for complete beginners to creative guitar techniques for advanced players and beyond. Guitar Tricks has a special focus on more obscure genres like Rockabilly and Surf music in addition to the well-trod blues and rock music lessons.
Beginners, intermediate, and even advanced players will find a lot to enjoy and learn from Guitar Tricks. Where many platforms are designed to simply allow beginners to get the hang of fundamentals, Guitar Tricks' curriculum is comprehensive and wide-ranging enough to keep even experienced players coming back for more.
Guitar Tricks' curriculum is centered around their Core Learning System, which lays out your progress in an organized and logical manner similar to a flowchart. The Core Learning System serves as a step-by-step guide to building a solid foundation in playing the guitar and advancing your skills.
Using the Core Learning System, you'll cover a wide range of guitar basics, including chord shapes, strumming, song tutorials, scales, music theory, and more. You'll gain a well-rounded understanding of guitar playing as you progress through the levels, and you'll have a lot of fun doing it.
How is Guitar Tricks' Course Content Structured?
First, you're going to choose what lessons course you'd like to pursue. Once you select either Beginner Lessons or Experienced Lessons on the homepage, you'll begin your journey using Guitar Tricks' Core Learning System.
The Core Learning System is divided into different levels. Beginners will start with Level 1 and progress to higher levels as they become more proficient.
Each level introduces new concepts, techniques, and challenges appropriate to the skill level, building on one another to form a comprehensive skill set.
Within each level, the curriculum is carefully designed to ensure a smooth progression of difficulty. You'll start with the basics, such as learning open chords, power chords, and simple strumming patterns, and gradually move on to more advanced topics like barre chords, scales, and soloing.
Core Learning System lessons are primarily delivered through high-quality video tutorials. Guitar Tricks instructors guide you through each topic, demonstrating proper techniques and providing valuable tips along the way.
The videos typically include multiple camera angles, making it easier to observe finger placements and strumming patterns.
In addition to video lessons, Guitar Tricks includes supplementary materials like chord charts, tabs, and practice exercises. These resources reinforce the concepts and guitar techniques taught in the videos and allow for more focused practice, and they're great for more experienced players looking for less structure.
You can also tap into Guitar Tricks' massive library of song lessons if you have the basics down and just want to learn to play songs. There's everything from beginner songs to classical guitar pieces—Guitar Tricks offers a wide range of song lessons for all guitar styles.
Is There a Member Community?
There sure is! The Guitar Tricks Forum is a wonderful resource for Guitar Tricks subscribers, where they can get together to discuss anything from lessons and techniques to music fandoms, gear, songwriting, and more.
There's nothing like a member community element to make you feel at home at a new online guitar learning platform. Reaching out and asking questions to current and longtime users is a perfect way to get familiar with the platform, pick up tips and tricks, and make friends.
There's even an introduction forum where students can go to introduce themselves, talk about their backgrounds, and ideally receive a warm welcome upon subscribing to Guitar Tricks. Now doesn't that make you feel all warm and fuzzy inside?
Guitar Tricks Review: Who Is This Course Best Suited For?
Guitar Tricks is one of the rare online guitar lessons platforms that truly offer quality content for guitar players of all experience levels.
So whether you're a total beginner, an intermediate lifelong dabbler, or an advanced player just looking to pick up some new, well, guitar tricks, Guitar Tricks is a great choice.
The online user interface is fairly simple and will prove easy to use for players of all ages. We will say that Guitar Tricks is especially friendly towards guitarists of a certain age, even going so far as to include a video series specifically geared towards older players.
By the same token, younger children might need a bit more pizzazz out of their learning platform, a department in which Guitar Tricks is admittedly somewhat lacking.
If this compels you to continue your search, continue reading—later, we'll share some alternative online lessons that might better suit you.
What We Like
There's a lot to love about Guitar Tricks' platform. But above all, content reigns supreme. Guitar Tricks features an incredibly comprehensive song library and tons of lesson videos, to the point of being borderline overwhelming.
But it's due to this volume of content that Guitar Tricks really allows you to get your money's worth. You could literally start your guitar journey here and continue on for years and years of cumulative learning and never run out of lessons (or money, for that matter).
Plus, it's just really easy to use. Whether you're just getting started and need a structured flow to your lessons, or you just want to pick lessons and songs one by one, it's not hard to find what you're looking for. It's easy to see why Guitar Tricks has been a mainstay on the guitar lessons scene for over two decades.
What Could Be Improved
While Guitar Tricks is a veteran on the scene of online guitar lessons, the site layout and design, as well as some of the video production, does show its age at times.
Not that there's anything wrong with that, but there are other platforms available that do have slicker productions and a more attractive user interface.
Also, on the flip side of the matter of content volume, Guitar Tricks can be a bit overwhelming. Once you've finished the Core Learning System, you're sort of on your own when it comes to figuring out where to go and what to do next.
There's a reasonable risk of analysis paralysis with all the lessons at your fingertips, and while we wouldn't wish for less content, there could be a better way of organizing beyond the Core Learning System. But that really only becomes an issue once you've gotten a ton of value out of Guitar Tricks already, anyway.
Alternatives to Guitar Tricks
Now, while Guitar Tricks is clearly a very comprehensive platform with a lot of useful features to boot, that doesn't mean it's going to be right for everybody. And if that happens to be the case, we're happy to offer some alternative online guitar lesson platforms for you to consider.
1. Guitareo
A relative newcomer on the scene compared to Guitar Tricks, Guitareo is designed to be especially beginner-friendly, with a focus on playing songs and having fun with the guitar rather than rudiments and scales.
There's a lot less content than what you get with Guitar Tricks, but the videos and the site itself has slicker design and production values and a lot more of a fun vibe to it. Choose from song lessons with synced tablature, instructional videos covering guitar fundamentals, chord and scale charts, and more.
While Guitareo is priced at a premium, it does have a premium feel to it. The instructors are likable and engaging, the interface is attractive and easy to use, and while it's tailored to beginners, there's a lot there for intermediate and advanced players as well. If you're a beginner with an advanced budget, try Guitareo.
Guitareo offers an incredible one-month free trial, so head over to Guitareo and sign up to see if it might be the right guitar lesson platform for you.
2. Simply Guitar
Simply Guitar is an app-based platform that uses a gamified approach to offer step-by-step lessons and teach essential skills, basic chords, and strumming patterns to help learners start playing songs quickly. This is definitely a platform geared more towards younger, tech-savvy aspiring guitarists.
With a focus on simplicity and ease of use, Simply Guitar offers learners an opportunity to practice at their own pace. The app's interactive features include real-time feedback, a really useful and innovative tool that guides you on finger placement as well as strumming techniques as you go along, helping build good habits from the start.
Simply Guitar uses bright graphics and animations to make the learning experience fun and easy. Video lessons are accompanied by clear visual cues, demonstrating finger placement, strumming patterns, and more. While the gamey aspect may not be for everyone, it is sure to be a hit with kids and young beginners.
If this sounds like it might work for you, head over to Simply Guitar now to take advantage of their 14-day free trial.
3. Truefire
Truefire guitar lessons are based around their massive assemblage of high-quality video lessons, which cover a wide range of topics, including technique, theory, improvisation, song tutorials, and more. While you get a lot more content with Truefire, Guitar Tricks is a lot more affordable, and more isn't necessarily always better.
One standout feature of TrueFire is its focus on interactive learning experiences. All Access members can use the interactive video exchange lessons feature, where students can submit videos of their playing to receive personalized feedback from the instructor.
If you're looking to simulate the experience of real guitar lessons online, Truefire is a great option. Their combination of top-notch video lessons with interactive lessons and a user forum creates a real sense of community among users that's ideal for serious players looking to expand their skill set.
If you think you might want access to even more content than Guitar Tricks has to offer, and you have some spare dough to spend, give Truefire a shot. They offer a 14-day free trial of their all-access membership, so you may as well head over and sign up!
Guitar Tricks Review: Verdict
If you're a guitar player or aspiring guitar player who just wants to-the-point, no-frills guitar lesson videos that are neatly organized, free of distractions, and readily affordable, you couldn't do much better than Guitar Tricks.
Guitar Tricks has a crazy variety of content, but not so much that it's totally overwhelming. Their user interface, while not the most popping in terms of visual design, is very functional and easy to navigate. And their Core Learning System provides a great way to monitor your progress and stay focused on your learning path.
The subscription is priced comparably to other newer platforms that bring a lot of slick production value but tend to fall short on content volume and variety. Plus, you can't go wrong with their 60-day money-back guarantee.
So, if you're a beginner, intermediate, or even advanced player looking for an online lessons program, there's no excuse for not heading over to Guitar Tricks right now and signing up for their 14-day free trial! We think you'll want to stick around for a lot longer.
