Overall Score: 9.4/10
Overall Score: 9.4/10If you’re considering getting a GuitarTricks membership, there are a few things you should know first. GuitarTricks has been offering online guitar lessons to its members for several years now – but is a GuitarTricks membership right for you? As a guitar teacher, and former member, I took a look under the hood of a paid membership to learn the various features that come along with it. This GuitarTricks review is to help you decide if a membership is worth it, or if your money would be better spent elsewhere.
With free YouTube lessons, an overflow of online guitar TABs and sheet music costing an all-time low, online lessons may seem like a waste to some. If you’ve ever tried to just watch a video of someone playing a song, or just learn a song by the printed music, you know it can be very frustrating. GuitarTricks has been removing this frustration for guitarists since 1996!
Founded even before YouTube, GuitarTricks offers some of the highest quality online guitar lessons available. This in-depth review will tell you everything you need to know about them.
Disclosure: TheBestGuitarLessons.com is a professional review site that receives compensation from the companies whose products we review. My goal is to match you with the best product or service for your own goals/needs. Should you decide to sign up with one through one of my links I will receive a commission for bringing said company the business. I will never review/recommend a product I know is not of the highest quality. Here you can read my whole Affiliate Notice. – Dev
Membership Analysis
GUITARTRICKS FEATURES
$
14.95
/mo
Interested in trying GuitarTricks for 14 days free? Click the “Visit GuitarTricks” button above and you’ll be brought to a special sign up page. Enjoy your free trial!
GuitarTricks History
Since 1998 GuitarTricks has been providing high quality online guitar lessons to their members. Originally founded by guitarist Jon Broderick, as a small website with just a handful of video lessons has grown to a collection of 45 professional guitar instructors and over 8,000 lessons to choose from.
One thing many don’t realize is that they were the first to do this. While there are now dozens of online guitar lessons sites, GuitarTricks is the one that started it all.
Over 400 Song Lessons!
Beginning and Intermediate guitarists most often list learning their favorite song as their #1 goal. However, many people skip over the fundamentals to achieve this goal. Don’t worry, GuitarTricks offers an arsenal of over 400 completely authentic song lessons. Many of these lessons are taught by the artist that wrote them!
However, before you go and learn all the songs you can handle, you need to learn a few things first. It’s a lot like that old saying, “You wouldn’t build a house without a foundation” or on a crappy foundation.. or something like that. Anyway, the same applies to playing an instrument.
Anyone with some time can become skilled at an instrument, but to be a truly excellent musician a student must learn many different aspects of their instrument. Theory, ear training, dexterity, speed and string skipping exercises must all be included in a students weekly learning. These are just to name a few examples.
The “Core Learning System”
It is for this precise reason that GuitarTricks has spent the last 8 years developing what they call the “Core Learning System”. Since 2005 they have been expertly building this 1,500 lesson series geared to bring you from a Beginner to a Pro as fast as possible.
These lessons start with the complete basics, such as pick holding techniques and guitar positioning and go all the way down to more advanced techniques such as sweeps and two-hand taps!
My favorite part about the system is how it branches after the first 2 stages. Depending on your own individual taste you can choose to continue following the Core Learning System with either a Blues, Country or Rock influence.
When I started out I learned Rock guitar. When I was reviewing GuitarTricks I was getting really into Blues, though. With that, I went with the Blues lessons. The lessons were great! I didn’t go through all of them, I’ll be honest. Yet, in a dozen or so lessons I was jamming out and improvising my own Blues tracks.
GuitarTricks Review: The Bottom Line
The Good
For 15 years GuitarTricks has offered top quality guitar lessons at an affordable price: $14.95/mo. With a 1,500 guitar lesson series and over 400 song lessons, it’s hard to beat a value like that. That’s not to mention all the other valuable resources made available with a full membership such as a chord and scale library, jam tracks and a metronome.
There are many more features, however these are the few I believe to be most valuable to my guitar students. Any lesson can be played at any time. You don’t have to play them in order. Choose from a variety of genre’s, lesson categories such as speed, song writing, etc.
The Bad
My only complaint is the way the site is set up. It is fairly easy to find where you want to go. However, beware the “back” button on your browser. If you are viewing a page and simply want to go back, you should be sure to find a link to the previous page. Hitting the back button brings up an ugly error screen that you need to “refresh” to fix. This is just a minor flaw, an annoyance at worst.
I’d like to think that a company that has been around as long as GuitarTricks would have such a small issue fixed already. Other than this, I really appreciated the effort that went into the rest of the GuitarTricks site and features that a full membership provides.
With a 2 week free trial and a 60 Day Money back guarantee, it’s hard to beat the value GuitarTricks offers.
I hope you found this GuitarTricks review helpful! Did I leave anything out? If you have any questions, comments or concerns, leave them in the comments below and I'll get you an answer!
Additional Resources:
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TrustPilot GuitarTricks Reviews
Good review like the fact you included history too!
Hi Dave, I’m glad you liked the review! Thanks for the kind words.
Hi, this is a great review. I’m a guitar player of 27 odd years now, I even taught a while myself many moons ago. I figured that with all the technology available today, lessons must likely have moved on to be even more accessible through the various online mediums. It’s cool to see that it has and that there are really good quality services out there like this one, as I imagine there is plenty of crap too.
Hi Colm, thanks for the comment. I’m glad you found the review helpful. You’re absolutely right on both accounts! The advancements in technology have lead to some incredible online guitar resources. However… The accessibility of these new innovations have also increased the hoards of crap polluting the web. Luckily, these guys aren’t one of them!
Looks proper professional Dev! The sub headers and paragraphs make it much easier to read. Great job!
Hi Lawrence, thank you for the feedback. I’m glad you found the review easy to follow!
I’ve always wanted to play the “gee-tar” but never had the time. I’ve bookmarked this awesome site so when I do, I will buy this course as well.
Hey Ithamar, thanks for the comment! Depending on your goals, you could learn guitar in as little as 30 min a day a few days a week. Of course it isn’t ideal for progress, but can certainly be done. Good luck and I hope you get to pick up your guitar someday soon!
I haven’t been playing guitar very much and this has given me a reason to start practicing again! Thanks!
Hey Ryan, sorry to hear you haven’t been playing much recently. Admittedly, I haven’t much either just from working on this site so much and private lessons. No worries! The wonderful thing about guitar is that it all comes rushing back to you super quick. Thanks for the feedback!
Great, thorough review. I feel like I am very informed now about the Guitar Tricks service.
Hi Emily, thanks for the comment. I’m glad you found the review helpful!
Learning to play guitar and piano is one of my dreams and I am glad to know that there’s a place I can find help to improve my skills. I love the site too, very clean and artistic
Hi Margaret! I hope you’re learning to play those instruments. Thanks for the comment!
Good review, I think it will be useful for new guitar students. What do you think about DVD based lessons, such as the Blues Learning System from GuitarTricks or the dvd of Learn and Master?
Hi Gianca, thank you very much for the comment & questions. I personally fully endorse DVD based lessons. In fact, I learned how to play guitar through DVD lessons many years ago. I believe with the right additional features, such as an online community for support, DVD lessons are an excellent means of learning guitar. I actually wrote a review for both GuitarTricks Blues Guitar Lessons as well as Learn and Master Guitar. Click the names to read the review!
Thanks again for the great question/comment!