Weekly private guitar lessons will cost you on average close to $2,000/yr. Choosing the right alternative is critical to your development as a guitarist. You want a product or service that will offer the same value as private lessons, but at a reasonable cost. Learn and Master Guitar is a comprehensive DVD series produced by Gibson Guitars.
The series includes 20 DVDs, 5 Jam CDs, over 100 pages of lesson resources and unlimited access to their online support community. This review will explain the ins and out of how the series works as well as my personal take on it. Hopefully it will help you decide if these lessons are right for you.
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. Full Affiliate Notice. – Dev
Guitar Lesson Layout
As mentioned, Learn and Master Guitar is a self-paced program. This means that you can progress through the lessons at your own pace. Steve Krenz does an excellent job putting the lessons together in an easy to follow format. Every concept he explains is broken down at the bottom of the screen in real-time. You can see an example of this in the screenshot to the right.
Each lesson gives a window that it should take to grasp & master the concepts taught. However, they can be completed and revisited as you please. Lessons also include “Homework” for the guitarist to complete before moving on to the next lesson.
Below you’ll find an in-depth breakdown of Learn and Master Guitar Lessons
Learn and Master contains several guitar lessons in their course. The basic Learn and Master program has the same amount of lesson material as the expanded version. The expanded version, however, contains an additional 10 workshop DVDs that teach you more songs, exercises and further explains concepts taught in the core 10 DVDs.
Each lesson is approximately 45 minutes long, with several lessons on each DVD. I would say, on average, a little over half of that time is spent on instruction, the other 15 or so minutes are spent explaining theory, different tips and explaining the “homework” for the next lesson. More on homework and the other lesson sections in the next tab labeled “Sections”.
The whole course is designed to take anywhere from 1 to 2 years to complete. As I said before, it’s self-paced, so completion time relies on the amount of time the student spends practicing. I recommend that all my students spend at least 1 hour a day practicing if they can. I find that’s the sweet spot for rapid progress, regardless of program.
What I Didn’t Like
After going through the Learn and Master Guitar system I felt almost disconnected. Yes, their online community is great however I found the most efficient way to fix this problem is to practice alongside my laptop. This way I could watch the lessons and be on the forums at the same time. A small complaint, I know. Maybe I’m just spoiled from using the chat feature that sites like JamPlay have.
Which leads me to my next issue: Cost. While Learn and Master is still cheaper than taking 1-2 years of private guitar lessons, I still believe it is a bit steep in price. Many online solutions only ticket at $10-20/mo. This, after a years time, is only a 10-15{790f71337e6d98064c4c8714ea5ae8212dc273c8f6afc851cec3faf612e5f056} cost increase from L&M, however you get the instant chat feature and better control over exactly what you learn.
The expanded edition of Learn and Master runs at around $250, the core version at $150. A year membership to JamPlay.com is $139. You can read my reviews of JamPlay and GuitarTricks Here and decide if the difference is worth it to you.
What Are Other People Saying?
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This is by far the best guitar learning program I have ever encountered. I have tried quite a few "learn guitar" programs that also give you a progressive and varied learning format. However, they never ever had the same kind of depth and structure; let alone the community support...
Michael
/ Lonoke, Arkansas
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The interface is in your face! It’s easy to follow for both a young player like my 12 year old son or a more experienced one like my studio buddies.
Noe Gold
/ Founding editor of Guitar World Magazine
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After viewing the videos and reading the book that’s included in the Learn & Master Guitar course, I quickly learned that this is a must for any artists or songwriter.
Sandy Mason
/ Nashville Hit Songwriter
Final Thoughts/Rating
Overall I think Learn and Master Guitar is an excellent learning system. Their lessons put a strong focus on music theory as well as reading music, which I love. I believe far too many guitarists today lack these capacities. Additionally, I believe this course would serve any Beginner or Intermediate guitarist extremely well.
However, with that said I don’t think Learn and Master would be as beneficial to an experienced guitarist as a service such as JamPlay or GuitarTricks. There is always more to learn, so I am not saying an experienced guitarist would gain nothing from the course.
Also, I believe some slightly better features would have been cool. I know it’s hard to compete with online because this is a DVD product, but some little things would have gone a long way. For example, a separate chord/scale library would’ve been huge. There are tons of chords/scales taught in the course, they are just in their own lessons. There’s no separate resource with all of the scales/chords alone, and together.
Overall I would rate Learn & Master Guitar an 8.7/10.
Well those are my thoughts on the Learn and Master Guitar program. Have you used it before? Are you interested in trying it out? Please feel free to leave any comments or questions I may not have answered in the space below. I’ll get back to you usually within 24 hours. Thanks for reading!
I used this course to learn guitar as a beginner with zero knowledge on Music and the instrument. I gave me excellent start and also kept my interest even after an year.. I have completed 6 lessons in an year and eager to go through the next lessons.. If you are a beginner nothing can match this course..
You mention a price of $250 and based on that I would agree with you about the cost of a static DVD library over the resources of the internet, however the cost for the 20-DVD set can be easily found on sale for as low as $164. Would you revise your bottom-line review if they could be bought for that price? Is it worth the money for someone who is trying to re-learn the acoustic guitar?
Excellent review once again Dev! Since you’ve added all these courses to your site, I’m amazed with how much effort you’ve put in 🙂
Thanks Charlie! I’m glad you found the review helpful!
Great review! This sounds like a good program that any guitarist should seriously look into. Thanks for the post.
Hi Christina, thanks for the kind words! I’m glad you liked the review, Learn & Master is definitely a noteworthy program. Thanks again for the comment.
I have only played guitar by ear. Perhaps it is time to get a course. TY for the review!
Hey Aviva, I would definitely look into a course. You can actually get very far by ear with a good enough ear. However this also poses very obvious road blocks. I’m glad you found the review useful, thanks for the comment!
Hi Dev, I’m not a guitar player (yet) but your site is clean, precise, and right to the point. It is informative and easy to understand for a potential guitar paler like myself.
Hi Garry, thank you very much for the kind words! Good luck!
Dev, I keep coming back to your site so that I can continue to build motivation to learn how to play. I appreciate how you broke down the good and bad here and I will make sure to use your reviews when I finally take the plunge.
Hi James. I’m glad you have found the site useful. That’s really the only thing I wish to accomplish with it, so it makes me happy to hear it’s working. I hope you can find that motivation some day soon, and I’ll be right here when you do! Thanks for the comment, bud.
I really like your review on Gibsons learn and master guitar! A friend of mines said that I have long fingers and he thinks that I would be good playing a guitar. All in all you gave a great review!
Thanks!
-Kendrick
Hey Kendrick, thanks for the comment! I have long fingers, as well. At first I thought it was a bad thing, thinking it made it easier for my fingers to get “tangled up”. How wrong I was! It’s definitely beneficial. Thanks again for the kind words, I’m glad you liked the review!