Guitar Tricks Review
Guitar Tricks is my number two ranked online guitar lesson site behind JamPlay. Although it ranks second, it has been one of my go-to guitar lesson sites for a long time and is still one of my favorite learning sites. Get Guitar Tricks Here
Guitar Tricks is one of the oldest and most popular sites for online guitar lessons. Whether you’re learning the basic guitar strings or working on challenging songs, there are plenty of lessons for beginners, intermediate, and advanced guitar players. It is hard to believe, but it has been around since 1998.
This is the first site I used when I wanted to learn something new on the guitar. When my son was learning to play guitar, he also used the instructors and lessons from Guitar Tricks to build his skills. (He is a good guitar player!)
You can choose to work with specific online instructors based on the style that you enjoy, or you can select a defined learning system such as the Core Learning System that takes you from the fundamentals of playing guitar to playing guitar at an advanced level.
One of the biggest reasons I like Guitar Tricks is the online sessions focus on learning to play songs, which makes a big difference in learning to play guitar.
Guitar Tricks Features and Benefits
- Over 11,000 lessons and over 30 very skilled guitar teachers. You can pick a style (i.e., rock, blues, country) and learn from the instructors that teach that style of guitar. Some of the lessons are very basic, and other classes are more advanced.
- Guitar styles taught include Rock, Metal, Country, Acoustic, Acoustic Fingerpicking, Funk, Blues, Classical, Bluegrass, and even surf.
- Intermediate and advanced online guitar lessons can take your guitar playing to a professional level.
- Huge song library to learn how to play just about any song. Learning how to play songs is essential to building skills as a guitar player. Most guitar players progress rapidly when they learn to play songs! They are one of the few websites that offer an extensive (licensed) song library. I have not counted, but the claim is that there are over 1000 songs (and counting) from every type of genre.
- Excellent tools, including a metronome, scale finder, Tuner, Fretboard trainer, and a Jam Station. Extensive library of lessons that teach you how to play songs!
- Structured learning program for beginners called the Core Learning System. This system covers the fundamentals of playing guitar and is structured to make it easy to learn for the beginner.
- As the student advances through this program, they will be shown what songs they can work on and the skills they have acquired. Lesson progress is tracked, and students can easily pick up where they left off.
Guitar Tricks Pros and Cons
Pros
- Online guitar lessons for beginners. With Guitar Tricks, you can go from picking up the guitar as a beginner to playing songs in a very short time. There are plenty of beginner lessons and songs to learn from.
- Intermediate and advanced guitar lessons. Once you have the beginning fundamentals of chords and strumming, there are lessons for more advanced techniques.
- Extensive song library. You can find almost any song you want to learn on this site.
- Excellent instructors. I was surprised that they had Ry Kihn (son of Greg Kihn)
- Learn scales, arpeggios, sweep picking, finger-picking, classical guitar, rock, and metal guitar.
- A downloadable app that you can use from your phone or tablet.
- Very reasonable at 19.95 a month, or even less with an annual membership (recommended).
- Free trial for 30 days and a 60-day money-back guarantee. I believe this is the best guarantee of all the online guitar learning sites.
Cons
- You cannot download the tab and music. Instead, you must view the tablature and music from the website.
- This can be slightly cumbersome when viewing the music from a phone. If you are viewing the tab and music from a computer, then this is not much of a problem. However, some of my students have complained about this shortcoming.
- The site appears slightly outdated. I know the content, and the training is updated regularly, but the look and feel may need a “facelift.”
- I have never found that to be much of a problem when learning the guitar, but it is one of the common complaints.
- Not many backing tracks to work with. Playing along with backing tracks helps tremendously with learning to play guitar. Guitar Tricks is very light on backing tracks.
Guitar Tricks Review Summary
Is Guitar Tricks worth it? Is it worth the price? Yes, if you are even moderately serious about playing guitar or improving your guitar playing, Guitar Tricks is worth the price of an annual membership. If you are spending money and time on anything, then learning to play guitar using Guitar Tricks is worth every minute and every penny.
In summary, this site gives you everything you need to learn to play guitar. From beginning guitar player to intermediate and advanced, you will grow your skills and have fun playing from this online guitar learning site. However, like all guitar lessons, you will need to practice and work on building your skills.
However, you cannot lose by using this site for guitar lessons.
In addition, the price is low, and there is a 60-day money-back guarantee. For that reason, it receives my second highest recommendation.
Disclosure – Guitar Chords Player receives commissions for recommendations through this website. It helps to support the website and our guitar habits!