Learning Guitar - A Review of Online Guitar Lessons

When you're looking to take up the guitar, or to improve your technique, you're faced with several options. You can take one-on-one lessons with a professional tutor, get a mate to give you a few pointers, buy any number of printed books, videos and chord charts or check out one of the many tutorial programmes available online.

Learning via the internet has many advantages. You can take the lessons at your own pace when you want to take them; replay any part again and again until you've nailed it; listen to actual recordings of how the chord should sound and you can often interact with the tutor(s) for feedback purposes.

In this feature, we've chosen four programmes out of the many general tutorials available. We've based the selection on our own experience, feedback from other users and overall value for money. Each one will give you a solid general grasp of the basics and beyond in their own distinctive style.

All the programmes in this review offer instant access and the promise of a full refund if you decide they're not what you're looking for.

The first one up is the MusicMasterPro Multimedia Program. This is a huge resource, which offers the student a wealth of downloads, lessons and video tutorials. Run by two professional guitarists who've been teaching for 15 years, the site also covers bass guitar and drum tuition.

The material covers just about every guitar style, featuring over 100,000 riffs, licks, solos and scales and the tutors claim they will prepare you for any song you wish to play. There's a basic 18 video lessons and another 20 audio lessons per style in Mp3 format.

OK, so it's big..but is it any good?

Well, we can see how a newbie could get overwhelmed when first opening up this course. The scale of it may look intimidating. But, once you find your way around, you soon get used to the frenetic "let's rock!" style and warm to the infectious enthusiasm of the coaching. There's a huge amount of material here and you'll need to guard against flitting from one part to the next rather than sticking to the step-by-step program they recommend.

The course is currently on special offer of $34.95 (about £20) which includes lifetime membership, with free monthly updates. So there's no question that it's tremendous value for money. To sum up:

Pros: Huge amount of material; generally top quality; downloadable rather than streamable (so you can take the lessons and clips with you and not be stuck in front of your computer); 24 hour support via email and 'phone (allowing for time difference); great value with lifetime membership.

Cons: Can appear unwieldy; style may not be to all tastes.

Overall: Highly Recommended.

Check out the full details here.

Next up is one of the most popular online guitar courses,Jamorama. Again, this is designed to be a complete learning system and features 148 video lessons and 26 jam tracks contained in two downloadable books and is the product of Ben Edwards, who has 14 years' guitar-teaching experience.

The programme is a recent update of a course that's been available for a while and has attracted quite a few rave reviews in its time. We found the lessons fairly easy to follow and the clips were of reasonable quality. This version includes some very useful bonus items, such as two exclusive computer games - Jayde Musica and GuitearIt which aim to teach you to read music and transcribe music as you play along. There's also Guitar Tuner Pro software included in the package as well as the Jamorama Metronome. The cost of the complete download course is $39.95 (about £24). To sum up:

Pros: Clear step-by-step instruction; lots of content; jam tracks allow you to play along with a band; worthwhile bonus package; good value.

Cons: No telephone support (only email).

Overall: Recommended.

Get the full details here .    

By the way, if you're only interested in acoustic guitar lessons, Jamorama also do the very best acoustic guitar course available on the internet. Check that out here.

Moving on, we come to Guitar Tutor Pro. One look through the spec of this course will tell you that this is a more "serious" programme than most. Created by Ryan Cameron, the course comprises 3 downloadable books with photos and professionally transcribed notation as well as over 400 audio files and over 300 exercises.

In practice, we found the quality of the instruction to be first class, especially as it included some basic music theory which is lacking in many other courses. The lessons are particularly suited to beginners and intermediate level guitar players. However, we felt that the programme would have been improved by adding some video clips. at a cost of $47 (about £28) it represents reasonable value. To sum up:

Pros: Clear and authoritive instruction; lots of audio files and exercises; useful guide to reading music notation; tuning software included; 90 day money back guarantee.

Cons: No video clips; only email support (although our questions were answered promptly)

Overall: A qualified recommendation.

For more details, click here.                          

Finally, we'll take a look at The Beginner's Guide To Unlocking The Guitar. As the name suggests, this course is aimed squarely at the beginner and is a no-nonsense downloadable book with audio files and finger training techniques. The stated aim is to get any beginner up and playing in just one weekend.

This is nowhere near as comprehensive a programme as others we've reviewed, but the intention is to strip the instructions down so as not to overwhelm the beginner. The result is a clear, if basic course which is easy to approach and follow. Again, it would have benefited from the inclusion of video clips, but at $29.95 (about £18), it's a fair bit cheaper than most programmes. To sum up:

Pros: Good, solid instruction aimed at beginners; includes 150 songs with 4 chords or under; beginner chord sound files; logical 8 step lesson structure; cheaper than most other courses.

Cons: Not really for intermediate or advanced guitarists; no video clips; chord sound files only streamed; no telephone support.

Overall: Good for absolute beginners, but for everyone else, consider paying a bit extra for one of the more comprehensive courses mentioned above.

Get the full details here.

Related articles and features:

The Easy Way to Learn Guitar

Ten Chords for Guitar Beginners

Guitar Tuning Tips

Return to Success In Music