Guitar Lesson Reviews

#1 Choice for Guitar Lessons

JamPlay.com is a fantastic community for aspiring guitarists to boost their skills from home. In fact, after trying & reviewing over 10 courses and communities, it is my #1 pick!

Alright, so here's what I like about JamPlay:

• 1,000+ high-quality video guitar lessons
• Tons of genres, techniques & songs covered
• 38 professional instructors
• Over 20,000 guitarists have used JamPlay!
• Active Forum and Live webcast Q&A lessons
• Incredible Chord, Scale & Riff Libraries!
• Online Guitar Tuner with tons of options
• Video Q&A: Ask a question, get a video answer!

Here are some things I don't like about JamPlay:

• It's $19.95/month (That's cheap compared to lessons though)
• Money-back guarantee is only for 7 days (Maybe that's because barely anybody ever asks for their money back...)
• Information overload: There's a LOT to learn from, which can be overwhelming at first. Good thing it's all organized.

Overall, after rejoining and seeing some huge upgrades, I can't deny that JamPlay.com is the best deal for guitar lessons out there:

Check out JamPlay, and don't forget to enter the code above:

Want to learn more? Read my full JamPlay review!

Highest-Rated DVD Guitar Lessons

The average price for a 30-minute guitar lesson is about $16, which means taking the typical 2 lessons/week adds up to $128+/month, or $1,536/year!

On top of that, you can't do the lessons over again until you get them (you know, like rewinding a DVD). In my opinion, both of these things make Learn and Master Guitar an awesome choice over shelling out so much cash for guitar lessons.

Here's what I like about Learn and Master Guitar:

• It only costs $249 $149 ONCE, not $128 every month!
• It has a 107-page book with easy-to-follow exercises.
• It comes with 5 CD's you can jam along with.
• You get access to a forum to learn with other guitarists
• It has 10 DVD's (this is the best part) to walk you through everything you could imagine about playing guitar.
• It covers a pretty wide variety of genres & playing styles.
• The lessons have a nice step-by-step flow to them.
• It's cool being able to play at home whenever you feel like it!

What I do not like about Learn and Master Guitar:

• Steve is the only instructor, so he's the only one you get to learn from (similar to getting private guitar lessons).
• The forum could be cooler and more active than it is...
• You have to wait for shipping.
• Since I had been playing for so long, some of the lessons moved a too slowly for me (gotta love fast-forward!)
• The lessons could use some more variety.
• The 1st 10 DVD's will definitely help you learn guitar, but not master it. The 2nd set of DVD's get more advanced though...

When I got Learn & Master Guitar, I picked the "Deluxe Edition", which at the time cost $249 (now it's $149), but I still saved a ton of money compared to private guitar lessons.

Overall, I highly recommend this course if you're just getting started, or if you've been playing guitar for a while without training.

If you'd like to learn guitar from home to save $1,600+ every year on lessons, check out Learn & Master Guitar here:

Still not sure? Read the full Learn & Master Guitar review!

Biggest Guitar Community

While searching for online guitar lessons, I ran across Guitar Tricks. It's $14.95/month for full access to over 3,000 video guitar lessons & over 40 professional guitar instructors.

They've been around since 1998 and they give away 24 FREE video lessons, BUT this site is not as high-quality as JamPlay.com overall.

These are my favorite things about Guitar Tricks:

• You can get 24 FREE video lessons to try it out.
• They have over 3,000 high-quality video lessons.
• You can learn anything from Bluegrass, to Rock, to Jazz, to Heavy Metal from their 45 professional guitarists.
• You can talk to 1,000's of other guitarists in their forums.
• You'll learn everything from how to tune, to playing chords & scales, to soloing and even writing your own songs.
• It's cheap! $14.95/month for unlimited access...

Here's what I do not like about Guitar Tricks:

• They don't have chord or scale libraries
• The instructors have different teaching styles, which can be nice, but it's tough switching mindsets sometimes.
• You have to pay $14.95 every month to stay a member.
• The forum isn't as nice as JamPlay's
• They don't have live webcasts or Q&A sessions

All in all, I'd say Guitar Tricks is a nice website, but you might want to check out JamPlay before you go off and spend your $14.95, because its recent updates have made it much better in my opinion.

Insider's tip: Join GuitarTricks.com for 24 FREE video lessons to see if you like them, then make your decision.

If you like learning guitar with video instruction, you don't want to spend a lot upfront, and you want to learn a wide variety of styles, Guitar Tricks is a good choice overall:

Still not sure? Read the full Guitar Tricks review!

Top Digital Guitar Course

There are like a million of these cheaper guitar products out there online, because they're digital and made by one guy (so they must not have high costs). BUT, out of all of them, Jamorama is the only one I found that's even decent!

Even though it's the best in its class, I would NOT recommend it over JamPlay by any means!

That said, there are some cool things about Jamorama:

• It's only $49.95 one-time.
• It's digital, so you get it right away online.
• It comes with 148 basic video lessons for beginners.
• It includes software games for tuning, keeping time, learning music by ear, and learning notes & chords.
• It's great for total beginners, and it has a slightly advanced PDF ebook with more content (for reading, not exercises).

Now, here's what I do not like about Jamorama:

• Unless you're a complete beginner, it moves too slowly.
• The software games are cool, but they get boring.
• It's not made to be a complete course. It's just designed to get total beginners started in the right direction.

So there you have it. Jamorama is a solid beginner's course, and nothing more. Even still, I would recommend getting a 1-month subscription to JamPlay.com (saving over $30)!

Check out Jamorama if you just want a simple software-based course on learning the basics of guitar for cheap:

Still not sure? Check out my full Jamorama review!