Best Beginner Online Guitar Lessons (our top Pick)
Guitar Tricks
For years Guitar Tricks has been a standard-bearer, not only in guitar lessons broadly, but in beginner guitar lessons specifically. Their program's strong organization and continual expansion makes them an easy first recommendation for beginners and more advanced skill levels as well. Use the orange button below to try the program free.
Beginner guitar players need structure and organization if they're going to take lessons. The best beginner guitar lessons should be tightly organized, easy to follow, and designed with a proper topical approach. We've taken all that into consideration (and much more) in this roundup, putting together a list of the top beginner options based on the most important factors.
- Topical organization
- Explanation of content and clarity
- Instructor personality
- Length of lesson segments (videos)
- Longevity of program (usable after the beginner stages)
We believe these factors matter most when a beginner picks up the guitar. If you aren't going to be totally self-taught, you need guitar lessons that can come along side and help you teach yourself, not just feed you information. There are a lot of guitar lesson programs out there that we've tested. Some of them we like a lot while others we really don't. If you want to browse only what we like most (regardless of skill level), checkout our top online guitar recommendations here.
Best Beginner Online Guitar Lessons (top picks)
Lesson | Name | Rate | TRY |
|---|---|---|---|
| Guitar Tricks | 92.8 | |
 | Guitargate | 87.7 | |
 | Justinguitar | 85.1 | |
 | Simply Guitar | 81.9 |
1. Guitar Tricks Beginner Courses
Guitar Tricks is the most popular guitar lesson resource in existence. It also happens to be our top recommendation for beginners, kids, and those that just need a refresher of the fundamental topics. While they have over 11,000 total lessons, their main body of content is organized into something called the Core Learning System. This system gives you two "Fundamentals" courses which you can then follow up with one of three different style lanes.
Read the Full Review: Guitar Tricks
BEST FOR: Beginners who want structure
CONTENT
92
EDU
90
ORGANIZATION
98
SONGS
99
- Lesson structure and organization is top-notch
- Song section is the best in class and it's not close
- Caters to beginners better than other programs
- Huge volume of content
- New content added regularly
- No one-time buy/download options
- Not the strongest program on advanced topics
Program Screenshots
A look at the Core Learning System in Guitar Tricks, which takes you through two Fundamentals courses before letting you choose between three baseline styles.
Breakdown of chapters and concepts in the Guitar Fundamentals I course.
A screen shot from one of the Guitar Tricks lessons on U2's The Edge
Style lessons breakdown in Guitar Tricks.
2. Guitargate Courses
Michael Palmisano, a longtime guitar teacher based in Maryland, developed the Guitargate program on his own and managed to get it sponsored by PRS. You'll notice he's playing PRS guitars (quite a wide variety of them) in all his course videos. We've used the program, know Michael personally, and consider it one of the best diamond-in-the-rough guitar lesson options, and a solid choice for beginners.
Read the Full Review: Guitargate
There are a few reasons we like it for beginners, so let's go over those in a brief listing:
- Michael provides individualized and direct feedback to students
- Teaching style is patient and thorough
- Program does an excellent job at weaving music theory into the process
The interface is also very user-friendly and easy to navigate with a basic "Mark as Complete" tracking system.
BEST FOR: Beginners who want to emphasize music theory
CONTENT
76
EDU
93
ORGANIZATION
90
SONGS
n/a
- No one does a better job of weaving music theory into their guitar lessons
- Individual feedback from Michael
- Gets closer to the feel of an in-person tutor
- Organization is solid
- No song section
- Not a huge volume of material
Program Screenshots and Sample Video Lesson
A logged in view of the Guitargate home page.
A Guitargate lesson on the major scale taught by Michael Palmisano.
3. Justinguitar Free Lessons
Justinguitar is the second program in our list based on a single teacher and personality. Justin Sandercoe has been teaching guitar for a long time. A recent redesign of his site has also vastly improved organization and made Justinguitar a far more viable comparison to some of the paid sites. And for those that don't know, his program is completely free.
BEST FOR: Beginners on a budget
CONTENT
82
EDU
82
ORGANIZATION
92
SONGS
82
- Completely free
- Great organizational system and topical consideration
- Sandercoe's teaching ability is as good as his guitar playing
- Caters to the beginner
- Older videos run at a really low resolution. 144p in some cases
- Intermediate and advanced content isn't as strong as the beginner courses
Screenshots
Justinguitar home page as of January 2024
Sandercoe spends a lot of time on blues concepts in his curriculum.
4. Simply Guitar
Simply Guitar is similar to Yousician in that it uses real-time feedback via your device's microphone to guide you through lessons and tell if you're playing the right notes. In other words, it analyzes your playing as you go. This type of learning is very engaging, particularly for kids or those who might otherwise have trouble focusing. Simply Guitar does a really good job of packaging all this into a very simple and user-friendly app.
Read the full review: Simply Guitar
The Simply Guitar app uses an interactive feedback system that's similar to Yousician and, even further back, Amped Guitar Learning, before Gibson bought them out.
Like more traditional guitar learning platforms, Simply Guitar is built on organized courses to guide users through topics and material.
Here's another shot of the app's interface. You can see it's very kid and user-friendly and easy to use.
BEST FOR: Kids, beginners, staying focused, learning lead styles.
CONTENT
80
EDU
77
ORGANIZATION
88
SONGS
79
- Real-time feedback technology is becoming the gold standard.
- Interface is very user-friendly.
- App is smooth and well-designed
- Topics are nicely organized and guided.
- Doesn't work on desktop, although we did see an emulator.
Things to Know When Taking Lessons as a Beginner (online and offline)
There are some pitfalls of taking guitar lessons that can negatively impact beginners, regardless of whether you take them online or in-person.
"Freebies" and automatic charges
A lot of online guitar programs offer freebies like DVDs, eBooks, or free streaming lessons. However, some programs we've seen actually funnel you into monthly charges without the user knowing. Make sure you read the fine print carefully.
Over-charging
Some guitar lesson spots tend to overcharge for their lessons, at least by the typical cost of guitar lessons standard. We've put together a list and recommend avoiding them.
Programs that just aren't very good
A lot of guitar teachers and programs just aren't that good. This is hard to predict when you're talking about a tutor that you don't know, but with online programs you can read reviews and do your research ahead of time. Some teachers and private music schools will offer a free trial lessons, which is always advisable to take advantage of and view as a testing period.
Lessons that are too difficult to be considered beginner-friendly
Sometimes you'll run into a guitar course that's labeled for beginners but gets into difficult topics too quickly, without properly preparing you for the task. We try to weed these out through our review process.
Guitar lessons can't replace practicing
It's important to keep in mind that guitar lessons can't replace practice time, especially as a beginner. If you're spending an hour on a lesson, just absorbing new information, you need time outside of that hour to apply the concept and solidify it in your memory.
Beginner lessons are not necessarily one-size-fits-all
Though we can often make recommendations based on our reviews, there is no particular teacher, music school, or online course that's going to be perfect for everybody. Take what you know about how you like to learn and apply that to your guitar lesson search. While some are better than others, it always depends on the individual and what works best for them.
How do we test & rate these programs?
Our testing and rating process for guitar lessons is pretty simple. We buy a full access membership and we just use it. Like you would, we grab a guitar and start playing through some of the content. We make notes of site structure, usability, how well the content is organized, how effective the educational material is, and how much depth it offers for each individual topic it claims to cover.
We buy a full access membership and we just use it.
Once those notes are complete and we've been able to get a feel for the program, we can extrapolate our ratings from what we've seen. Each rating is given on a scale of 1 to 100.
Summary of our Beginner Guitar Lessons Roundup
Based on all of these rating factors and our own extensive reviews, we can comfortably recommend these four resources as the best beginner guitar lessons. That's not to say that beginners can't have a positive experience with other sites. However, we've done our homework. And if you still aren't sure about which program is right for you or if you have questions about our review process, leave it in the comments section below.
Usually Bobby answers those directly (easier to get to than email), so feel free to drop a line. We want people who pay for education, especially music education, to get a good return on their investment. Because there are a lot of programs out there, but not all of them are great. In fact, the value you get in return for many is downright poor. And even if the quality is there, it can sometimes be hard to just find a good fit.
Hopefully, this article will help you find the perfect guitar lesson fit. Best of luck to you in your search.
More Online Guitar Lesson Resources
Written by Bobby Kittleberger on Lessons & Roundups
Written by Bobby Kittleberger on Lessons & Reviews
Written by Joanna Hamaoui on Lessons & Reviews
Written by Bobby Kittleberger on Lessons & Roundups
Written by Danielle Kittleberger on Lessons & Roundups
Written by Bobby Kittleberger on Lessons & Reviews
Written by Guitar Chalk on Lessons & Info
Written by Bobby Kittleberger on Lessons & Reviews
Guitar Tricks and Simply Guitar are both our trusted partners that we both use and recommend. If you click through our orange buttons and sign up for a membership, or even a free trial, we might receive a commission at no extra cost to you. Thanks to everyone for supporting us over the years while getting awesome guitar lessons. We could not do it without you! - Bobby and Danielle
Our disclosure↬
It’s good to get ratings and recommendatios for guitar lessons.I took “in person” lessons for a few years. Been out of the loop for awhile, now I’m 75 retired, and want to start up again. Thanks for your site.
Thanks, Michael – good luck getting going again. Let me know if you need anything.