Parent article: Best Beginner Guitar Lessons
Updated by Danielle
Updated on January 5th, 2023
Our review has been revamped for 2023 with new screenshots and updated information. The content of the program remains largely the same, but we've cleaned up, consolidated information, and improved accuracy.
Guitar Tricks Review
Verdict and Summary
With a program that dominates licensed song lessons, beginner content, and topical organization, Guitar Tricks' long-standing platform (since 1998) continues to be one of the best options on the market.
Guitar Tricks has become one of the biggest and most popular guitar lesson websites since its inception in 1998. Today, it's thought by many to be the best place to learn guitar online. Their format is almost entirely video-based, with fantastic topic ordering, and short instruction segments that are usually less than 10 minutes in length. In this review, we’ll cover that format and show you how it performs in comparison to other online guitar lesson programs.
To conduct our review, we bought and tested a full access Guitar Tricks membership with guitar in hand. This is not a secondary account or rehashing of someone else's opinion. Please note that we use partner links (our orange buttons) to support Guitar Chalk, though this does not impact the accuracy of the information we provide. Thank you for continuing to support us.
Compare to Other Lesson Programs
In this section you can easily compare Guitar Tricks to other similar programs. You can search for more lesson programs (Yousician, Justinguitar, etc.) via the search box that can be launched beneath this table.
Site | Name | Rate | TRY |
|---|---|---|---|
| Guitar Tricks | 92.8 | |
 | JamPlay | 88.7 | |
 | Guitareo | 77.9 | |
 | Fender Play | 67.8 |
Compare More Lessons
We have most of the major online guitar lesson programs in our database. Launch the search box via this blue button and search for more to add to the compare bar that pops up at the bottom of this page.
Watch or Listen to the Review
If you'd prefer just to put on headphones and listen to our review, I created the screencast below for just that purpose. In the video I walk through the program and talk through all the same bullet points listed in this article. It was published a couple years ago, but most of the information and the core contents of the program are still the same.
Review Quick Hits
- Price: $19.95 per month or $179 per year
- Free Trial: Yes, 14 days
- Members: 3 million+
- Lessons: 11,000+
- Refund Period: Yes, 60 days guaranteed
- Song Tutorials: 1,000+
What's new for 2023?
- You can now cancel a free trial or paid membership from within your account without having to email support.
- Song lessons can be browsed in "collections" based on popular styles and genres
- iPhone and iPad app compatible with family sharing on up to seven devices
- Restructuring of the membership dashboard
- iPhone app version at to 2.1.58 as of January 7th, 2023
Cost and Pricing Summary
There are two different prices after the free trial has ended. The first is $19.95/mo while the second is a 25 percent discount that applies if you pay by the years, about $180. More discounts often come up during promotional periods or via coupons.
Read more: Guitar Tricks coupon codes and promotions
Additional Cost and Membership Info
Lessons and song tutorials are being added regularly, usually once or twice a week. Over time, full courses are also updated and revamped to better-suit the needs of members.
Further, their 60-day refund period is honored without questioning, so you can cancel for any reason and get your money back. We’ll cover all aspects of the videos, the format, the content offered, and everything else you need to know if you’re considering buying a membership.
Let’s dive in.
The Member Dashboard
There are a few different roads you could take within the site. You’ve got the Core Learning System, lesson categories, style categories and even lessons grouped by artists.
To make sorting easier, Guitar Tricks breaks all of their content into three sections on their home dashboard, which is what members will see when they log in to their account. Here's what it looks like:
The home dashboard page for Guitar Tricks members, highlighting the three main lesson categories.
Coming off the members home page you have the following options:
- Beginner Lessons
- Experienced Lessons
- Learn to Play Songs
Each category organizes lessons differently. To drill down another layer, we'll cover the beginner and advanced sections in more detail.
Beginner Lessons
Within the Beginner Lessons section you’ll see the Core Learning System table with the first two courses highlighted in red, per the screenshot below:
The Beginner Guitar Lessons section of Guitar Tricks, highlighting the Core Learning System and the Guitar Fundamentals I and II courses.
Those courses are the following:
Both of these courses are considered the introductory points for complete beginners, taught by Anders Mouridsen. The rest of the Core Learning System is grayed out, though can still be clicked and accessed. Additionally, you’ll notice the following three categories at the bottom of the page:
- Songs Made Easy
- Practice for Beginners
- Tuning & Guitar Maintenance
These are topic-specific beginner lessons and not full courses. While some of the material here is covered in the Fundamentals courses, this content is sorted so you can quickly get to the most popular beginner topics. The quality of education you get from these courses overall, is extremely good. Here's a quick look at how Guitar Tricks stacks up against other programs in our education quality rating category.
Guitar Tricks lands behind Guitargate and JamPlay by just a few points in this category. Having more elements of instructor feedback or interaction would go a long way.
Intermediate and Experienced Lessons
On the Experienced page you now have the Fundamentals lesson circles grayed out and the advanced courses highlighted in red. These courses include the following:
- Blues Level I
- Blues Level II
- Country Level I
- Country Level II
- Rock Level I
- Rock Level II
The Experienced page highlighting the advanced courses and categories from Guitar Tricks.
At the bottom of the page you have advanced lessons broken down further into the following categories:
- Style Lessons
- Guitar Techniques Lessons
- Artist Studies Lessons
- Practice Lessons
- Chords & Scales Lessons
- Gear & Tone Lessons
The rest of the options on the Experienced page that were cut off in the screenshot above.
While some of the lessons in these bottom categories cross paths with what you get in the courses, most of it is standalone material that is completely autonomous and unique. Which path you take depends on how you want to navigate the content. In that regard, Guitar Tricks offers you a lot of flexibility. For example, clicking on the Styles section takes you to the following page:
A tile splash screen showing the styles offered to Guitar Tricks members.
From here you can filter lessons based on their musical genre. Keep in mind that these categories are broad and may include multiple sub-genres. For example, the classical guitar section also includes Spanish and Flamenco guitar material. Click on the Acoustic section and you’ll jump to the following page:
Category page for the lessons Guitar Tricks offers focusing on the acoustic style (lessons continue down below what the screen shot shows).
All of the most important, core acoustic guitar topics are covered.
Anders' full acoustic courses, levels 1 and 2, are included here as well, which is also part of the Core Learning System in the Experienced section.
Once you’re on this page you’re looking at all the lessons focusing exclusively on the acoustic guitar style. The interface is smooth, well-organized and easily navigated. All you need to do is pick a topic. I went back to the Guitar Fundamentals 1 course with Anders, which takes you to the following introductory screen (this is the same screen you'll see for all the courses):
The course introductory page for the Fundamentals 1 course.
From here you can start any portion of the course or just start at the beginning. It looks like the lesson lists we saw earlier.
Chapter 1 of the Guitar Fundamentals 1 course.
Once you start, you’ll be taken to the video player:
The video player in Guitar Tricks showing one of the Guitar Fundamentals 1 courses.
Here's the content underneath the video:
Additional lesson content underneath the Guitar Tricks video player.
This is the format that all Guitar Tricks videos are presented in, which houses the following elements:
- Video player with multiple resolution options, including 4k.
- Description of the lesson and any notation (if applicable) via the two tabs beneath the video
- Lesson info section with FAVORITES, PRINTING and DOWNLOAD options
- Full course summary with each video listed in order
Here's a different lesson presented with tabs and notation:
Where applicable, lessons include tabs and notations.
The interface is smooth and intuitive, allowing you to use and see almost all of the content above the fold (without having to scroll down). The video player itself offers a lot of resolution options as well as a looping feature that allows you to repeat portions of the video.
You can also speed up or slow down each video. Changing to different videos within a course is easy via the listing of each lesson on the right side of the screen. This path we’ve outlined - going from a style section or course to the video player - is the most common way to get to any one lesson or tutorial series.
Topical Order and Organization Ratings (Comparing Guitar Tricks to other programs)
One of Guitar Tricks' strongest suits would be its course structure and how topics are grouped and ordered within each course.
Song Lessons
Another strength of the Guitar Tricks program is their song lesson section, which is the most complete and robust of its kind featuring fully licensed HD video lessons with accompanying tablature. All these songs are taught note-by-note by instructors and can be learned one section at a time. We'll take a closer look at this aspect of the program in this segment of our review. At the top of their songs page, you'll see all the different categories and sorting options:
The top sorting options and lesson browser for the Guitar Tricks song lessons section.
Each song lesson has the following features:
- Fully licensed
- 100 percent accurate
- Includes tabs
- Instruction broken down into segments
- Full demo of each song with the ability to slow down and loop any section
Artists and Bands Included
The amount of artists represented is massive and spans a wide range of musical styles from vintage rock and bluegrass to modern rock and pop.
Top section of the artists filter.
Just a handful of the artists include:
- Pink Floyd
- AC/DC
- Eric Clapton
- Tool
- Godsmack
- Ed Sheeran
- Rolling Stones
Again, that's just a very small segment of what's included. If you go and look at the artists page (pictured above) it's a massive number.
This section alone is worth the monthly price and continues to be one of our favorite aspects of the Guitar Tricks program. No other program that we've tested (or know of) has come close to providing a resource like this. Once again, it's a strong-point of the curriculum and is one of the categories we rate guitar lesson programs on. Guitar Tricks is a clear winner in this category.
Guitar Tricks sits at the top of our chart in the song lesson department.
Refund Policy
To understand the Guitar Tricks refund policy it's helpful to first understand how you end up paying them to begin with. There are two different ways to get into a paid Guitar Tricks membership. You can sign up directly or migrate to a paid account from a full access free trial.
- Free trial to paid account
- Direct to paid membership
In either case - whether you pay to start or you get billed after a free trial - the Guitar Tricks refund policy is the following:
From the day of being charged (either for a monthly or yearly membership) you have 60 days to cancel and get a full, no-questions-asked refund.
This is done by cancelling your Guitar Tricks account and emailing support to ask for a refund. You refund is processed in a few business days and your account is then downgraded to a free membership.
Instructors
The desktop version of Guitar Tricks has a specific page that showcases all of their instructors. From that page, you can click on bios for each instructor and read about their guitar and education credentials.
A look at the some Guitar Tricks instructors page.
For example, Anders Mouridsen graduated with Honors from MI’s Guitar Institute of Technology and has worked with a long list of notable musicians, including Stone Template Pilots, Taylor Swift and Pink.
Anders Mouridsen’s bio page.
Mouridsen’s impressive credentials are not unusual among Guitar Tricks instructors. Several others have studied at the Musician’s Institute in Los Angeles, recorded their own music and even served as guitarists on a number of popular TV shows, including Saturday Night Live and Jimmy Kimmel.
Despite their credentials, you won’t see instructors from mainstream bands or musical acts. For example, JamPlay has enjoyed the likes of Collective Soul’s Joel Kosche and Staind’s Mike Mushok, as well as a number of other notable guitarists making appearances as instructors on their site. Guitar Tricks doesn’t really go this route. Yet the instructors are knowledgeable, well-spoken and, for the most part, have engaging personalities.
Personalities and Teaching Styles
Every instructor is different, with variances in personality and teaching style that can’t all be accounted for. In general, you’ll consistently find the following traits:
- Enthusiastic about the subject matter
- Competent and articulate speakers who are easy to understand
- Confident and firm about the topics they’re presenting
- Friendly and relatable
There are parts of videos, particularly the introductory material, that can feel canned and awkward. In those moments, it’s fairly obvious that the instructors are reading from a script. Yet, this is quickly remedied as they get into the material and become more comfortable with their speaking cadence. All instructors do a great job of speaking slowly and in short segments that are easy to remember and comprehend.
Can you interact with the instructors?
While there’s no formal feedback system in place, Guitar Tricks does make all of the active instructors available to you via their member’s forum. In that forum, each instructors has their own section where you can post your questions and receive an answer directly from them.
The open forum section where you can ask questions directly to instructors.
The instructors are all quick and consistent about keeping up with the forum, helping to alleviate the disappointment of not having any kind of feedback interface available. Of all the instructors, the three most active on the forums (by far) are Mouridsen, McCormick, and Christopher Schlegel. Schlegel frequently responds to threads from other sections of the forum as well.
Free VS Paid Memberships
Guitar Tricks has two types of membership:
- Free
- Full Access (paid)
There is no middle ground. You’re either using a free account or a full access account that gives you access to everything on the site. You cannot sign up for portions or segments of the website, which is actually a bit of a detraction. We’d love to see different ranges of memberships or the ability to purchase access to specific courses or segments of the site.
For now we’ve got just the two options to work with. Let's start by going over the free account.
The Free Account
The free access account - not to be confused with a full access free trial - is easy to setup and requires no credit card to get started. You just put in your information, setup a username, and you’re good to go. Once you’ve created this account you’ll have access to the following content:
- 24 Free Lessons
- The “Public” section of the forum
- The Guitar Tricks Newsletter
The 24 free lessons are the lessons that Guitar Tricks makes available to free access members as a “get your feet wet” option. We’ll look at these more closely in the next section. The free access account restricts access to the rest of the site.
Guitar Tricks does offer a section of lessons that is completely free, though it's only 24 total.
The 14-Day Free Trial
If you do want to check out the rest of the site without paying for full access, Guitar Tricks offers a 14-day free trial where you can upgrade your free account to full access without getting charged. Here are a few things you need to know about the free trial:
- It does require a credit card to signup.
- The trial automatically funnels you into a paid account on the 15th day unless you cancel.
- A cancellation can be made any time via your Guitar Tricks account (cancellation button - no need to contact support).
- If you don’t cancel and you are charged, Guitar Tricks has a 60-day money back guarantee you can fall back on to get your money refunded.
There’s no actual risk involved, though it does feel like more than a trial when you need a credit card to sign up and an email to cancel. However, if you’re willing to put up with some manageable hoops to jump through, the trial gives you access to the entire site without any kind of restrictions.
Two weeks isn’t a long time, so I’d advise waiting until your schedule gets somewhat light before activating the trial.
Full Access Member
Once you’re a full access member, you’ll have access to everything on the site. If you get to this point, and you're not still using the free trial, you’ll choose between one of the following options:
- $19.95/mo
- Yearly plan at 25 percent off (about $180)
These are the regular (and current) prices that Guitar Tricks offers. As I mentioned earlier, there are times throughout the year when they send out a promotion for a cheaper yearly membership, which makes it worthwhile to keep an eye on their newsletter.
Once you’ve signed up you should also note that these memberships renew automatically. If you do not want this to happen you'll need to login to your dashboard and cancel your Guitar Tricks membership. This will suspend your account from renewal but, will let you continue to use your account until the period you’ve paid for has completed.
The Ideal Guitar Tricks Member
Those who are self-motivated and thrive on their ability to independently pursue educational goals should find the Guitar Tricks format completely ideal. It’s self-paced, easy-to-use and optimal for those who just want to get their hands dirty and play some guitar.
I’d be willing to bet that the effectiveness of Guitar Tricks is almost entirely dependent on which type of learner you are. Thus, some self-assessment and reflection is advisable before taking the plunge.
I would also say that's it's particularly strong for beginners, though all skill levels can benefit.
The Final Verdict
What’s the overall verdict for our Guitar Tricks review? Per the rating system we use for only guitar lessons, we've given it a score of 92.8 percent. Here's a quick summary of the strengths and weaknesses.
Primary Weak Areas
Not much in the way of instructor feedback and you can't buy individual courses.
Primary Strong Areas
Song lessons, topical organization, effective/professional teachers, and consistent content updates.
The layout and scope of Guitar Tricks’ content is perfect for those who want to get into a system quickly and start learning guitar in a properly ordered manner. There’s room to grow and the content isn’t all just for beginners. However, the ideal member will be beginners looking for a self-paced way to learn.
This is where Guitar Tricks excels, having created some of the best intro level guitar courses that are available online. Moreover, they’re able to get well-organized content in front of you that spans a wide range of guitar styles and topics.
If that’s your game plan, this site is a far better deal than in-person tutoring, at the $19.95/mo price tag.
Conclusion
Have an experience using Guitar Tricks that you’d like to share or maybe just questions about the program? Perhaps a bone to pick with our Guitar Tricks review? All is fair in the comments section below, so feel free to get in touch with questions or to share your own experience.
Related Articles
Written by Bobby on Lessons and Roundups
Written by GC Editorial on Lessons and Comparisons
I thought this site was awesome but the more I look at it the more it feels like a funnel for Guitar Tricks, I don’t trust this is all the independent.
We do have affiliate relationships, but that doesn’t mean we don’t provide objective reviews. We review products we partner with and those we don’t.
I’m a subscriber of GuitarTricks following teacher Lisa McCormick for about six months now. My experience has been entirely with Lisa McCormick. I started as a beginner to see if I could fill any missing gaps, even though I have been playing for years. I found the GT interface and lesson progression to be very well thought out, however, the site is not without its problems.
For example, in each section you are given sheet music (tab w/notation) with no instruction on how to read it.
Much of the sheet music you are given to practice lesson songs contain errors (sections missing, repeat signs missing) making it very difficult to follow Lisa in the duet that comes at the end of each section. I’ve contacted GT about this and they just say they’ll correct it, but they don’t.
There is no interactive tab like you would get in GuitarPro or Songster. Why not?
You can not print out the sheet music due to “copyright” violations, because the writer – Lisa McCormick, has copyrighted them! Now, some may say that is not a big deal. I say it is. It is difficult to see the song in its entirety on a computer screen. You certainly won’t be able to add instructional notes to the score to help yourself.
If GT would correct the above problems I would recommend them for complete beginners. I’m going to try TrueFire.
Ron, TrueFire is a solid option.
With your Guitar Tricks experience, what lessons have you noticed errors on?
I agree that interactive tabs would be a HUGE addition to Guitar Tricks if they were able to implement something like SoundSlice or the Songsterr engine (Ultimate Guitar Pro does that too).
The errors are in the sheet music in beginner songs lessons under Lisa McCormick (the ones she sings on). This was six months ago. I don’t remember the specific song titles and I cancelled the membership.
A student might only find the errors if they played the sheet music along with her video version of the song. Most students probably copy her video instructions – so never see the errors. In any case, the written music is very difficult to use and as others have noted here, it isn’t possible to view the whole song at once in a tiny window.
Not sure why GT includes written music (including Italian navigation markers, btw) which would confuse a beginner – especially without any instruction on it. Really, slash notation works much better at this stage.
I lost motivation on continuing at GT because I did not want to constantly second guess what I was being taught.
I checked out TrueFire last night. Regarding interactive notation, I believe TrueFire allows downloading of some GuitarPro tabs, but even GT’s online notation has a moving cursor, scrolling windows (yay!) and a looping and tempo adjustment.
Seems very good so far, if slightly more costly than GT.
Yeah, TrueFire does great with their supplemental content. Much better than Guitar Tricks. I’ll agree that’s not a strength of the GT program, but hopefully that’s something they’ll improve on in the future. A SoundSlice integration would be a major leap forward for them.
Hi There. I am going to sign up for a 1 year membership if someone can answer 1 question. After paying the yearly membership are there any other costs ?
Hey Greg – No, there are no costs after the membership price. It’ll be set to automatically renew after a year, but you can always cancel that if you want. Hope this helps.
I am totally blown away by the depth and quality of this review. It answered every question I had about this and even a lot I didn’t know to have. As a professional tutor (not guitar), I highly applaud you for all the effort you put into this. Thanks so much.
Hey, Robin – thanks so much for the kind words. Certainly an encouragement. What subjects do you tutor?
By the way, I checked out your websites. Really neat concept. My wife is all about the thrift shopping.
Thank you for the very thorough, honest review.
You can now cancel the free trial from your account page on the web site. No email necessary. I did it today. I will probably join as a yearly subscriber using the discount code. I’ll know after I read your reviews of the other sites.
Hey man – thanks for bringing this to my attention. I’ll double check with their support that this is the case and then update this review accordingly. That would be a huge plus, in my opinion.
If you purchase the paid subscription to Guitar Tricks, can you utilize both the iPad application as well as access it on my computer with the same subscription?
Yep. Regardless of where you purchase the membership, the apps for all devices are free and can be used to access content. It’s all one and the same.
I concur, lots of very good lessons on Guitar Tricks. However, one thing I don’t see commented on is that for most of the song lessons and some technical lessons you cannot download and print the music (which I understand for published songs because it is protected) but the on-screen music notation doesn’t scroll with the video lesson, jam track etc. (like it does on several other lesson sites). All that is visible is one 8 or 12 bar section of the song. In other words, short of memorizing the song, there is no way to play along. Made the comment to GT customer support and they said essentially – Yeah we know. My analogy is a canoe without a paddle. Not totally useless but almost.
Hmm, I haven’t noticed this on song tutorials (the shortened tabs/notation). However, I really like how TrueFire sets up their song lessons, with tabs that scroll along with the video.
Thanks for adding this information. Not sure if GT plans to upgrade this in the future, but if I have any chance to provide some input, I’ll be sure and mention this thread.
Thanks again, Ron.
Just one bloody review of guitar tricks from someone notnpaid to do so is literally all I want.
This isn’t a paid review. We’re an affiliate of their’s, but it’s still an honest take – commission or not. I’ve been a customer of GT for a long time.
The others we recommend (including non-affiliates) are here: https://www.guitarchalk.com/online-guitar-lessons/
Thanks for the in-depth review!
You bet. I hope it’s helpful.
Hi Bobby,
Incredibly in-depth review of GuitarTricks. I’ve been playing for over 30 years, self-taught, and I’ve always considered giving this a try in order to improve my skills and playing, and possibly break some bad habits I know I have developed over the years. I also have a few lessons from GuitarJamz that I got on special, but have not dug into those yet. Anyway, great review and I love your site.
Thanks, man. Much appreciated.