BEst Guitar Lessons for Rolling Stones Fans
The Guitar Tricks Song Section
With a heavily stocked collection of Rolling Stones cover tutorials, taught step-by-step with licensed tabs, the Guitar Tricks program - particularly their song section - is a great option for Rolling Stones fans, and classic rock fans in general.
The Rolling Stones have made a lot of music over the years, and they're a popular target for cover bans and YouTube performers spanning a wide age range. In this roundup we're going to look at a couple of lesson programs that are both really good at teaching guitar in general and have a decent amount of song lessons and/or guitar tabs on the Rolling Stones' popular material.
We'll look at two paid options and one free.
Keep in mind:
There's going to be a difference between "in the style of" Rolling Stones lessons and actual songs written by the Rolling Stones that are being taught.
To teach songs and display tablature, guitar lesson websites need licensing from the publisher, which can be difficult to obtain.
That's why the list of sites that do this is relatively small.
Here are the three we'll recommend:
Our Recommendations
We make recommendations for guitar lessons, both from our partners and from sites that we do not partner with. While we are supported by our partnership with Guitar Tricks, it costs nothing additional to you and it's still a program we genuinely believein. Justinguitar and Ultimate Guitar Pro are not our partners, but excellent programs that we recommend all the same.
Website | DETAILS | Our RATING | TRY It Out |
|---|---|---|---|
 | Guitar Tricks (song lessons) | 93.2 | |
 | Justinguitar (song lessons) | 85.1 | |
 | Ultimate Guitar Pro (premium tabs) | n/a |
1. Guitar Tricks Courses & Song Lessons
At the time of writing this article, Guitar Tricks has published 25 Rolling Stones song lessons.
Their song lessons include a full video tutorial that goes through the song step by step, including solos (when applicable). It also provides a fully licensed and accurate tab sheet.
Video and licensed tabs go hand in hand for each Stones' lesson.
We'd also recommend the rest of the Guitar Tricks courses which cover a wide range of styles and concepts, including the disciplines of rock, blues, and funk guitar which are all staples of the Rolling Stones musical style. For fans who want to learn some songs and have access to a solid educational resource, Guitar Tricks is a great place to bring those two things together.
The organization of content and accuracy is solid, and a big part of what separates a good paid program from free content.
As of writing this article (late 2020), we've counted roughly 27 Rolling Stones guitar lessons in the Guitar Tricks program. All of these lessons are taught as a tutorial, with multiple videos and complete tablature.
Read the full review: Guitar Tricks
IDEAL FOR: Learning popular Rolling Stones songs and someone looking for well-organized courses.
CONTENT
90
EDU
95
ORGANIZATION
96
VALUE
92
PROS
CONS
2. Justinguitar Courses & Song Lessons
Justin Sandercoe has been producing lessons and song tutorials for a long time and he offers all of his content completely free. To date, he has done 12 Rolling Stones guitar lessons, the most recent coming out in September of 2019.
The main differences between Justinguitar song lessons and Guitar Tricks would be the following:
- Justinguitar doesn't include tab sheets
- Justinguitar films tutorials in one video segment, usually from a single camera angle
- Guitar Tricks breaks videos up by song segments and includes performance
- Guitar Tricks includes a backing track
There are always going to be some advantages to paid content, but Justin Sandercoe's song lessons are still really good and he does an exceptional job at explaining the steps of each song he teaches.
Sandercoe's most recent Stones lesson, "Wild Horses" in open G.
Considering he's just one guy producing all of his content, he has amassed a tremendous amount of song tutorials, perhaps second only to the Guitar Tricks database.
We like Justinguitar's program particularly for beginners, or those who want to check out some Rolling Stones content before jumping into a paid program.
One of Sandercoe's beginner courses
Sandercoe's platform is perfect for that.
Even if you're not a beginner, he has so much content that you could stay busy for a long time.
Read the full review: Justinguitar
IDEAL FOR: Getting started with song lessons and those wanting to avoid the monthly fee.
CONTENT
82
EDU
82
ORGANIZATION
92
VALUE
95
PROS
CONS
3. Ultimate Guitar Pro Tabs
If you're strictly looking for Rolling Stones tabs and you aren't worried about the video component, Ultimate Guitar is probably already on your radar.
But, what a lot of people don't realize is that Ultimate Guitar has a premium membership called Ultimate Guitar Pro. This gives you access to higher-quality tab sheets presented in a Guitar Pro format with a proper score, timing signatures, backing tracks, and better accuracy.
This is far better than what we're used to seeing on Ultimate Guitar with the user-submitted plain-text tab sheets.
Usually, something like this:
The old Courier font style of guitar tabs.
Here's a screenshot of a Rolling Stones song tabbed in the Pro format:
Tab for "Paint it Black" in Ultimate Guitar Pro.
You can see this tab sheet is much more thorough than a basic Courier font tab. It also includes parts of the song - listed at the bottom of the screenshot - and instruments on the left panel.
For people who just want the tabs, this is one of the best ways to get them and well worth the $40 per year asking price (just a little over $3 a month).
While you could certainly get by with the free tabs or Songsterr's free content, Ultimate Guitar has done a great job making their premium tab membership worth the added fee. They give you far more functionality than Songsterr and at a much better price.
For those exclusively concerned with getting reliable tabs and would appreciate the backing tracks, Ultimate Guitar Pro would be our top recommendation.
Read the full review: Ultimate Guitar Pro
IDEAL FOR: Those only interested in using tabs
CONTENT
n/a
EDU
n/a
ORGANIZATION
n/a
VALUE
n/a
PROS
CONS
More free options?
There are plenty of free resources where you can find Rolling Stones tabs and even full lessons. Going back to the Justinguitar recommendation, all his videos are on YouTube to begin with. You'll also find a lot of Rolling Stones lessons taught on Andy Guitar and Marty Music's YouTube channel.
He makes it look so easy. Flickr Commons image via RalphPH
For tabs, there are a ton of free options, a couple of which I already mentioned that would be my top recommendations:
- Ultimate Guitar free membership
- Songsterr's open source content
Most of this content is user-submitted and not professionally produced, but you can still make a lot of progress learning Rolling Stones cover tunes, even while sticking to the free stuff.
Songnotes is another excellent YouTube channel that covers some Rolling Stones material.
Beginning of a song tab page on Songnotes.
Why take our word for it?
When we review guitar lessons and make recommendations, we make sure to adhere to the following guidelines:
- We only recommend courses/lessons from websites we've actually used
- We recommend from both partners and non-partners alike
In other words, we don't just recommend resources to try and make money off of you. While we partner with some of the programs we recommend, the bulk of them are either completely free or not partnered with us.
Flickr Commons image via RalphPH
When it comes to recommending lessons for Rolling Stones fans, we're just looking for websites that provide you the absolute best resources for learning their music.
If we already partner with them, great.
But we don't limit ourselves or over-exaggerate our recommendations based on those partnerships.
Our Ratings Rationale
As we put together this list, it's obvious that we're looking for guitar lesson programs that have at least some element of teaching Rolling Stones songs. However, there are a few other things we'd like guitar courses to cover as well.
They include, but are not limited to, the following:
- Course should have good organization and large body of content
- Course should cover Rolling Stones songs in a high level of detail
- Course should focus on styles and musical genres that pertain to the Rolling Stones (primarily rock, blues, and funk)
- Course should provide tabs and/or video resources
The three programs we've highlighted, Guitar Tricks, Justinguitar, and Ultimate Guitar Pro, all do an excellent job meeting these requirements.
Flickr Commons image via RalphPH
Conclusion
Whether you go with one of the paid options or stick to free access content, there are plenty of great guitar lesson programs and resources out there that will help teach you Rolling Stones songs from the comfort of your own home.
Keep in mind that we've tested all the resources recommended here and have found them to be quite good.
We've also included material that we don't partner with, as well as some that we do.
Hopefully, this helps you get to some Rolling Stones content that will be legitimately helpful to you.
Questions and Comments
If you have questions about the guitar lessons we've recommended or our review process, feel free to reach out via the comments section below.
Comment Policy: You're down to leave a comment? That's awesome. Keep in mind that comments are moderated and rel="nofollow" is in use. Please avoid any spammy keywords or a domain as your name, otherwise your comment will be deleted. Let's stay on topic, keep questions relevant and have a meaningful conversation. All the best.