Yousician VS Guitar Tricks Comparison (side by side)

Guitar Tricks and Yousician are two very different programs, yet with a shared goal of teaching you guitar from your computer in the comfort of your own home. On the one hand, Guitar Tricks is a collection of more traditional online courses and instructional videos, while Yousician uses a video game-style application (similar to Guitar Hero with some instructional video elements) to guide you through the material.

In this article, we're doing a direct Yousician VS Guitar Tricks side-by-side comparison, to see how the two programs stack up against each other.

To review these programs we actually buy memberships and use them. Guitar Tricks has been around for a long time and we have a lot of experience their platform. Yousician is a newer offering, though we've had time to buy, download and test their software in order to write this comparison. If you have questions about either program or about the review process, feel free to leave those in the comments section below.

Read the full reviews: Guitar Tricks or Yousician

First, we'll look at some of the simple membership statistics that both programs offer. Guitar Tricks has an edge here with a longer free trial and a cheaper pricing structure (Yousician's Premium membership that includes everything is more expensive).

Yousician doesn't have data available that discloses their membership numbers, nor is it easy to tell how many lessons they have in their system. That's not necessarily a problem, and is partly due to the fact that Yousician structures their material much differently. 

Skill Level, Depth and Challenge

To compare two online guitar lesson programs, we need to compare how effective they are in terms of addressing specific skill levels. While both programs address an entire range of guitar and musical skill, we've found Guitar Tricks to be a little more comprehensive in terms of handling intermediate and advanced topics, at least in comparison to Yousician.

At the same time, working through the exercises in Yousician on the more advanced levels is legitimately challenging. The Yousician app actually listens to your guitar and tracks how well you're hitting each note, which makes more advanced riffs and licks a challenging exercise.

Here's our direct comparison:

One of the biggest strengths of Guitar Tricks is how they've been able to properly order and topically organize their content. It's not to say that Yousician does a bad job of this, but Guitar Tricks is just better when it comes to a comprehensive covering of each topic. Particularly when you get to intermediate and advanced material, the lack of a speaking, tutorial-style explanation really starts to hurt Yousician's value.

Structure, Design and User Experience

Design is a difficult comparison to make between these two programs, because Yousician isn't technically a website. It's an app that you download and run on your computer or mobile device. Still, both interfaces function in a similar manner, taking you through lessons and course material that are all sorted by various categories. Here's how they match up:

Guitar Tricks has recently upgraded their lesson interface and modernized the look of their website overall, making it even easier to navigate. One of the problems with Yousician's platform is that it can be a little difficult to determine where to go and how to sort material. It's not bad, but Guitar Tricks is definitely the better of the two programs in this regard.

Video Player Quality and Features

Again, Yousician doesn't center around video, but around an interactive Guitar Hero-style game process. This makes a direct comparison tricky, but they do share a lot of the same elements. For example, both can speed up or slow down, loop, and integrate social features.

Yousician's interface looks great, is addictive, and actually does an amazing job of listening to your guitar. It can even identify missed notes within chords. Again, it's an imperfect comparison, but both interfaces are aesthetically well-designed, functional, and helpful to the user.

Supplemental Material

Supplemental material (meaning written, audio or graphically-presented content) is an area where Guitar Tricks significantly outpaces Yousician. Tabs, sheet music, diagrams, audio files and text summaries are all consistent features of Guitar Tricks lessons, while Yousician's material is almost entirely limited to the on-screen game interaction.

You can see in the screen shot below that the Guitar Tricks lesson has tabs for description, notation, and jam track, while the Yousician interface just isn't structured in the same manner. 

Song Lessons Section

Yousician does teach you to play songs as part of their curriculum.

However, almost all of their popular licensed songs require a "Premium" upgrade from an already paid membership. Guitar Tricks gives you access to all their licensed songs (and all material on the site) with their basic membership package (they only have one type of membership).

Guitar Tricks also teaches their songs with an actual instructor while Yousician relies again on their video game interface. Guitar Tricks, through both volume and quality of content, is the clear winner in this comparison.

Concluding the Yousician vs Guitar Tricks Comparison

Both of these programs cater to a wide range of skill levels, while specializing in the beginner and novice player. However, Guitar Tricks is a much stronger program, for primarily the following reasons:

• Broadness and depth of content
• Instructor-led explanation
• Topical organization of material

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Questions about the Programs

If you have questions about either of these programs or want to share your experience using them, feel free to drop a note in the comments section below. Again we've purchased, tested, and worked with both products to make sure our Yousician VS Guitar Tricks comparison is thorough and based on a first-hand account.