So you just got your first guitar, and are looking for a way to learn to play?

Or you've been playing for a while, and want to take things to the next level?

Using the best online guitar lessons to learn guitar is a very efficient and cost-effective way to advance your chops, no matter what level you are at.

I have been playing guitar for 20+ years and teaching for 15+ years. I still use online lessons to learn new things almost every day.

If you are interested in which online guitar teaching websites I use and can honestly recommend, and also which ones I stay away from, read on. I will also list my favorite guitar YouTube channels on this page.

This turned out to be a pretty long article, so here is a table summarizing the top lesson sites I can wholeheartedly recommend.

I have had accounts with each of these sites and have used them extensively for years.

Continue reading for a thorough review of each of these sites, with pros/cons of each and who they are best suited for.

GuitarTricks was established in 1997 in San Francisco. It was one of the first video guitar lesson companies on the internet, and as such, basically invented the industry.

They have grown along with the internet, presently employing about 40 guitar teachers to record their lessons.

GuitarTricks lesson structure

The backbone of GuitarTricks' offering is their "Core Learning System".

This is basically a collection of courses meant to take a complete beginner all the way to an upper-intermediate level.

It starts out with the most basic techniques and theory in the 2 stage Guitar Fundamentals courses, and transitions the student to a specialized genre of their choice:

• blues
• country
• rock

These 3 genre courses are well thought out and structured, just like their beginner courses.

It's important to note that the lesson hierarchy is important, and should be learned in sequence.

A lot of times, beginner guitarists will skip a section they find difficult. Don't do that. Practice as much as you need to before moving on to the next section, otherwise, you will have holes in your knowledge and get stuck later on.

Genres taught on GuitarTricks

Beside the 3 main genres of covered by the Core Learning System, GuitarTricks has mini-courses on several other genres as well.

These are not lengthy courses to teach you an entire genre. They merely cover smaller niche topics of a given genre.

For example, here are the lessons they have listed under Funk:

This is more of a collection of funk topics, rather than an A to Z course on funk guitar.

Songs to learn on GuitarTricks

Sometimes you don't want to sit through a course which will take weeks to cover.

Sometimes you simply want to learn a song you love. After all, that's why you picked up the guitar in the first place.

The song lesson collection of GuitarTricks is very strong.

They have a massive amount of very popular songs to learn from a large number of artists.

Private, live lessons on GuitarTricks

Some people say that taking private guitar lessons held by a live teacher is the best way to learn guitar.

While I disagree with this statement for a number of reasons (money, appointments, accessibility, etc.), there are times when it's nice to be able to have somebody to ask a few questions.

GuitarTricks takes care of this, as you can buy private, 30 or 60 minute online lessons from a few of its teachers.

Learning mostly from prerecorded online lessons and having the means to talk with your online instructors is the best of both worlds.

Here is a video review of GuitarTricks, and a few screenshots below:

Who can get the most out of GuitarTricks?

Are you a beginner or intermediate guitarist?

Then I can honestly recommend GuitarTricks. Follow their lesson curriculum, be diligent, and you will learn guitar with this site.

If you are interested in signing up with GuitarTricks.com, make sure you have a look at this GuitarTricks discount, and their free trial offer as well.

Jamplay is another large guitar tutorial website. It was established in 2006 in Ohio and features lessons from about 70 guitar teachers and music professionals.

Besides publishing a large number of lessons, they also focus on innovation. For example, they employ the largest number of camera angles out of any lesson site I've seen and they have great online guitar tools.

They also contract established musicians to create guitar courses exclusive to Jamplay.

Jamplay lesson structure

Jamplay categorizes its lessons into 4 main categories:

• Phase 1: lessons for beginners
• Phase 2: lessons on genres and guitar skills
• Phase 3: song lessons
• Phase 4: song writing

They take a vastly different approach as compared to GuitarTricks, I'll show you why in a second.

Let's have a look at the beginner lessons page on Jamplay.

They presently have 20 courses for beginner guitarists taught by different teachers. Some are good, some are not.

I don't really think this approach is all that great though, because a beginner needs a set path to follow, not 20 different paths to get lost on.

Genres taught on Jamplay

The genre lessons are much better on Jamplay than their beginner lessons in my opinion.

They take the same approach, that is offer courses by a number of teachers. This is not a distracting factor though, since intermediate players need the variety the methods of different teachers can offer.

Again, with this many teachers, there are good ones and bad ones. You can weed out the bad ones very quickly.

Song lessons on Jamplay

The song lesson database is much smaller on Jamplay, and the songs that they have are not as good as GuitarTricks' song lessons.

There are only a few famous artists to choose from, so this isn't one of Jamplay's strong points.

Lessons for intermediate-advanced players

This is where Jamplay really shines in my opinion.

They offer lessons by real artists, which is great for advanced guitarists.

Also, they have a large number of lessons dedicated to mastering various skills on the guitar.

This is great, because I myself have struggled with speed picking in the past.

The solution?

Jamplay's Speed and Technique courses, of which there are 8 at the moment.

If you have been playing for a while and want to focus on targeted topics, they will definitely have a course (or several) to help you out.

Here are a few screenshots of Jamplay from my account panel.

Who is Jamplay best for?

While I think there are better sites for beginners, intermediate and advanced players will really benefit from the barrage of lessons Jamplay has in store.

The chord and scale finder tools are also very useful to experienced players.

They are constantly releasing new courses, so you will never run out of things to learn if you choose to sign up with Jamplay.

Here are 2 coupon codes you can use on their site.

TrueFire was established in 1991, before the internet was a "thing". They initially dealt with creating and distributing VHS & DVD lessons and got into online tutorials later on.

Their catalog of lessons is absolutely massive:

• They supposedly have 35,000+ individual lessons (I did not count)
• They have collaborated with 600+ teachers (again, I did not count)

Their lessons cover every imaginable aspect of playing guitar, but the most unique thing about TrueFire is their teachers. They have big names like Tommy Emmanuel and Steve Vai teaching courses, which is great news for advanced guitar players looking to learn the tricks of the pros.

TrueFire lesson structure

The lesson structure of TrueFire can be broken down into the following:

1. Courses (each course contains 30-60 individual video lessons)
2. Learning paths (each "path" is a collection of courses)
3. Private lessons
4. In the jam (video jams)

The Courses section is a big melting pot of all of their lessons.

Having this many lessons means you have to have advanced search & filter functionality.

Thankfully they have one, albeit it's a bit slow. But it works.

Once you select a main topic, you can filter your results based on skill level, style, teacher, curriculum, and instrument.

The result of this will be that you hone in on a course that you are interested in.

As with Jamplay, many of the resulting courses have overlapping material taught by different teachers.

TrueFire "Learning Paths"

Having such a large number of lessons and courses means it's easy to get overwhelmed.

And as we know, too many choices is never a good thing for guitarists. They just end up jumping all over the place YouTube style.

Perhaps this is the reason TrueFire introduced their so-called Learning Paths.

Presently they offer the following Learning Paths:

• blues
• jazz
• rock
• acoustic
• country
• bass

These paths are meant to take you from a newbie guitarist, all the way to an advanced guitar master in your chosen genre.

In practice, what TrueFire does is it takes individual lessons from their various courses and structures them. This way, you don't end up bouncing in between courses.

The result is very long Learning Path. In fact, if a beginner was to start one and follow all of the lessons, it would probably take years to finish.

For example, I wrote a detailed review of their Blue Learning Path, which you can read here.

Song lessons on TrueFire

The song lessons section of TrueFire is not very good. If you're looking to mostly learn popular songs, you should choose another website.

They have "in the style of" lessons and some songs by Tommy Emmanuel, but nothing to get excited about.

Private online lessons on TrueFire

The site offers 1-on-1 personalized lessons with a lot of its teachers.

These are not live lessons though. The way it works is:

1. You record a video of yourself playing, asking questions, etc. and upload it to TrueFire.
2. Your chosen teacher watches your video and responds with a video of his/her own.

This is an interesting approach to 1-on-1 lessons.

In the Jam jamming experience

TrueFire developed a nice piece of software called In the Jam.

It is hard to describe, so here is a video telling you about it:

You need to buy these In the Jam tracks separately though, they are not part of the monthly/yearly membership.

Who is TrueFire best for?

I can honestly recommend TrueFire to intermediate guitarists looking to get out of a guitar rut, and advanced guitarists who want to learn from great musicians.

In fact, I am an ongoing member at TrueFire myself. I gravitate towards the more advanced courses as my time permits.

Beginner guitarists will get a lot out of TrueFire as well. The beginner lessons are easy to follow, have lots of playalong lessons, and you are transitioned into genres smoothly with their Learning Paths.

If you are thinking of signing up with TrueFire, here is a