My Favorite Online Guitar Lessons
This is Greg Howe, not me :)
Welcome to Shredkick. If you are here, you are looking for Online Guitar Lessons. I have a bit of a story to tell you about this:
Before I became an instructor I was a student just like you. I struggled for years to make progress with my skills.  I hired instructors, bought books, and watched Youtube lessons for hours on end, but I still had a nagging feeling that something wasn’t “clicking”. I was missing something.
Then a friend introduced me to Online Guitar Training, it had:
- Organized lesson plans.
- Continuously building on the previous lessons.
- Expert, Highly Skilled and Experienced instructors.
- Multiple Styles and Genres taught by specialists.
Join Jamplay for Free | Join GuitarTricks for Free
It was the game changer that I needed. I was able to dedicate my free time, with the help of expert teachers, and brilliant lesson plans I found through the online programs below, to honing my skills as a guitarist. All the while I was sitting right in front of my computer.
Now I want to spread that same game changing experience with other beginning and novice guitarists, like you. That is why I started Shredkick and why I hope to be able to introduce you to some great online training programs. Without further ado:
Best Free Online Guitar Training
My Favorite – JamPlay
This is my personal favorite. I learned more from the teachers on JamPlay than any other platform. While it costs less than $20 a month, I got more value out of this program than the thousands I spent on mediocre teachers and pointless books. They’ve recently updated as well, some of the most important points:
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It’s a Free Membership
This is brand new to 2015. A free membership area where you can check out the various features of the site. Join the free area by clicking here.
8,000 lessons and growing
You’re not gonna run out of things to learn. It’s got plenty of variety too, stemming from it’s wide assortment of genres.
Genre/Style Experts
Last time I checked I think there was over a dozen different genres, each with rich lesson plans and specialized instructors. Join the free area and take a look at what they have, as they’ve probably updated it since I’ve published this post.
I’ve spent my early years trying to avoid paying a few dollars to get real guitar lessons, but I never really improved my skills that much. As soon as I finally bit the bullet and shelled out 20 bucks, I saw the light.
Jamplay was absolutely crucial to my improvement as an artist. Join now to start improving.
My Second Favorite – GuitarTricks
During my time as a student I joined many different sites. In fact I probably joined all of them. I had membership upon membership, and eventually, the cream started to rise to the top. The better programs had clear advantages over the mediocre ones. Take my word for it, GuitarTricks is the cream of the crop.
Some points to consider:
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Free to Join
A solid two-week trial period is more than enough time to evaluate the site and the lesson plans. I would recommend joining, if only to see what they have to offer. Click here to see for yourself.
Huge songs repository
They add new ones almost every day. If you plan on starting a cover band, this is perfect for you, you can pick out which songs you want and they will walk you through it.
Extremely large support forum
For specific questions that might not be covered in the videos. They have hundreds of thousands of posts in the forum, this is great for getting questions answered that might not be addressed in the videos.
The song repository is one of the key factors separating Guitar Tricks from other sites. For cover bands or just enthusiastic fans, the selection of all your favorite songs and how exactly to play them is really useful.
I feel bad giving Guitar Tricks second booking. I may be wrong. You don’t have to take my word for it, you can find out yourself by joining for free:
Guitar Tricks (14-day Free Trial)
There you have it, my years of experience condensed down into a few short paragraphs. I hope this has been helpful and you are able to take away from it a sense that you learned something new and useful. I love teaching and helping people better themselves, which is one of the reasons I love spreading the word about these programs.
I’ve included some video reviews of mine below, feel free to watch/listen/share and provide any feedback you may have.
Guitar Tricks:
Jamplay:
If you have any feedback you can shoot me an e-mail at cliff[at]shredkick.com with any questions or comments, I’d love to hear from you!
Other Benefits of Web-Based Training
It’s a long-time debate between real-life, person-to-person guitar teachers and guitar lessons online, such as web-based, Internet video lessons. There are benefits and downsides to each option, but we’ve put together a handy bullet list of some of the value-point of online lessons.
Repeatability
Free guitar lessons and other guitar training on the Internet has a ton of different benefits, including ease of reference, repeat-ability (ability to pause, replay or skip lessons for the the sake of customized practice plans.)Â While guitar teachers are able to provide specific feedback to you about your progress, their time is quite expensive.
Save Money
Simply put, online training saves money. It’s much, much cheaper than having a regular lesson plan with a local teacher or a Skype lesson with an out-of-town instructor. There are plenty of absolutely-free options as well, although they have some downsides as well (including lack of granualarity, lack or sequence, and no potential for feedback). For a very low investment you can get access to tons of resources and value, which you can peruse and pick from as you wish.
Narrow Focus or Broad Spectrum, Your Choice
Along with the concept of repeatability comes the concept of focus optionality. You can choose to go over the small details and practice them for hours, or you can spend the time researching new genres, methods or expanding your interests. It’s your choice. While this choice is still available with a regular teacher, it may be a waste of money to spend so much expensive time focusing on the small things.
Spending more time practicing and mastering the little things can then make feedback from an instructor/teacher much more effective. It’s better to spend a significant amount of time on your own practicing the smaller things while saving the more expensive instructor time on focusing on major blocks or questions you may have.
Broad focus is also very possible. The scalability of the Internet allows for many different styles, genres, and musical masters to be pulled together from across the country and the world. So if you don’t know exactly what you want to study or if you want to broaden your horizons, you can browse through dozens of different options.
Choice of Many Genres
It’s difficult to find a teacher who specializes in a certain genre of guitar music, as such it may be impossible to truly master a specific style. With web-based training, genres and styles are grouped for easy browsing, and each is provided by an expert in the field. These experts are difficult or impossible to find on a local level, so the Internet provides a way to aggregate these master skill sets in one place, for easy access. Considering the breadth of depth of this knowledge, the modest price point is a steal.
 Why Beginners Should Choose Online Training
1. Beginners benefit from easy starts
Often times it can be frustrating starting off, and online lessons allow you to stop, rewind, replay, and retry all your beginning lessons over and over. With face-to-face lessons there is only 1-hour a week where you get to be with your instructor, while online you can be with them however long you choose! And its cheaper! Which brings us to our next point:
2. Cheap and Productive, More Bang for the Buck!
Online lessons are usually in the 20-30 dollar/month range, where face-to-face lessons are usually 40-50 dollars per hour, at least. Not a great comparison if you ask me. They have also been proven to be effective at helping beginners learn the initial stages of guitar mastery, with few to no complaints or refund requests. They are efficient because a user can take a lesson whenever they want, they don’t have to wait until the next scheduled appointment. This means that you can get more done in less time, and quickly become a shredder with the best of them!
3. Identify Problem Areas
You may breeze through your beginner lessons with ease, or you may run into some problems/difficulties. In either case you will benefit from the high efficiency and ease of use of the best online guitar lessons available. Once you run into a problem, you can download new materials to help you with the specific issue. You can go over old lessons to make sure you’ve gotten it right, and all the while you won’t be paying a personal instructor exponentially more money.
Guitar Masters Who Endorse Online Training
Some of the most historic guitar masters are advocates of music education and online training. We’ve pulled together a small list of some of the best guitar players in the world who have publicly shown support various training programs.
Steve Vai
Steve Vai may in fact be the best guitarist in the world. He has sold millions of albums and toured the world with the likes of David Lee Roth and other. He is a strong advocate of guitar lessons via the online medium, as well as education of music and guitar theory. He has become a strong leader in spreading the popularity of online programs.
As evidence of that, he recently became the Guiness World Record holder for giving the largest online guitar lesson in history!
Richard Bennett
An established music and extremely skilled guitarist, Richard Bennett has become a strong support of online programs for music education.
Jim Campilongo
Perhaps not very widely known, Jim Campilongo is a skilled artist and strong advocate for online lessons. He recently had an interview specifically about training, music theory and education. It was an excellent piece of work and worth a watch if you have the time.
Joe Satriani
Any guitarist or music fan worth his/her salt will know about Joe Satriani, and know that he is one the top guitarists in the world today. His shredding skills are likely unmatched by anybody on earth, and so if he shows support of guitar lessons on the Internet, it gives it a tremendous amount of credibility.
Joe even gave his own guitar lessons with TotalGuitar.co.uk, and it’s an incredibly insightful and worthwhile watch. Watch here:
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