This comparison is going to take a look at the pros and cons of two different online guitar lessons sites: Guitar Tricks and Justin Guitar.
If you’ve never heard of Justin Guitar but are familiar with famous guitarists, Justin Guitar was created by Justin Sandercoe. Justin Sandercoe took more than a decade of experience and put all of that knowledge into an online lesson for new musicians to learn from.
From a beginner’s perspective, we wanted to compare Justin Guitar and Guitar Tricks to see if one site happened to be better than other in terms of educational value, cost, and learning quality. We wanted to observe to see if a novice guitarist would be able to properly learn how to play guitar with these sites and for what price.
Justin Guitar is a site that has around 950 guitar lessons that each have a great depth to them. Justin did a great job producing the beginner lessons, as they are incredibly well thought out and have an easy to follow structure to them.
On the other hand, we have Guitar Tricks, that has around 11,000 (11 thousand) guitar lessons that have been based on certain techniques and styles in around 600 songs.
With all of the lessons and ways to learn to play guitar that Guitar Tricks offers, if you spend enough time on the site and watch all the lessons, Guitar Tricks will be able to take you from brand new beginner guitar players (lessons for beginners) to a master guitarists (advanced players).
I like GuitarTricks because they have an easy to learn system with many different options for different STYLES of play. Other programs are really only geared towards casual learners, but GuitarTricks covers the whole spectrum.
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About Justin Guitar Online Guitar Lessons
If we’re going to get technical, yes, Justin Guitar is considered to be free for aspiring guitarists (free lessons). However, if you really want to be able to learn how to play guitar and be fluent in different styles of music, you’re going to have to pay.
If you’re not looking to spend any money, there are thousands and thousands of free guitar lessons on YouTube; the only downside to this, is that there isn’t any consistency or structure to these types of video lessons, because you’re not going to learn everything you need to know to become a master guitarist on one channel.
People who excel with online guitar lessons are the ones who pay for a membership, regardless of initial skill levels or whether you play acoustic or electric guitar.
Justin Guitar is a great site to start out with if you are looking to nurture your love and passion for guitar and learn a few lessons on your guitar journey. If you are someone who swore to keep your credit card away from your computer, Justin Guitar does give you a decent amount of education and lessons on their site for free.
You can get a good selection of video lessons for different techniques, playing styles, and genres without having to spend a single dime.
However, the biggest complaint that I have about Justin Guitar is they try very hard to sell users products that won’t really help them; they provide links to guitar books, eBooks, and CDs to purchase and all of these items don’t necessarily hold any good educational value. Even as purely a song lesson format for beginners.
Justin Guitar tries selling $50 DVDs to beginners, who won’t necessarily know any better than to not purchase the DVD. For the purchase of a $50 DVD off of Justin Guitar’s site, you could spend the same amount of money and purchase a four-month subscription to Guitar Tricks and have already gone through Guitar Trick’s Core Learning System learning path.
However, for not having to purchase anything from Justin Guitar, there are a handful of intermediate level lessons that pair with a large selection of songs (both acoustic and electric guitar). The filming quality of the lessons is very good, although I wouldn’t really compare them to be the same level to learn guitar as Guitar Tricks.
I do like how there are captions and additional images that pair along with some videos.
It’s very clear that the developers of Guitar Tricks understand that the lessons that you provide to beginning musicians are the building blocks for the rest of their musical experiences.
The developers of Guitar Tricks are all individual guitar masters in their own way and compiled together to create their own individual lessons to help get a firm understanding of the basics and chords while also developing healthy habits that are associated with properly playing the guitar.
Guitar lessons also provides a large variety of selections to users who are not just beginners; this site offers practice lessons, challenges, and critiques sent to users via e-mail. On Guitar Tricks, most of the guitar tools and videos lessons are downloadable to your device, so if you aren’t connected to the Internet, you can still learn to play.
You can’t download any songs, however, because of problems with licensing. For any new members, you can try Guitar Tricks free trial membership for fourteen days, where you will get full access to all of the tools and lessons that Guitar Tricks has to offer to users.
This company also has etudes for users to play that are excerpts from different genres of music, that allow users to be fluent in different styles of music, basic music theory, and sequence of chords. Each lesson that Guitar Tricks offers to users is extremely detailed with tips, tricks, and extra bits that go along with each lesson.
They also offer the same learning criteria for guitar players, which happens to be:
A basic video course (video leassons) that covers all of the fundamental tips and tricks that beginners should know
Learning how to play specific songs and specific playing styles
Online lessons and classes for playing styles that follow specific genres and playing techniques to refine your skills
I like GuitarTricks because they have an easy to learn system with many different options for different STYLES of play. Other programs are really only geared towards casual learners, but GuitarTricks covers the whole spectrum.
Which to Pick for Online Guitar Lessons: Justin Guitar or Guitar Tricks?
If you are willing to pay for guitar lessons or a one-on-one guitar teacher, you are going to get the best access to lessons and instructions (and QUALITY instructor).
Online guitar lessons have been designed to re-create a real life guitar learning experience and both Guitar Tricks and Justin Guitar do a great job.
Compared to lessons that you would pay a private teacher (private lessons) to give you, Guitar Tricks and Justin Guitar are much cheaper. Based upon my personal experience, I also found that Guitar Tricks was a lot easier to operate, because of the Core Learning System that Guitar Tricks has installed into their site just for beginners.
Justin Guitar is a great site to use if you’re looking to learn guitar, but it is extremely limited, especially when you compare the site to Guitar Tricks; if you are looking to fluently play the guitar, Justin Guitar doesn’t give you everything you need for learning guitar or advancing as professional guitarists (advanced player development).
If you end up deciding that you want to spend money on a monthly online guitar lesson service / learning guitar, you really get a lot more with Guitar Tricks than you do with Justin Guitar
I like GuitarTricks because they have an easy to learn system with many different options for different STYLES of play. Other programs are really only geared towards casual learners, but GuitarTricks covers the whole spectrum.
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Author
Guitar Space Team
The Guitar Space team is a crew of dedicated players. Led by Ed Lozano, working musician, teacher, and author for over four decades. Ed is joined by other bonafide classic players, bringing real-life guitar-playing testers, buyers, and writers to the crew. We'll tell you what you really need, what we'd buy & give you real-deal advice from decades of playing.
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