Guitar Tricks – Review
Reviewed By Shawn Bradshaw (Cyberfret.com)
rated Plus (5 out of 5)

Guitar Tricks

First let me say that I had a lot of fun with Guitar Tricks as I was working on this review. I learned some very cool country lead guitar licks. I also picked up a nice sounding fairly simple Celtic acoustic guitar piece, an interesting shred metal riff. This was just touching the surface of what is available.

Guitar Tricks is a membership website than contains over 3500 online guitar lessons by more than 45 different instructors. There are lessons covering all different styles and levels of music. If you are a complete beginner, or someone like me who has been playing for 30 years, this site has lessons for you.

The lesson format varies from teacher to teacher. From short licks, to full-blown multi part tutorials. But all of the lessons contain video or mp3 audio, as well as notation and/or tablature to help you learn the material.

With so many lessons to choose from, you may wonder where to start.  Guitar Tricks has many ways that you can browse and search for lessons. First you will find lessons listed by topics, like scales, theory, technique etc. You will also find lessons listed by style, or even influence. So if you wanted to find some lessons that center around the style of James Taylor, John Petrucci, B.B. King, or any number of other guitar greats, you can use that as a starting point. From there you can sort lesson by style, difficulty, and the focus of the lesson. You can also sort lessons by the teacher or which lessons have video, and which use mp3 audio.

The videos on the site are all downloadable, and Guitar Tricks gives you a free offline video player to view them with. With both the online and offline video player you can loop just specific sections of the video. Which is a cool feature for getting down a small section of a riff. You can also print out any of the notation to put on your music stand as you are practicing.

Besides the jam tracks, and the forum, another very cool feature is the metronome. This is not your grandfather’s metronome. Welcome to the 21st Century. This one will accent any beat from every 2 to 9 beats. But the coolest feature of all is that it will speed up at any rate you choose in what is called “speed drill” mode. Perfect for helping you build your chops.

The Downside

Most of the videos I watched were good quality. I watched a lot of them. But there were a few that were shot in low light and had bad audio. This is definitely the exception and not the norm. And while a little distracting, I did not take away from being able to learning the material.

The Bottom Line

Guitar Tricks gives you a lot of bang for the buck, and probably has the largest selection of lessons I have seen. There are new lessons added every week, so you will never run out of new things to learn. At the very least, sign up for the free membership. You will have access to the 24 free lesson, jam tracks, and access to the forums. There is no long-term commitment at Guitar Tricks, you can sign up for one month at a time for just $14.95 per month $12.95 per month (looks like the price has been lowered temporarily)

I highly recommend this Guitar Tricks. I give it a 5 out of 5. I learned some new tricks :) I have found a site that I will personally use to improve my own playing.

Guitar Tricks Website
(sign up for a free account for 24 free guitar lessons)