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The Best Websites and Apps for Learning Guitar
MAY 29, 2019
From the July/August 2019 issue of Acoustic Guitar | BY KATE KOENIG
There are several reasons why traditional music lessons aren’t for everyone. In a practical sense, you may not be able to afford them. Or maybe you just don’t have the time to fit a regular lesson into your week and devote additional hours to practicing. Or perhaps, for whatever reason, taking lessons is just not how you want to learn.
Being a self-taught guitarist (or musician in general) in 2019 is as well-accommodated as it ever has been, mostly because of the wide variety of apps, software, and websites to choose from. “It’s changed the way we think about the self-taught musician,” says Dr. Bryan Powell, founding co-editor of the Journal of Popular Music
Education and chair-elect of the National Association for Music Education. “Now the ‘self-taught musician’ has a lot of teachers. Keeping our goals in mind while we survey resources will help us find the right ones that are going to work for us.”
Aside from the resources that can be found on YouTube, and apart from the many apps that can make the process easier, there is a bounty of pre-structured, all-in-one courses that are customizable enough to suit beginning, intermediate, and even advanced players. They fall under two main categories: immersive software programs and online lesson databases. Of course, having so many options can be fatiguing when it comes to making the right choice. Here are some of the most popular and renowned programs to help you get started.
THE IMMERSIVE EXPERIENCE
Best for beginners, Yousician is an immersive software package that engages users in a new way. Founded in 2011 by Chris Thür and Mikko Kaipainen, the company’s first program, WildChords, was designed as a video game for children. A few years later, they produced Yousician, which offers lessons on guitar, bass, ukulele, piano, and as of 2018, voice. It’s available for Mac and PC, as well as in an app version for Android and Apple devices.
For guitar, Yousician offers a series of lessons with three initial paths to choose from: Lead, Rhythm, and Knowledge. Each offers slightly different customized study, but the basic structure is the same for most lessons: You watch a video of an instructor explaining a technique, and then you play an exercise that allows you to practice it.
The exercises are what make the program unique. A backing track plays as tab-style notation scrolls past on a fretboard—to earn points and pass the exercise, students have to play the notes accurately and on rhythm. The coolest thing about Yousician is that you don’t need anything more than a guitar and a working microphone on your device or computer—the program processes the sound of your guitar and can tell if you’re playing the notes correctly, even when the music gets more fast-paced and complex. Through the help of this audio signal-processing tech, you get valuable feedback on note and rhythmic accuracy.
Yousician teaches through songs, and structures the course based on your skill level. You also can’t progress to the next lesson until you’ve completed the previous one. One interesting feature is that if you’re in a rush, you can enter the amount of time you have to practice, and the program will offer you a lesson that fits. The program also comes with a musical toolkit, which includes exercises for learning and practicing chords, standard notation, scales, and arpeggios, as well as collections of songs to practice fingerpicking styles, barre chords, and songs that belong to certain genres.
While the program is effectively structured and a fun, engaging tool, one drawback is that the songs are limited. Other learning methods include access to almost any popular song you’re interested in learning how to play; when using Yousician, you’re limited to covers of popular songs and traditional, public-domain folk songs.
Another commercially popular immersive software system for learning guitar is Rocksmith—a program that essentially allows you to play the popular video game Guitar Hero on a real guitar, available on PlayStation 3, Xbox 360, and Microsoft Windows. In comparison to Yousician, Rocksmith doesn’t offer as much educational value or rudimentary exercises. It can, however, act as a fun practice tool for intermediate to advanced players.
THE ONLINE EXPERIENCE
Aside from some smart and helpful apps—which we’ll touch on a bit later—immersive software is where you’ll find the most benefits that come in the way of what modern technology has to offer. More than gimmicks, those features are useful—but in other ways, there’s nothing better than the basic instructional tools that can be found in our other main category: online databases.
One of the most highly recommended online databases for learning to play guitar is GuitarTricks.com. Founded in 1998, Guitar Tricks offers 11,000 standard video lessons, delivered by their staff of instructors. In addition to their database, a key benefit is that on request, you’re able to book a private video lesson with an instructor, or a spot in a group session. The site, whose resources can also be accessed via its Android app, boasts a collection of 600-plus songs subdivided into categories including bluegrass, jazz, blues, metal, rock, surf, country, classical, and funk & soul. Each song comes with its own instructional video, and some come with their own scores.
One aspect unique to Guitar Tricks is the Core Learning System. Designed especially for beginning students and those returning to the guitar after a long break, the system allows you to structure a series of courses based on specifically what you choose to learn on the instrument. Like most all-in-one services, you also have access to tools including a scale finder, metronome, chord finder, and tuner, along with a few other customized exercise programs.
Guitar Tricks is one of many online databases; other popular sites include:
JamPlay offers 6,500 lessons from over 90 instructors, which include celebrity artists like Bumblefoot (Guns N’ Roses), Steve Stevens (Billy Idol), and Mike Keneally (Steve Vai, Joe Satriani), as well as live video lessons in which site members can interact with the instructor.
Though they have fewer lessons to choose from, ArtistWorks offers instruction on a variety of instruments in addition to the guitar, from seasoned teachers including Paul Gilbert, Keith Wyatt, Tony Trischka, and classical guitarist Jason Vieaux. The site’s best feature is its video exchange, in which students can submit videos of themselves playing, and receive instructor feedback based on their technique.
Guitarcast, an online subscription learning platform from Stringletter Media, the company that publishes Acoustic Guitar magazine, offers hundreds of instructional videos from master teachers at AG, Hal Leonard, Homespun, and others, and caters to acoustic and electric players of all levels and styles.
With the largest database online, TrueFire has 40,000 lessons with 140 plus instructors, including Muriel Anderson, Tommy Emmanuel, Laurence Juber, and Adam Levy.
An entirely free service, JustinGuitar offers over 1,000 lessons and appears on several “best online guitar resources” lists.
THE MULTI-TOOL EXPERIENCE
Outside of all-inclusive software programs and lesson databases, there are several incredibly useful apps that are available to the self-taught musician.
Offering a very basic yet timeless function is Roni Music’s Amazing Slow Downer—which does just what it says: it slows down recorded music without affecting the pitch. It’s available as software on both Macs and PCs, and now there’s an ASD app for Android and Apple devices that can connect to tracks on Spotify (with a Spotify Premium account).
Available on Apple, PC, and Android devices, EarMaster 7 Pro includes 2,500 exercises for ear training and sight-singing, along with fundamental music theory and rhythm study. The range of exercises is interactive and designed for all skill levels.
With a database of 2,000 songs, FourChords is an app for Android and Apple devices that breaks down songs into four simple guitar chords to make them easy to follow for beginners. It also includes lesson tutorials from JustinGuitar, as well as the ability to adjust the key and tempo, track progress, and get feedback via audio signal processing tech (the same used in Yousician).
Chordify is a unique app that uses audio signal processing in a different way: It analyzes an uploaded song (from anywhere online, or your own hard drive) and outputs a measure-by-measure chord chart. It then allows you to play back, edit, and transpose the results. It’s available as an app for both Android and Apple devices.
You can find tablature and chord charts for nearly any song you’re interested in learning with Ultimate Guitar Tab, Songsterr, and GuitarTapp PRO. iReal Pro, and Guitar Jam Tracks are three examples of play-along apps that provide you with the backing tracks you need to play along with the songs you’re working on. There are a number of tuner apps available, but Guitar Tuna (from the makers of Yousician) is especially handy for its simplicity.
INSTRUCTOR FEEDBACK
A former New York City public school teacher, the aforementioned Dr. Powell also teaches at several universities in the NYC metropolitan area. (He assigns homework to his master’s level education students, to whom he’s teaching basic guitar for use in their own classrooms, on FourChords.)
“I think it’s a really exciting time for people who want to learn guitar,” he says. Especially in the realm of popular music education, Powell emphasizes the importance of applying your individual goals to your self-education. “Choosing the different resources that work for you, playing the songs that you want to play, and learning in the way you want to, is a better approach for engaging students to stay with playing the guitar throughout their lifespan.
“It starts with what you want to do. The people who are going to stick with learning a new instrument, whatever it is—it’s based on attraction to their interest. Because, if you’re really into it, when your fingers start hurting because you’re playing guitar chords and you haven’t built up calluses, that passion is what’s going to keep you coming back.”
Christopher Sampson—founding director of the popular music program and songwriting professor at USC Thornton School of Music—has had a multifaceted performing career on the guitar. He uses EarMaster Pro every morning as part of his daily routine. “It’s my equivalent of going to the gym,” he says.
“At the beginning level, I think these resources and these apps can be great entry points,” he continues. “They can offer really good starting points to get somebody on fire and interested, and there’s a lot to be said for that. Enthusiasm goes a long way.” When choosing the right educational app or program, Sampson says, “It has to work very intuitively so that I’m not working harder at learning the software than I am at learning the skills that I need.
“Ultimately, all music is self-taught,” Sampson adds. “For somebody to really achieve something interesting in music, they’re going to have to take all the concepts they gather, whether that’s via technology, influences, peers, and they’re going to have to figure out how to create their own style and sound.
“They have to teach themselves what this means to them. That’s a big step—but the self-initiative part of things, of students sparking their own learning process, is a great sign that they might be ready for that down the road.”
This article originally appeared in the July/August 2019 issue of Acoustic Guitar magazine.
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Guitarists of any level can improve their playing with Yousician. Whether you’re a beginner hoping to pick up the basics or you’re already advanced, our missions and exercises are perfect for building a wide range of skills. Learn chords, strumming, melodies, lead, rhythm, fingerpicking, and so much more!
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WHAT DOES THE GUITAR EXPERIENCE LOOK LIKE?
1. FRETBOARD
Here the tablature shows you which strings and frets to play. It’s the most common and easiest way to write music for guitar (but we have other options too!).
2. FOLLOW THE BALL
Follow the bouncing ball to see when you should play a note. You'll get instant feedback on your timing and the quality of the note you play.

3. SONG BAR
The song bar lets you know where you are in the song, as well as what's coming up. You can skip ahead, or set a loop for practicing the trickiest parts.
4. GAIN POINTS
Follow the bouncing ball and hit the notes on time to get more points. Make sure you practice a few times to get a top score, and then compete against friends!
LEARN HOW TO PLAY GUITAR
The guitar is one of the most versatile instruments around. Whether you want to strum chords, bang out a riff, shred your way through a solo, or play some beautiful fingerpicking, with a guitar there’s a whole world of amazing music to discover. At Yousician we love playing and teaching the guitar, and we hope you do to!
If you’re eager to start learning your new skill, you can go ahead and try our premium plan for free to get started. You’ll get immediate access to our full range of guitar lessons and videos. If you keep scrolling down, you’ll see why Yousician is the perfect companion to help you learn how to play the guitar.
TUNING YOUR GUITAR
An essential first step is to get your guitar in tune, so it sounds great. Yousician has a built-in tuner that will guide you through step-by-step – it listens to you play a string, and tells you whether it’s too low or too high. It’s designed to be as simple and straightforward as possible, and even gives you a nice little “ping” to let you know when you’ve got a string in tune.
In the picture you may notice that each string has a name: from top to bottom as you hold the guitar, they are E A D G B E. To remember this, try using the phrase “Eddie Ate Dynamite, Good Bye Eddie” – it’s not only a helpful warning about the dangers of eating explosives, but the first letter of each word spells out E A D G B E. Now you know the names of your strings!
READING GUITAR TABLATURE
Music for guitar can be written down in an easy-to-read system called tablature, or tab for short. There are six lines, one for each string – it’s like looking down at your guitar, with the big E-string closest to you, and the little E-string furthest away. Notes are written on the string you’re meant to play, with the number telling you which fret to use: 0 (open), 1, 2, 3, and so on.
In Yousician, you’ll learn step-by-step how to read tablature and play lots of fun songs, from custom-written originals to help you build skills, to must-know traditional tunes and popular songs in all styles. As you go, we’ll cover everything you need to know, including using different fingers, playing notes on the higher frets, building speed, playing scales, and using more advanced techniques like slides and hammer-ons.
If you prefer, you can switch to view ‘standard notation’ (those familiar little black dots), or see tab and standard together. At Yousician we offer a range of notation views, so you’re in the driver’s seat, and can learn to read guitar music the way that suits you.

HOW TO PLAY GUITAR CHORDS
When you play one note at a time, it sounds nice. When you play a few notes at the same time, it’s called a chord, and it sounds awesome! Chords are the building blocks of most popular songs, and learning a good vocabulary of chords is essential for any guitar player.
Chords are written down in chord diagrams. These are basically pictures of the guitar fretboard, showing you where to put your fingers. The dots tell you which notes to hold, and the color tells you which finger to use. Check out this E chord – the diagram tells you to hold three notes down, and strum the other strings open.

It can be tricky to learn new chords, but in Yousician we’ll take you through step-by-step guitar lessons, with videos, workouts, and fun songs to put your chords into practice straight away. We’ll also show exactly how to strum, like using the handy down-up pattern in the picture.

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HOW TO PRACTICE GUITAR
You’ve got a lot to take in when learning a new song – which notes to play, when to play them, and getting your fingers to do what you want. That’s where Yousician’s “practice mode” comes in! You can slow songs down as much as you need, repeat small sections until you’ve got them under your fingers, and build speed gradually until you’re ready to nail it at full speed. If you’re so inclined, you can even push yourself to achieve gold stars for 100% accuracy, and climb the leaderboards! In Yousician, you’re in charge, and you set your own pace to learn at the speed that works for you.
EASY GUITAR SONGS TO LEARN
With Yousician’s song library, you have access to a wide range of popular songs to play. As you’ll see, all songs are carefully graded from level 0 (complete newbie), all the way up to level 15 (Steve Vai style wizardry), so there’s always something just right for you to play. We even have multiple arrangements for each song, focusing on different elements of the music, and suitable for different ability levels.
One very well-known guitar song is Sweet Home Alabama by Lynyrd Skynyrd – it’s lots of fun to play, and a great one to have in your repertoire. In Yousician, you can choose whether you want to focus on playing the chords, riffs, melody, solos, or learn them all. This is an excellent way to build your musical understanding, and get a feel for the various elements that come together to make a song.
In the Yousician song library there’s a whole world of expertly-arranged music for you to explore, from acoustic classics like Hurt by Johnny Cash, to rock anthems like Everlong by Foo Fighters, to modern pop like ocean eyes by Billie Eilish. Have fun!
BEST WAY TO LEARN GUITAR
If you’re ready to build your musical skills on guitar, Yousician is here to help. We’ll take you through step-by-step guitar lessons, helping you learn and master a huge range of skills and songs, keeping things fun and motivating along the way.
Grab your guitar, and let’s play! Our free trial for the premium plan will give you a perfect kickstart. This will be an exciting and motivating learning journey. Have fun with Yousician, and we’ll see you at the next jam!
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