JamPlay.com or GuitarTricks.com?
As a result of all the hype around e-learning nowadays, we decided to do an evaluation of Jamplay, an online guitar lessons site, and compare it to GuitarTricks.com. We just wanted to see if a novice could learn how to play the acoustic guitar at the sites.
JamPlay.com assessment
Is Jamplay better?
During our review of Jamplay, we were very pleased. The website provides online video guitar tutorials for a very reasonable price of $11 per month (using annual regular membership), which is a laugh since a personal teacher costs approximately $55 by the hour.
Actually, it really is safe to state that Jamplay is better than a personal instructor. The teachers at Jamplay will answer your letters personally, so no loss there, however they also provide 1000’s of video guitar lessons addressing all types of music.
If you start out learning the acoustic or electric guitar at Jamplay, you will go through their 3 level learning process:
- Fundamental basic courses for novices,
- Style classes (for instance country, rock, etc.),
- and learning specific songs.
Beside the above, they also have
- Advanced lessons taught by established musicians
- Live webcam lessons, where you get to interact with the given teacher
- “In the style of” lessons, where you learn the specifics of a famous artist’s unique style
A number of guitar teachers have lessons about almost every style, which means you can choose the instructors that appeal to you. Some teachers are good, and some are not.
Styles covered at Jamplay:
Acoustic, Bluegrass, Blues, Folk, Funk, Jazz, Metal, Rock, Surf, Classical, Reggae, Spanish
What we liked about Jamplay:
- Excellent search functionality, which means you can find your way around the many video lessons.
- Nice selection of online guitar tools and games, that can help in the learning process
- Huge chord and scale library
Downsides:
- To download a lesson, you need to pay extra money on top of your subscription fee. Each download costs $3. GuitarTricks lets you download their lessons without paying extra.
- There are too many teachers teaching the same thing, as many teachers have courses on the same subject. However, this may be useful for those that simply fall in love with a teacher.
GuitarTricks.com assessment
Or is GuitarTricks better?
A GuitarTricks membership costs $10 with their annual membership.
The website is huge. They have thousands of video lessons covering all difficulty levels, covering many styles.
GuitarTricks also offers a number of helpful, downloadable guitar tools, such as:
- the metronome
- backing tracks player
- chord catalogue
- interactive learning games
Searching through the tutorials is also very easy, which is fantastic, because simply finding the thing you would like to learn from the many lessons they currently have would alternatively become a real pain.
How do you progress at GuitarTricks?
If you start learning guitar at GuitarTricks as a total beginner, you’ll go through their core learning system, which is a very well though out course that will get a novice player up to an intermediate level.
A great feature pertaining to advanced guitarists is that the search function lets you look for lessons in the styles of well known guitar players. This segment of GuitarTricks is named “By Inspiration,” and it allows you to find tunes performed by megastars from Eric Clapton, to Chet Atkins, to John Mayer to Gary Moore, etc..
Styles covered at GuitarTricks:
Acoustic, Bluegrass, Blues, Folk, Funk, Jazz, Metal, Rock, Surf
There are also modules that concentrate on the distinct style of guitar players, the so called “in the style of” lessons, covering artists such as:
Joe Satriani, Stevie Ray Vaughn, Jimi Hendrix, Chet Atkins, and numerous others…
The things we enjoyed about GuitarTricks:
- The Core Learning System is great for beginners. Short lessons and to the point.
- GuitarTricks developed a great website structure, helping to make finding the video tutorials you are interested in quick. This is necessary, because navigating this number of tutorials would be quite challenging otherwise.
- One of the greatest attributes we noticed through our assessment of GuitarTricks is that video clips and the guitar tools on the website are all downloadable, with the exception of song lessons.
- Reasonable costs compared to the volume of lessons on the site. Paying for this many lessons from a personal guitar teacher would otherwise cost you a lot of money, yet only $15 a month at GuitarTricks.
The things we didn’t like about GuitarTricks:
- There are some really old video tutorials, which are of very low production quality (roughly 3% of the video lessons).
Sample Video Lessons
GuitarTricks sample video
JamPlay sample video
There you have it, a sample of video quality from both sites.
So which is better? GuitarTricks.com or Jamplay.com?
Learning to play acoustic or electric guitar through GuitarTricks or JamPlay is a perfectly viable alternative to getting a private guitar teacher.
They both offer a wide range of advantages, that a private tutor simply cannot offer. The associated fee difference is one of the largest benefits of learning from online lessons, simply because it will cost a fraction of what one could typically spend on a private tutor.
With the above said, my opinion is the following:
GuitarTricks is better for beginners, since their beginner courses are more thought out and structured. Also, GuitarTricks has lots of songs to learn from, which is great for beginners needing motivation to keep on playing and practicing.
JamPlay is better for more advanced students. They have lots of advanced lessons from real artists, as well as useful online guitar tools that more advanced players will make greater use of.
Whichever way you go, save some money!
- Here is a link to a 2 week free trial on GuitarTricks. You need to enter your PayPal or CC info, but they won’t charge anything, and you can cancel from their site if you don’t want to stick around.
- And here is a 25% coupon code for JamPlay, you’ll save a few bucks: 72D4D0
Enter the code on this page.
I am just looking at the videos, comparing them, and the jamplay videos look cooler, so I think I’m going to go with jamplay. Or is that just the shiny wrapping?
Yeah, jamplay videos are definitely nicer made. They have more camera angles as well. But to tell you the truth, those animations and stuff are just edits. The real educational material is not affected by them at all. It really depends on the lesson. You can’t make a crappy teacher teach any better, by adding more camera angles and rotating text 🙂
I’m just saying that you shouldn’t make your decision based on the skills of the animation team. Look at the lesson plans, sign up for the free accounts, watch the demo lessons, and compare the features of each site.
I just had someone email me about which site to choose, in case they just want to learn songs, so I thought I would post my reply here as well, since this might be interesting to others as well.
GuitarTricks has way more song lesson than Jamplaym around double right now. This is a weak area of Jamplay actually, since a lot of the songs they do have, are not very popular songs. I think this really comes down to the focus of each site. Jamplay focuses more on intermediate+ players, so they release a lot of lessons, which can teach you how to make music yourself, improvise, things like that. GuitarTricks is aiming more at the beginner-intermediate crowd, and people who may not want to become super master ninja guitarists, they just want to play nice songs.
I think this is the reason GuitarTricks has so many new songs all the time. They also have regular “song funds” as they call them, where they’ll take $20 off their yearly price for a week, get lots of new subscribers, and use the money to buy the license to more new songs. For example, they just released a bunch of new Rolling Stones songs as well.
So if you are into learning songs, than GuitarTricks is a better bet. But do your research. Google Jamplay songs and Guitartricks songs, and compare the song lists yourself.
Thanks for this review, it’s just what I’ve been looking for. Been looking at both these sites for a while now, since I’m sick and tired of learning through youtube and not really getting anywhere. I know the basics and can play songs, but I don’t feel myself developing. It’s probably the lack of structure, as you mentioned it in your post. I was also looking at theguitarlesson.com because of the animated tabs, that looks pretty cool as well. But I’m going to go with guitartricks now instead of jamplay, I’m gonna try the free 2 week period, and see how I like it. Hopefully it will give me what I need to start getting better, I’m tired of playing the same old things all the time.
Hey porter, I know exactly what you’re talking about, I have a friend who couldn’t advance with youtube lessons as well. They are fun for a while, but once you start jumping in between videos and not really knowing what to do with them, it looses it’s merits.
Of course, youtube has the advantage of being free, but the pay-for sites are really a lot better.
I really think forking out $10 per month for online guitar lessons isn’t much, even when somebody is broke. I mean it’s the equivalent of a McDonald’s meal.
Go ahead and give GuitarTricks a shot, it’s a great site run by great people.
I’m honestly confused on what to do, on one hand i wanna play neat songs which guitar tricks has an advantage in, while i also want to be an expert in just all around guitar playing which jamplay seems like a better choice for, but the real kicker to why i’m so confused is because i don’t know if guitar tricks offers a fingerstyle course like jamplay does. Don’t get me wrong i’m sure they have lessons for it but to put it bluntly i wanna play extremely good finger style guitar as well as electric guitar, sure guitar tricks has electric guitar lessons everywhere you look but i never see or hear finger style mentioned in guitar tricks, honestly i just want a clear answer on what i should go for to specialize in finger style (learning popular songs like for example perfect by ed sheeran i’m guessing can also be done on jamplay as i believe it has lessons on making personalized arrangements for songs ? i’m not sure)
Hi there, so if you want to specialize in fingerstyle guitar, I’m guessing you’re already at an intermediate level. If so, than yes, Jamplay would be better for you. They do have several specific fingerstyle courses. They just launched a blues fingerstyle curse as well. Guitartricks has various fingerstyle lessons, but nowhere near as many as Jamplay.