GuitarGate Review: Guitar Lesson Programs

Guitargate is a place for people of all skill levels to come and improve their talent. The program was created by Michael Palmisano, an award-winning teacher who graduated from the Musicians Institute in Hollywood, California. Guitargate was designed to recreate the experience of attending a world-class guitar school but online, from wherever you want, 24/7. Through watching and practicing the skills highlighted in the Guitargate videos, students should have a comprehensive, working knowledge of the guitar by the end.

Course levels for everyone

Guitargate is made up of course levels 1-8, blues guitar fundamentals, country guitar fundamentals, and a class called "The Successful Cover Band Playbook". The course levels range from teaching the very basic fundamentals of playing the guitar to learning progressions and arpeggios, hybrid picking, 7th chords, non-diatonic harmony, and more. In total there are over 6,500 videos and learning resources for you to dive into at Guitargate.

Weekly Zoom lesson

Each week there is a Zoom lesson from a guitar pro that's recorded for anytime viewing later on. You'll have it emailed to you each week and you'll have the opportunity to ask questions about course material, stay engaged, and dive into the songs you're interested in. Some of the most recent lesson topics we saw included multiple lessons on Grateful Dead songs, how to build your practice sessions, drop D tuning and voicing, connecting arpeggios, voice leading, Memphis riffs and grooves, and a Q&A session.

Ever-changing platform

At the bottom of each lesson is a discussion forum for students to connect and also provide feedback about the course. Guitargate looks for common threads in these forums about things in the lessons that need to be addressed and they'll make changes in the curriculum. This is part of their commitment to provide the best learning environment and up-to-date material for students. When they feel that an entirely new lesson needs to be created based on the feedback they've received, they'll create one.

First lesson is free

The first lesson at Guitargate is completely free to everyone. It's called "The Total Beginner's Course" and includes 16 lessons about chords, theory, rhythm, guitar tone, and technique. Subscribers get full access to everything on the site including live lessons. We appreciate that you can do this without paying anything so you get an idea of the format of the lessons and how much is included. This should be enough to help you decide if you want to sign up for the premium membership.

Yearly membership plan

Committing to a premium membership at Guitargate is no joke. You'll want to make sure you're really dedicated to the program since the only payment plan is a one-time payment billed yearly for $299.99. When you think of this compared to in-person guitar lessons, it's a steal of a deal. However, it is more expensive than quite a few other online guitar courses we've considered. Based on how the first lesson goes, you'll have to weigh whether or not this is worth it to you. And keep in mind that subscriptions can be canceled at any time but you will lose your course progress and all of your video submissions.

Good value for the money

Guitargate boasts that they have over 200,000 members who use their site. They don't have a Better Business Bureau profile or unfiltered reviews on their site, but we did dive pretty deep to see what people all over the internet had to say about using Guitargate. If it makes you feel any better about committing to the membership price, people are actually quite thrilled with this lesson platform. This is coming from both newbies and people who know their way around a guitar. People say that it is extremely comprehensive and they can easily pick up where they left off and start improving and learning right away. Guitargate does a good job of teaching music theory as well as how to play the guitar, which is a crucial combination. Students are happy with the quality of content, how many concepts are covered, and the value for the price.

Highly recommend

In the end, we highly recommend Guitargate. The best way to gauge whether or not this is the right route for you is to dive into their first lesson and see where it gets you. Even if you're beyond learning the basics, breeze through the videos to see how they are laid out, see if you like how things are explained, and make sure you feel confident that the instructors are well-trained. If you feel good about lesson #1, then surely there is plenty of course material to warrant paying for a year-long subscription. Guitargate has earned our highest rating.

On the GuitarGate website