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Monday, July 14th
JamPlay was built for aspiring acoustic and electric guitar players. The company is integrated with another company on our list called TrueFire. Rather than offering a one-time product, JamPlay has positioned themselves as a teaching service where they are continually producing new lessons to guide you along the way. Their full-service platform is meant for the absolute beginner or experienced musicians.
Create your own learning path
To simplify the process of JamPlay, they've laid out four main steps that you'll follow to get you started. First, you'll select your membership and get instant access to their platform and can start playing. When you set up your account, you can specify what skills you want to learn to create your teaching path. As you work and practice, JamPlay will monitor and keep track of your progress. And last, you'll be able to reach your goals as you take advantage of all the material available to you here. An average lesson is around 14 minutes, but ranges anywhere from 5 to 60, depending on the song and teacher. You can work as fast or slow as you want through these lessons on your own timetable.
Explore lessons before signing up
All of JamPlay's content can be accessed on Windows, Mac, Linux, iOS, Android, AppleTV, and Roku through the TrueFire app. The genres that their courses cater to include rock, blues, country, fingerstyle, metal, and jazz. If you click on the genre you're interested in, you'll be taken to a page on JamPlay's website with a list of classes you could take. You can read through the teacher bio, see an overview of what's taught in the course, and read the course details (how many lessons there are, the runtime, tabs, play along tracks, and so on). We recommend browsing through these courses before signing up to make sure there are plenty of lessons that you'd be excited to take.
14-day trial
The other thing you should do before committing to a membership is take advantage of the 14-day free trial at JamPlay. You'll get access to all of JamPlay and TrueFire's content of over 70,000 videos, a free course download of their top 20 guitar lessons, access to learning paths and song lessons, and a promo code for 20% off your first download purchase.
Unbeatable amount of content
Once your trial is up, you have two membership options. First, you could pay $29/month for an all access pass to the platform, or sign up for a year and pay $119.88 annually. This is a much better deal since it comes out to just $9.99 per month. The membership includes the JamPlay + TrueFire library of over 1,500 courses, over 450 song lessons, over 70,000 multi-angle video lessons from across all skill levels, over 40,000 tabs, standard notations, and guitar files, progress tracking, access to community threads, and more. The amount of content available to you here is beyond what we've seen through most guitar companies, but you won't get one-on-one teaching, which we know some people are looking for.
Satisfaction guarantee
Even though you get a free trial from JamPlay, they still offer a satisfaction guarantee. If you are dissatisfied with any aspect of what you paid for, you can contact them within 14 days for an exchange, credit, or refund of the purchase price.
Mixed student reviews
The Better Business Bureau gives JamPlay an "A+” rating. On JamPlay's website, they have a host of YouTube videos with user reviews and pages of testimonials from students. All of them are 5 out of 5 stars, so we aren't sure that they're unfiltered. We did find on some third-party sites that people had mixed feelings about the effectiveness of this site. Some said that for absolute beginners, knowing where to dive into the lessons is a little complex. A lot of people said they liked the teachers and found the tools useful, which is a plus. But we wouldn't say that this is everyone's favorite platform for learning guitar.
Lacking structure
We felt like there wasn't a lot of structure on JamPlay's site. It's amazing to have so many videos for students to use, but if they aren't well organized and outline a clear learning path, then this just feels complicated and confusing. The pay-per-month fee feels a little steep to us, but committing yearly might not be what everyone wants either. We're glad to see that there's a free trial here and a 14-day satisfaction guarantee. You should undoubtedly take advantage of these before signing up to see if you like the way this program works. JamPlay has not earned one of our top ratings, but still could be a good option.
There are a lot of incredible musical instruments you could choose to learn, but the guitar is a crowd favorite for quite a few reasons. It's easy to tote around and bring a song to life at a moment's notice. It goes beautifully with so many other instruments and if you are able to sing, then you're a walking performance. Whether you're casually jamming with friends, playing at a formal event, or just finding solace by yourself and enjoying a melody, having the talent to play the guitar is invaluable.
No matter if you have a young kid interested in learning to play the guitar or you're getting up in age and still have a zest for developing new hobbies, there are easily-accessible guitar lessons perfect for your level. Even those who have taken years of guitar lessons and play quite a few songs can continue to learn and move up in their skills. Online guitar lessons can meet you where you're at and provide the convenience of learning on-the-go whenever you have time.
There are quite a few platforms that offer guitar lessons online. They all take on a variation of teaching styles, so what works for one person might not be the best choice for another. Maybe you want to work one-on-one with a teacher online for constructive feedback and to hold yourself accountable to someone. Or maybe you're the type of person who just wants to learn behind closed doors on your own timetable and go at your own pace. Luckily, a few companies out there offer free trials to give you a taste of their platform and choose the one that will benefit you most.
From online guitar lessons, you'll learn everything you'd learn in-person with a teacher. Plus, it's usually much more affordable. You'll cover hand positions, how to find different notes and string them together, strum patterns, and how to read music. You can usually choose your favorite songs and learn to play those, which makes the process much more exciting.
We've done a lot of the important research regarding some of the best online guitar lesson options, but we recommend you keep a few things in mind when you're differentiating between companies:
The experts at Top Consumer Reviews have researched the most important things you'd need to know about choosing a guitar lesson program and ranked some of today's popular options. We hope this information helps you find a company that provides great resources for learning the guitar and builds your confidence as you improve your skills!
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