I would estimate that there are literally hundreds of thousands of guitar-related websites on the Internet, with a few hundred popping up every month. While many of these sites will have something valuable to add, I tried to collect the best guitar websites, the ones that I think will be most useful to my guitar students.

Now, this is nowhere a definitive list or guitar directory, but it's a good start.

If you find a site that you think is innovative and worthy of being called one of the best guitar-related sites on the net, then please leave a comment and if I agree, I'll add it to this list. Oh, and don't just spam comment links. If you don't explain why you think your proposed guitar site is awesome, I'll just delete your comment.

Instead of just presenting an insanely long list, I've separated the sites into categories to make everything easier to digest and find. Click on a category and you'll magically be taken to that part of the page.

Paid lessons

Higher quality guitar lesson sites will offer some free lessons, but charge a recurring fee for access to all tutorials and content. The Internet has evolved from simply providing video lessons. The best sites will offer added value stuff, like interactive guitar learning games and guitar tools, so stuff that makes a guitar student's life easier.

But I think the main benefit of paid guitar lesson sites is that they have lots of well outlined courses. YouTube and free sites don't have structured courses, so guitar students end up jumping from one lesson to the next and not learning much.

I have a separate lengthy post on the top sites offering online guitar lessons, but here is an abridged list of the best paid-for guitar lesson websites:

GuitarTricks

guitartricks-best-sites

GuitarTricks.com is a video guitar lesson website with literally thousands of lessons. They have lots of teachers teaching guitar lessons in all genres and difficulty levels. They also have several online guitar tools that guitarists will find useful.

Presently, they cost $14.95 per month, or if you pay for a year in advance, the monthly rate goes down to $10.75 per month. They also have a 2 week free trial offer

JamPlay

jamplay
JamPlay.com is very similar to GuitarTricks.com, the biggest difference is that JamPlay has better website designers and video editors 🙂 So basically they are prettier, but otherwise are very similar. I actually have a post on the difference between JamPlay and GuitarTricks to set things straight.

They cost $19.95 per month, or if you pay a year in advance, the membership comes out to $11.66 per month. Chump change for the amount of content you get from the site, in my opinion, the same goes for GuitarTricks.com.

TrueFire

truefire2

TrueFire.com is another massive guitar lesson site, catering to guitarists of all levels. You can stream their material online for a flat monthly or yearly fee, and also order their courses on DVD. TrueFire really shines in the number of very specialized courses it offers. It's also worth noting that Steve Vai and Tommy Emmanuel are among their teachers. They also have a neat jam play software package called In The Jam, which allows you to play with a "real" band and control each band member individually.

Here is a 25% coupon for purchasing anything on Truefire.

LickLibrary

Lick Library

LickLibrary.com is another video guitar lesson site, but their material is more advanced than the previous. They have lots of DVDs as well, which can be purchased online or in music stores.

Their lessons can also be viewed online for GBP10 per month, which is around $15 right now.

TheGuitarLesson.com

theguitarlesson-best-sites

And last but not least, TheGuitarLesson.com, a video tutorial website focusing on beginner guitarists. The video lessons are very easy to follow, since each tutorial has on screen animated tablature and chord diagrams, so it's great for beginners.

There are several pricing plans starting at the $1 three day trial, $9 monthly membership, or the 9 month membership which comes out to $6 per month.

Free lessons

Remember the saying, "You get what you pay for!" Well, it's not always true.

There are some guitar lesson sites out there that offer quality, relevant tutorials without asking for money. Of course, everyone's got to make a living, so these sites generate income by asking for donations, selling products, or recommending other sites for a commission.

But either way, the main product of the following sites is totally free, so here are some of the best free guitar learning websites:

JustinGuitar

justinguitar2

The video lessons you'll find on justinguitar.com are not just useful, but structured as well. He has courses covering different genres and in various difficulties as well. Of course, the production value isn't as high as with the paid sites, but the educational value is on par.

You can also purchase DVDs and books from Justin if you wish.

GuitarLessons.com

GuitarLessons.com

GuitarLesson.com is a good free website for anyone looking for video guitar lessons, the only downside is that their tutorials aren't structured as well as Justin's. But the material is still valuable, so another tool in your arsenal. They also offer paid lessons, but if you're going to pay, I would recommend GuitarTricks over them.




Song tablature

Of course, when you learn the guitar, you'll want to play your favorite songs as well. Why else would you bother? (Other than looking cool of course...) So anyhow, there are many tabs websites out there. The free tablature sites are community based, meaning any given song is tabbed and uploaded by a member of the community, so any regular person. This will mean that a lot of the tabs will be bad, but thankfully, the best tablature sites have rating systems, where other people can vote on how accurate and useful the given tablature is. This saves you from looking over 89 versions of a song's tablature.

So without further ado, here are the best guitar tablature websites:

Ultimate Guitar

UltimateGuitar.com

Ultimate-guitar.com is the biggest tablature website on the internet. If the song's been written, you'll find the tabs for it on Ultimate Guitar. In fact, you'll probably find several tablature version on the site to any give song.

911 Tabs

911tabs

The cool thing about 911tabs.com is that it scrapes the tablature pages of every tablature website, and returns all of them for you. So let's say the version of Smells Like Teen Spirit you find on UltimateGuitar is not to your liking, hit up 911tabs, and a search will reveal the relevant page on every tablature website there is. It can be overwhelming, but it beats going to each site one by one.

Guitar Pro tabs

Guitar Pro tabs

This Guitar Pro tabs site offers what it says, free tabs for the Guitar Pro software. You can also purchase their entire database of tabs for $9, giving you an endless supply of tabs, enough for several lifetimes.

Online guitar tools

Awesome online guitar tools can be created thanks to the modern web technology of today. There are tools to replace not just the software you would otherwise have to download, but also physical hardware. Not to mention guitar teachers...

All right, so here are the most useful guitar tools you'll find online:

Chordbook

ChordBook.com

The interactive guitar chord and scale generator & finder on chordbook.com is unmatched in user experience. It used to be a Flash based website, but they recently converted it to HTML5, which means it'll work perfectly on mobile devices as well. Way to keep up with technology!

Music Theory

MusicTheory.net

MusicTheory.net is similar to the above site, but this one includes some guitar related exercises as well, such as tests to help you learn the fretboard, etc. This site is not made with Flash, so it should run perfectly on all mobile devices, which is great! If you want to learn even more theoretical things, make sure you visit out music theory for guitar lessons.

Drum machine

drumbit

If you don't feel like downloading drum tracks, or want to create something of your own, you'll definitely want to have a look at Drumbit. It's a free online drum machine (mobile friendly), you can easily add all kinds of drum sounds and create a custom, looping drum track to play along with.

Acousterr

acousterr

Acousterr.com is one of those really simple, yet really useful sites that make your life easier. Its tab maker lets you create perfect monospace tablature very easily, since all of the formatting is done for you. If you ever set out to create monospace tabs, you'll know that formatting would be the hardest part of it. It also plays your tabs, an added bonus.

And my favorite part, the line-break. If you've ever tried to create monospace tabs, you know that the worst part is having to put the tabs in a new line. With acousterr's tab maker, you just press enter and all the tabs from that point will enter into a new section of tabs.

ChordChord

chorchord.com

ChordChord.com is a nifty little site, it generates great sounding chord progression for you at random. You can tweak a few settings, and even improvise along with your newly created "backing track". It's also interesting to see the large combination of chord progressions that sound great, which is especially important for beginners stuck in the I-IV-V scene.

WikiLoops

WikiLoops.com

WikiLoops.com is a site where you can download all sorts of backing tracks and loops created by other people. Unlike GuitarBackingTrack.com, these backing tracks are not song specific. You have a great search form, where you can pick your genre, time signature, tempo, key, and be presented with free backing tracks you can use as you see fit.

News

If you're craving some news on your favorite bands, guitar brands, interviews, or anything from the guitar world, there are several guitar sites that will suit your appetite for guitar news. I can't really too many specific things about these sites, since they all post guitar related news stories, so this is a simple list of the best guitar news sites on the web:

Guitar World News

Guitar World News

Guitar World news, a site on guitar news.

Music Radar News

Music Radar News

Music Radar also has a section dedicated to guitar related news stories.

Ultimate Guitar News

UltimateGuitar News

The same goes for Ultimate Guitar news.

Technical

There are many technical aspects of the guitar, which guitarists of intermediate-advanced levels will be interested in. These range from custom rigs, guitar wiring, changing pickups, all the way to building your own amps and guitars. As you would expect, the Internet has info on this as well, you just need to know where to find it.

BuildYourGuitar

BuildYourGuitar

Have you ever thought how cool it would be to build your own guitar? Or maybe modify a few things on your existing guitar? Well, if you have, than BuildYourGuitar.com should be your first stop. You'll also find an exhaustive list of guitar building links, books, videos, sites on this website.

EquipBoard

equipboard

If you ever wonder what kind of guitars, amplifiers, effect pedals your favorite guitarists use, have a look at equipboard.com/role/guitarists. It is a community driven site, where people can upload the gear that guitarists use, as well as proof of it being used (YouTube video, image). You'll find pretty much every famous guitarist you can think of, and even not so famous ones. Being a community site, there are some incorrect things though, which are usually marked by members of the community.

Software/Apps

Not everything is in the Cloud (yet), there are a couple of really useful guitar software that you need to download, install, and use on your computer. I'm guessing these will be in the Cloud in 10 years time as well, but for now, here are my picks on the best guitar software:

Guitar Pro

Guitar Pro

GuitarPro is hands down the best guitar tablature editing/playback software available. The possibilities you have at your fingertips is just huge, not just for composing, but also for learning your favorite songs. Guitar Pro also has built in tools, such as a metronome, tuner, scale/chord finder. Check out this tutorial on getting started with Guitar Pro to see why this is such a useful tool.

eMedia Guitar Method

eMedia Beginning Guitar Method

The eMedia guitar method is an interactive guitar instruction program aimed at total beginner guitarists. The program is pretty old, it could use a facelift, but the material in it will be really useful to people just picking up the guitar, who don't want to learn from online lessons or a guitar teacher. eMedia also made other guitar method software, one for intermediate guitar, the other for blues, but they weren't nearly as good as their beginner program.

If you are interested in this program, you can buy it cheaper on Amazon.com, than on the eMedia website. Just so you know 😉

General coolness

If something is just plain cool, you gotta let people know about it, right? Yes! These sites don't really, or more precisely, don't completely fall into any of the set categories, but you need to see them.

Guitar backing track

GuitarBackingTrack.com

Playing along to your favorite songs is much funner than playing just your guitar, that's why GuitarBackingTrack.com was created. You'll be able to download the guitar backing tracks to thousands of really famous songs. Some backing tracks are better, some are worse, as this is a community-based site as well, where people can send in their backing tracks.




All right, that's my time, not it's your turn. Which sites did I miss? If you think there are any other guitar-related websites that are TRULY great, leave them in the comments below. Make sure you leave at least a 2 paragraph long description of why you think your proposed site should be on this list.

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16 Comments

  1. For the Software/Apps section, would it be ok if I mention my software: GuitarSharp. It started off as something which was just of use to my guitar learning/practice, but since then more and more features have been added by request. Classical and tablature use is supported, plus playback training, VST and MIDI. Ease of use is the key aim though with drag n’ drop editing and auto formatting supported. We would really appreciate people’s thoughts and suggestion so that more features can be added. A free trial version for Windows is available from http://www.GuitarSharp.com. Thanks!

    1. Hi there, I had a look at the demo video of your software. The drag and drop feature looks interesting, but overall, is still far from being able to compete with Guitar Pro. The 15 GBP you are charging seems a bit rich for it’s limited use. Consider making it free and ad supported perhaps? Just a thought.

      1. Hi Tom, Thank you very much for taking the time to check out the demo video. Yes, the drag and drop functionality is a great feature and makes editing really easy, but that video was only concentrating on that element of the software for composing. The software is also aimed at players so supports some pretty unique features like speech recognition playback training, VST Effects and video tutorial hosting. The comparisons with GuitarPro are inevitable, and its recognised file format is a key reason GuitarSharp allows those files to be imported and edited. But at around a quarter of the price of GuitarPro we think it makes good value. Your suggestion of making it free and ad based is something we are currently exploring as an alternative to the 30 day trial version so keep tuned. Thanks again very much for your reply, and if you want to download the free 30 day trial version and give it a whirl we would really appreciate your feedback. Regards. Phil

  2. Thanks for curating this list, very helpful. I’d like to shamelessly offer up https://www.essyguitartab.com as a candidate, it’s a recently launched website that I’ve helped develop.

    There’s a free, no-ad tool for viewing and finding chords that also allows you to create chord charts to print or export to PDF (essyguitartab.com/chords).

    There’s another for learning scales (essyguitartab.com/scales).

    And finally there’s a tab app where you can save, print, play, and share tabs that you create. This has a free version and also a paid subscription with some extra features.

    We’re still working on full mobile compatibility but I think it’s a great product as it stands. I appreciate your consideration.

    1. Hi, the site looks pretty good and useful. Let me know once you get the mobile optimized version running, without that it can’t make the list, most people are browsing on their phone nowadays.

  3. Fot tablature creation I would recommend Acousterr , they have a really good tab maker application with nice sounds and great design. Google acousterr tab maker and you should be able to find it. I personally started using it recently for my compositions and found it pretty powerful and easier to use than guitartabcreator

    1. Thanks for the recommendation, yes, it does seem to be better than guitartabcreator. I’ll update the list to reflect this soon.

  4. Great to see this post up and offering a diverse amount of guitar websites. Guitar is now under pressure and we all need to keep working together to maintain the guitars popularity and appeal.

  5. Hey,
    As the founder of wikiloops.com, I have to admit I am quite flattered to see the ‘loops made it to this exquisite list, thank you very much for that!
    I just wanted to let you know that we have taken your observation serious and added the previously missing “filter by musical key” to the latest search engine upgrade on wikiloops.com 🙂
    Again, thank you very much for mentioning the project here, as a free service without a promotion budget we really benefit from such recommendations.

    1. It’s great to see that you are actively developing your site Richard, keep up the good work, it’s really useful to a lot of people.

  6. I can know many kind of effective tips from here. This is an interesting article. i still do ALL of this tricks.
    Thanks

  7. Thank you a lot for sharing this with all of us you actually know what you
    are talking approximately! Bookmarked. Kindly additionally discuss with my website =).

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