15 Best YouTube Guitar Lessons Channels

Best YouTube Guitar Lessons Channels

There’s never been a better time to start learning an instrument. Thanks to platforms like Youtube, there is now an endless amount of resources at our fingertips that we can take advantage of to learn everything from the beginner basics to super-advanced shredding techniques and everything in between. 

While it is pretty incredible to have so many choices at our disposal, it can sometimes be a little overwhelming and leave us with “option-paralysis” forcing us to spend more time scrolling through videos and channels while leaving us with less time to actually play the guitar. 

To help everyone out, we’ve compiled a list of some of the most popular and highly rated Youtube channels to help you find which one is best for you as you  

The Best YouTube Guitar Lesson Channels

  • Guitar Tricks
  • Justin Guitar
  • Marty Music (Marty Schwartz)
  • Guitar Jamz
  • The Art of Guitar
  • Rock On Good People
  • Active Melody
  • Andy Guitar
  • Guitareo
  • Guitar Mastery Method
  • Your Guitar Sage
  • Music is Win
  • Paul Davids
  • Rick Graham
  • Lick Library 

Guitar Tricks

First in our list is Guitar Tricks, which has been a staple in the guitar community on Youtube for many years, with their first uploads going all the way back to 2007. Before YouTube, they were essentially the first major website offering online guitar lesson content back in 1998. 

In the past 14 years on youtube, they’ve accumulated over 145 thousand subscribers, and have over 15 million views on their videos. In total between their website and Youtube channel, they’ve got over 11000 lessons and playthroughs of over 1000 songs. 

The team at Guitar Tricks is composed of many different instructors and they cover a wide range of guitar playing styles and skill levels. If you want to learn rock guitar, they have a playlist that walks through the fundamental theories of rock guitar playing, mixed with song-learning to keep players having fun; same for nearly every other genre as well.

The channel is really well organized, where subjects are broken down into short videos and sorted into playlists which makes things much easier to digest.

While some channels tend to focus on a specific type of playing or learning, Guitar Tricks has put a ton of work into making their channel one where players of any background, genre, skill level, or experience level can all find lessons that fit their needs.

As I mentioned they got their start as an online guitar lessons website, which is still quite active today. They do have a subscription model to access the lessons which runs $19.99 and offers access to some lessons that aren’t on their Youtube channel. They offer a 14-day free trial if you’d like to check it out and see if it’s worth the investment for yourself.

Guitar Tricks has a well-deserved reputation for creating high-quality lessons for any player, and that’s exactly why they’ve been such a popular choice for guitarists for over 20 years.

Justin Guitar

Justin Sandercoe has been one of the most prolific online guitar teachers of the past 20 years. Justin studied at the guitar institute in London and before focusing on lessons, he was a professional touring musician and songwriting so he has a great set of knowledge to draw from.

The justinguitar.com website was started back in 2003 and currently provides access for over 1300 lessons. In 2006, Justin switched over to Youtube offering free digital lessons, and he’s had tremendous success.

With nearly 1.5 million subscribers, and over 215 million views, his channel is easily one of the most popular in the guitar community.  

His channel currently has just over 1000 uploads, which vary from beginner theory and song learning, to advanced chord progressions and even hour long live Q&A sessions which are becoming more popular in the Youtube community.

Overall, Justin is just an excellent teacher and works hard to make content for all players. HIs lessons are practical and easy to comprehend so it’s no wonder he has so many subscribers these days.

Marty Music (Marty Schwartz)

I’ve you’ve ever googled the term “guitar lessons” you’ve likely seen Marty’s face up come in the search results. He has been doing online lessons since around 2005. He originally started recording videos as a tool for his in-person guitar students to use as a learning tool, and he quickly realized how useful it would be to post full lessons online full time.

Marty currently has 2.98 million subscribers on Youtube and is considered one of the most prominent teachers in the online lessons world.  He releases content nearly every single day and tends to focus on teaching players how to learn songs. This is a big part of his success, as playing songs is one of the most fun exercises guitarists at any level can do. Many teachers believe a mixture of theory and song learning is a great way to keep students growing and keep them interested. 

In addition to song and theory lessons, Marty is known for doing monthly interviews called “Guitar Tours” where he sits down with a professional guitarist and discusses tricks, techniques, experiences, and stories. He also has a great collection of videos revolving around guitar gear, which are great. 

Marty also has a website that offers exclusive content, as well as a Patreon page. If you can’t get enough of the Marty Music page, these are a great option to pick up some extra tips and tricks.

Marty has been one of the most successful online lesson pioneers, and he continues to grow and evolve with the times. We’d recommend Marty Music for those who are interested in lessons with a mixture of talk and gear demos.

Guitar Jamz

Guitar Jamz is one of the premier guitar lesson channels which focuses strictly on lessons and has a resolving cast of veteran guitar teachers including the above mentioned Marty Schwartz, Tim Pierce (studio session guitar legend), Bret Papa, John Konesky (known for writing and playing with Tenacious D) and many more.

This channel has been around since 2009, and currently has 2.3 million subscribers. Being one of the most popular guitar related channels on Youtube, they are quickly approaching one billion views. 

The focus on many of their videos is song learning or focus on a particular artist. Some of their most popular videos and playlists are how to play songs by artists ranging from Adele, to Bob Marley, to Metallica. In addition to this, they do a lot of beginner videos that teach basic concepts like playing chords, and theory topics like scales and modes.

This channel is great for beginners. A lot of the song tutorials they focus on are beginner and intermediate level songs, and they are great about teaching things slowly and clearly.

The Art of Guitar

Mike G, the creator of The Art of Guitar channel, has been teaching guitar for over 25 years and creates excellent content for players of all experience levels on his channel. He originally created his website to upload videos to teach a family member who didn’t live near him. After seeing how helpful it was for him, he decided to branch out and share his teaching with the world.

Currently sitting at just under 700k subscribers on his channel, he has been voted one of the top 10 guitar channels on Youtube in recent years. He created the channel in 2009 and typically uploads several videos per week, currently approaching 600 total videos.

The video content on his channel is actually quite broad. Not only does he do lessons for all levels, he does tons of interesting content like “My favorite guitar licks” or “Angus Young’s 18 greatest guitar techniques” or “20 Super Mario sounds on guitar.” He also has a series called “brutally honest gear review” where he takes a piece of new gear and goes into great detail about what he likes and dislikes.

This wide range of content is a big reason he’s so popular; he can really bring out the fun goofy parts of playing music along with deep dives into really interesting topics. Not only is he an incredible guitarist and teacher, there’s also a significant amount of content for drummers and bassists as well.

Rock On Good People

The Rock On Good People channel is a direct descendant of the nextlevelguitar.com website which has been around since 2005. They were one of the first video based lesson websites to find success back then, and they continue to pump out great content to this day.

They officially joined the Youtube world in June of 2007, and have gained the fandom of nearly 350k subscribers in that time.

One of the most prolific channels on our list, they have uploaded just under 1700 videos to Youtube so far, and have been averaging 3-4 videos a week for quite some time.

Some of the most popular videos on this channel are titled things like “EZ Awesome Blues Licks” or “EZ Strumming Patterns.” The guys at RockOnGoodPeople seem to specialize in small, easy to tackle techniques and tricks that can be really fun to play.

In addition to lick lessons and technique videos, they also do some great gear demos and pedal reviews. If you like the content on this channel, and want to get even more you can check out their website for exclusive lessons – nextlevelguitar.com

Active Melody

If you’ve got the blues, the Active Melody channel might be your new favorite place to go for lessons. While some of the channels we mentioned have a rotating cast of teachers, Active Melody is fully operated and run by one guy named Brian.

Brian started this channel and his website back in 2010, and he’s gathered 392k subscribers in that time. His channel has just under 700 videos currently, and he averages about 3 uploads per week.

Most of his lessons are based around blues playing, including blues theory, tricks, lead and rhythm methods, scales, etc. One of the greatest things about Brian’s channel is that he tends to almost always have tabs available as well as backing tracks for you to jam along with. While it is rare, Brian does occasionally cover some gear reviews, and other practical musical advice like what the best apps for learning guitar are, or how to count time when jamming with others.

The Active Melody channel is a great resource for those players primarily interested in learning blues guitar. The ActiveMelody.com website has a subscription similar to the others we’ve discussed, and has additional content like personalized weekly lessons, backing tracks and tabs.

Andy Guitar

One of the biggest hurdles when learning an instrument from courses on Youtube, is how scattered they can be. Many channels have hundreds of videos, but no real structure to guide you on a productive path. That’s exactly what Andy set out to correct.

Andy started his guitar channel back in 2006 as one of the earliest content creators in this field, and he now has a massive 2 million subscribers, along with nearly 1400 videos.

The bulk of the content on Andy’s channel is split up into playlists which follow different learning paths. He has several beginner playlists including some fun ones like “10 Day Guitar Starter Course – Absolute Beginner?” where Andy challenges new players to play for at least 10 minutes for 10 days straight to start building good habits. He has several different variations of beginner guitar course playlists so this is one of the best channels for new guitarists.

Along with these learning path playlists, Andy also does a lot of videos teaching you how to play popular songs from some of the worlds biggest artists like Ed Sheeran.

Guitareo

Ayla Telser Mabe is the brain behind Guitareo, who has been playing for many years and has a real passion for teaching others. While the Guitareo channel has featured a few different instructors over the years, Ayla is the current teacher featured in most videos and she does a fantastic job.

The Guitareo channel was created in 2009, and currently has just below 900k subscribers making them one of the most popular channels around. On average they’ve been dropping about 2 videos per week, with a guaranteed video upload every Friday.

The content on this channel is heavily focused towards beginners and covers a really wide range of subjects. One of my favorite videos of theirs is the “Navigating The Guitar Fretboard” video. Learning how to get around the neck is one of the most confusing things for many new players, but Ayla and the Guitareo team do a really great job of explaining things clearly and slowly. Another set of popular videos on this channel are the “Play Like Hendrix” videos where they break down iconic riffs and licks and help you learn to play like the legends.

While this may not be a real high priority for some of us, it’s worth mentioning that the Guitareo videos have really good video production. They almost always have a multi-camera setup that they use to make it easier to see the instructor speak and or / play. 

Guitar Mastery Method

While being one of the newer channels in our list, Guitar Mastery Method gained a lot of popularity pretty quickly. Started in 2014, they’ve amassed over 230k subscribers and have 200 videos uploaded as we speak. 

The channel was started by Charlie Wallace and it quickly grew into a large team with 5 other instructors and content creators.

The goal of the channel was to teach as many people as possible how to effectively and easily learn to play guitar. Because of this, much of the content on this channel is focused on teaching beginners the foundational knowledge you need to grow as a guitarist. 

While this channel doesn’t have as many videos as some of the other channels we’ve discussed, they cover a lot of really important lessons in what they do have; quality vs quantity. Rock, blues and Country are the main genres we see in their catalog, but there is also a great deal of theory lessons which cover everything from scales to triads to soloing over chord changes.

A new feature to Youtube is the “shorts” category, where you can upload quick videos usually under a minute long. The Guitar Mastery Method channel has taken advantage of this and have uploaded dozens of these quick guitar lick videos that are really cool.

Your Guitar Sage

Erich Andreas is one of the most identifiable names in the Youtube guitar lesson realm. He’s been uploading videos since 2006 and has covered nearly everything you could want to learn.

Your Guitar Sage is currently sitting well over 750k subscribers and has uploaded a whopping 1500 videos so far. He does weekly uploads as well as weekly live Q&A sessions where you can drop by and ask him anything you’d like (guitar related things of course.)

Some of the most popular uploads on the channel are things like “Know ONE Guitar Scale, Know Them All” which is a brilliant lesson about how nearly all of our music theory is connected. Another great one is “Fingerpicking for Beginners.” 

Erich does a great job of creating something for everyone on his channel. You’ll see many videos with the words “for beginners” in the title, but you’ll also see motivational advice about being a musician, interviews with songwriters, lots of live Q&A, and much much more.

If you check out the Yourguitarsage.com website, he does also offer exclusive lessons with tabs and backing tracks to help you get going. Also, if you’re a military veteran, Erich offers a free lifetime membership to the Your Guitar Sage website (really cool thing to do!)

If you’re looking for an interesting channel with a wide range of guitar based content, this is a great place to go.

Music is Win

Tyler Larson has become a huge name in the guitar section of Youtube in recent years. Thanks to his humorous content, and superior video production, his channel can be quite entertaining to watch. Tyler graduated from Berklee college of music, and is on a mission to share the guitar knowledge he learned with the world.

Tyler has been uploading videos to this channel since 2015, and now has an outrageous 1.5 million subscribers, along with nearly 1200 uploads.

The MusicIsWin website is where Tyler hosts his Guitar Super System education. This course is meant to take a guitar player from a beginner level to an expert level in a very short amount of time. It is a low monthly cost, which is quite appealing compared to some other online courses. Also, there is a trial period available if you’re curious about it.

I would consider Tyler a “shredder” level guitar player, where much of his content is based around these long extravagant solos that you’d hear from the likes of Joe Satriana and Steve Vai. 

The content he posts on his channel is all over the place. While there are many free lessons available, he is also quite focused on entertainment. Some of the most watched videos on his channel are things like him playing guitar with a fidget spinner (back when those were everywhere) and “playing the forbidden riff in a guitar store.” 

For a mixture of humor, gear reviews, interviews, and lessons, Music Is Win is an excellent choice.

Paul Davids

Possibly my personal favorite in this list, is the one and only Paul Davids. A guitarist and producer from the Netherlands, Paul is an incredible player and teacher with a great channel full of fun and inspiring content.

Currently, Paul has over 2.5 million subscribers making him the second most popular page in our list, right behind Marty Schwartz. There are 356 uploads on the Paul Davids channel which was started in 2015. 

The first thing you’ll notice about Paul’s videos is the extremely high production value. Paul uses a super high-end multi-cam setup with top notch audio and video.

Theory is a big focus on Paul’s channel, where many of his uploads feature popular songs that he breaks down into small theory lessons, such as “The Secret to a Beautiful Progression.” In this video he breaks down several songs, identifying what notes of a scale are used to trigger emotion and resolution. Theory can be boring, but when it’s presented this way it makes things much more interesting and relatable.

Paul offers some great full range guitar courses on his website which I’ve used myself in the past. His lessons are broken down into easy-to-digest modules with videos and documentation to go along with each step.

If you’re an intermediate player who is looking to get more comfortable with your theory and playing, Paul is an excellent resource to use.

Rick Graham

If your goal is to become the shredder you’ve always dreamed of being, Rick Graham should be your first stop. The blinding speed at which Rick plays is one of the most incredible things I’ve ever seen. Rick was one of the very first creators to upload online lessons to Youtube, especially for the world of guitar virtuoso material.

Rick has been regularly uploading since 2005, and is currently just below 250k subscribers. He’s uploaded nearly 800 videos in this time frame and racked up nearly 50 million views!

There’s no doubt that when you first click on Rick’s channel you’ll be presented with a video of a guy playing absolutely beautiful guitar leads as fast as humanly possible. The most popular uploads on his channel are things like “Killer Shred Technique” and his famous “Eric Johnson – Cliffs of Dover” cover which is just insane. 

While many of the lick learning videos he uploads are absolutely aimed at advanced shredding players, he also has a lot of practical fundamental knowledge where he covers basics like how to play comfortably so you don’t hurt your hands, and how to begin practicing improvisation.

Rick is just a brilliant player, and I highly recommend you give his channel a visit.

Lick Library 

The geniuses behind Lick Library have been working on guitar lesson contect well before Youtube ever existed, 1990 to be exact. They first started as a company that strictly made backing tracks for players to practice with and even play live with. These days, they’ve become one of the leading guitar lesson companies in the world.

Lick Library joined Youtube back in 2006, and have gathered just under 300k subscribers along with 1400 video uploads. 

The main focus on the Lick Library site and Youtube channel are based on playing like famous players, and often they are able to get the actual artists to stop by and help out. Some of the most famous uploads on their channel are videos on how to play like John Mayer and Jimi Hendrix, or John Petrucci. My favorite video on their channel are the playthroughs where Guthrie Govan stopped by to run through a few of his most famous tracks.

If you’re not really interested in focusing on theory, or need a break from that world and just want to learn to play something fun, Lick Library is a great choice for that. 

Conclusion

As you can see, we have a ton of great directions to turn for guitar lessons. Each of these creators offer a unique perspective and learning style, so our best recommendation is go take a look around, and see which channel best suits your needs and playstyle.

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