In this TrueFire review, we’ll check out their guitar lessons along with the features, courses, and extras, to see if it’s the right guitar training website for you.
TrueFire is the oldest online platform for learning guitar – it was set in 1991, and it is the one that has the biggest number of courses and lessons.
At TrueFire there are lessons for everybody – from complete beginners to experienced, professional guitar players. The site is designed with a huge amount of attention to detail, it is an easy-to-use and intuitive one.
This platform is mostly dedicated to teaching styles and techniques, and it doesn’t offer a lot of song lessons, so if you are about to become a serious guitar player and musician, subscribing to TrueFire is the right decision. Also, this site is bassist-friendly too – from beginner to advanced there are lessons for every low-end musician.
TrueFire Website Format
Contents
TrueFire’s design is a perfect one for learning guitar – it is practical and intuitive to the point that every person can use it without any trouble, and even people that are not very good at computers can get it.
The first thing you see on the site is the main menu tabs:
- Courses
- Learning Paths
- Private Lessons
- Jams
- Sales
- Live
- Channels
- Educators
Hovering your mouse pointer over these tabs will show you their insides. Every single course, guitar lesson, and video on TrueFire is super easy to get to with this menu.
TrueFire Guitar Courses
TrueFire’s total number of lessons and guitar courses incredibly big – there’s over 700 courses as well as 40,000+ video lessons. As we mentioned in the intro, everybody that wants to learn guitar playing is welcomed on TrueFire, beginners, intermediate players, and experienced players – there are courses for everybody.
The first thing you’ll see after you subscribe is the “Learning Path” choice selection – these paths are available: Rock, , Blues, Jazz, Country, Acoustic, Rock, and Bass.
TrueFire’s courses are pretty limitless. They have one for almost all genres including:
- Acoustic
- Americana
- Blues
- Blues Rock
- Classical
- Country
- Fingerstyle
- Flamenco
- Funk
- Hard Rock/Metal
- Jazz
- Jazz Blues
- R&B/Soul
- Rockabilly
- Singer-Songwriter
- World
At TrueFire there are also courses for other instruments:
- Ukulele
- Mandolin
- Banjo
- Bass
- Harmonica
- Dobro
Every course is designed in a step-by-step manner with video lessons, tabs, and additional information.
Types of Guitar Lessons
For complete beginners, in the “Learning Paths”, there is the “Learn Guitar 1” course that will walk you through all the basics that you need to know in order to get to the course “Learn Guitar 2”. After you’ve completed these courses, you can work on different songs, techniques, styles, etc.
Intermediate guitar players and Advanced guitarists can also go to “Learning Paths” and jump to the courses that they feel they need in order to improve their playing. As we mentioned, TrueFire is the platform with the biggest number of guitar lessons online, and there are tons and tons of materials that will interest guitar players of every level.
Although there are platforms that have bigger song lesson lists than TrueFire, there is a good amount of them on this platform too. TrueFire has 5 main song lesson types:
- Rhythm Covers
- Note-for-Note
- Song Elements
- Chord Melody Covers
- Fingerstyle Covers
At TrueFire there are tons of courses for all of the popular guitar playing styles (we mentioned them in the previous paragraph).
TrueFire Video Lessons
TrueFire has over 40,000 guitar videos! Well, being a platform that exists since 1991, this fact is not too weird.
All of the videos on this platform are filmed with a multiple-camera setup, which means you can see what the instructors is doing with both of his hands.
Most of the videos (the newer ones) are filmed in high resolution, except the older ones – well, they didn’t really have 4K in the nineties. The video player at TrueFire has a speed up/slow down feature and a looping feature. Some of the videos also have an auto-scrolling tab.
Of course, the video will always stay centered when you are watching it. Other relevant video lessons and courses are listed on the right of the video player. Underneath the video player is the more info like Tablature and Notation, the comment section, and sometimes a backing track.
TrueFire Guitar Instructors
TrueFire has a HUGE list of educators – there are over two hundred people that have made guitar lessons for TrueFire. All of them are hard-core professionals working in the music industry or music business.
Many of the TrueFire instructors are graduates from prestigious music schools while others have been working along side big musical acts, and some of them are big names themselves. Most importantly, most of the instructors have been teaching guitar a long time.
TrueFire lessons and courses are taught by some really famous guitar players too. Here are some examples:
- Steve Vai
- Tony Franklin
- Dweezil Zappa
- Tommy Emmanuel
- Mike Stern
- Robben Ford
- Larry Carlton
Songs, Backing Tracks, & Guitar Genres
The Song Lessons at TrueFire are divided into five categories:
- Rhythm Covers
- Note-for-Note
- Song Elements
- Chord Melody Covers
- Fingerstyle Covers
And while the song lesson list on this platform is not a huge one, all of the song lessons found on TrueFire serve the purpose of helping you to learn a certain technique or style of playing.
TrueFire has over 200 backing tracks that everybody can jam to – even those who don’t want a paid subscription. TrueFire also has developed an “In the Jam” program – a program that not only gives you the backing tracks, but it also allows you to mute or control the volume of the stems that make the backing track.
Every “In the Jam” backing track comes with TAB and Notation, Chord Charts, Scale Suggestions, etc. However, the “In the Jam” program does cost more.
TrueFire Lesson Prices & Cost
There are three available subscription plans at TrueFire: Monthly, Annual, and Lifetime.
- Monthly subscription: $19.95
- Annual subscription: $199
- Lifetime subscription: $1,999
Extra Features
TrueFire has all the extra features that a guitar student can think of. This includes: Scale Charts, Chord Charts, a Metronome, a Tuner, a big Student Forum, “The Riff” (a guitar journal with all sorts of articles focused on guitar playing, guitars, gear, tone, etc.), more than a thousand audio lessons, tone lessons, gear reviews, apps for both iOs and Android devices, giveaways, and whatnot…
We also must mention that Private “one-on-one” guitar lessons are also available on TrueFire, but they are paid additionally.
At TrueFire there are more than one million students at any given time – it is a great online guitar learning platform that offers a lot.
Recommendation
We recommend TrueFire to everybody that wants to expand its knowledge on guitar playing! Both complete beginners and Experienced Guitar players can learn from this site.
It is the oldest, and the biggest of them all. Try it, see for yourself!
