learning basic notes, a few simple chords, and trying to figure out how to push down on the strings so they don’t buzz. You bought your first guitar and dove in. You knew who you wanted to play like, what songs you were going to learn, and maybe even had plans for recording your own music. In this sense it does a better job of appealing to younger players than TrueFire (opens in new tab), one of its main competitors.You started trying to learn guitar with all the motivation in the world. It’s paced exactly as a well-honed beginner course should be, with some fresh approaches to exercises that utilize the app’s graphical style. Chord changes, strumming patterns, time signatures and fingerstyle dominate the nine stages with the minor pentatonic and 12 bar blues jamming only appearing towards the end. Sandercoe’s course recognizes a fundamental truth of guitar rhythm must come first, and without it you’ll never progress as a player. But the value here is this feels like an intimate one-to-one lesson – and that’s no mean feat when you’re watching on a phone’s screen! Which is just as well because there’s no means to slow the speed down like many other lesson providers off in their players (you can slow the tempo in the Songbook section though). The pace is gentle Sandercoe’s teaching style is confident and clear with insider tips that come from years of experience – there’s never the sense he’s rushing your through a lesson.
But all you beginners out there don’t need to be nervous. From the beginning, it’s clear this app is designed to get you playing straight away.
Sandercoe advises you to check his website for advice on the fundamentals on holding a guitar and pick. After a very comprehensive intro to this version of the app from him, the first lesson jumps straight in, teaching you to play an A chord with his acoustic. Justin Sandercoe’s approach to learning guitar puts a lot of emphasis on chords and building up to using them to play songs, which is a point of difference from the likes of Fender Play (opens in new tab). Justin Guitar Power: Suitability for beginners It’s a nice incentive (though you can cheat in the settings and tick all the stages as complete). All the Stage one-nine course songs are here and split into relevant categories and you can unlock them as a kind of reward when you learn specific chords in the course’s Learning Path. These are simplified chord-based versions of classic and contemporary songs designed to get you having fun and using the lessons you’ve learned in the course – more will be added with ongoing updates. Tabs at the top allow you to see photos of how all the chords in the song look like fretted on a guitar, see and hear how the strumming pattern should sound (this is really important for chord rhythm work), and the last tab shows you how you could play it in fingerstyle if you choose to. It’s looks a bit like a mix of karaoke and the Guitar Hero games – but playing for real. The chord names are shown in the main screen as the song plays, while the chord positions on a guitar neck are shown on the right. It’s a bespoke system that autoplays a backing track while an instrument plays the vocal melody line (you can choose accompanying instruments or turn them off in the settings). The Songbook tab isn’t a portal to stream Sandercoe’s previous YouTube breakdowns of popular songs as we expected.