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200 Best + Free Guitar Courses & Certificates [2026]
Ranked by Michael Kuhlman, CourseDuck's founder, from student reviews across every provider. How we rank
Our guide: The Best Music Courses on Udemy in 2026: Piano, Guitar, Music Theory, Singing, Production and DJing
Our top picks
- Ultimate Beginner Guitar Masterclass [Udemy] - Best Paid Course
- The Professional Guitar Masterclass [Udemy]
- Acoustic Guitar and Electric Guitar Lessons: Getting Started [Udemy]
- The Professional Bass Masterclass - Bass 1, Bass 2, Bass 3 [Udemy]
- The Total Beginner's Guitar Course [Udemy]
- Learn Guitar in 21 Days [Udemy]
- Ultimate Beginner Electric Guitar Masterclass [Udemy]
- Learn Guitar: Zero to Guitar Fingerpicking in 30 days [Udemy]
- Classical Guitar Essentials - The Basics Part 1 [Udemy]
- SONGWRITING SIMPLIFIED: Music Theory, Melody & Creativity [Udemy]
About the best Guitar courses
Frequently asked questions
- Udemy and Eduonix are best for practical, low cost and high quality Guitar courses.
- Coursera, Udacity and EdX are the best providers for a Guitar certificate, as many come from top Ivy League Universities.
- YouTube is best for free Guitar crash courses.
- PluralSight, SkillShare and LinkedIn are the best monthly subscription platforms if you want to take multiple Guitar courses.
- Independent Providers for Guitar courses & certificates are generally hit or miss.
- Average
- $57,275 a year
- Middle half earn
- $38,500 to $74,000 25th to 75th percentile
- Full range
- $19,500 to $96,500
Share of US job postings in each pay band; the dark bar holds the average, the striped bars the 25th and 75th percentiles. Source: ZipRecruiter salary data, gathered when this guide was first published in October 2026.
Complete Guitar Lessons System - Beginner to Advanced (2025)
Forty hours and 340 lectures from a YouTube guitar teacher with four decades of lessons behind him, running from first chords through theory, fingerpicking, slide and blues licks.
Best for: Patient beginners who want one long, slow, methodical program that keeps going into theory, fingerpicking and blues.
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- Nearly 47,000 reviews at 4.5 stars, with five-star ratings making up nearly 60 percent of the total
- Covers far more ground than typical beginner courses: theory, fingerpicking, slide, blues and modes
- Slow, careful explanations that beginners and returning intermediates say build a real foundation
- Updated in July 2025, with PDF attachments on the lectures
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- Videos are talk-heavy; low-star reviews say a 20-second point can become a 10-minute lecture
- Structure feels like a loose reference in places, and some advanced modules run under ten minutes
- Wide camera angle makes the fingerpicking lessons hard to follow, according to one reviewer
1
Ultimate Beginner Guitar Masterclass (2026)
Henry Olsen's friendly 15 hour beginner guitar course, with a free chord book, a beginner blues section and nearly five hours of song tutorials, backed by 8,100 reviews at 4.7.
Best for: Complete beginners, or lapsed players, who want chords and real songs fast with a patient, chatty teacher.
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- A 42 page picture chord book and PDF handouts come with the course; one reviewer printed the book and calls it great.
- Nearly five hours of song tutorials, so the chords get used on real songs early on.
- Reviewers call Olsen clear and relaxed about mistakes; one has watched the course three times and keeps coming back.
- Refreshed in April 2026 and still collecting recent five star reviews.
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- Some strumming handouts reportedly don't match the video, and a few lessons are talk over practice.
- Bits look repurposed from YouTube, with subscribe prompts and a gig vlog that add little.
- Barre chords get a single 12 minute lecture, so the path past open chords is thin.
2
The Professional Guitar Masterclass (2017)
A GIT-style fretboard and theory course from Guitargate's founder that teaches CAGED, chord function and improvising to players who are past the beginner stage.
Best for: Players with six months or more under their belt who know chords but not why they work, and want to improvise without hunting for notes.
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- Reviewers say it ties together theory they had gathered piecemeal from books, other courses and even Berklee Online
- Covers CAGED, chord function and non-diatonic changes in a step-by-step order that students call complete and watertight
- Palmisano's energy keeps dry theory watchable, and long-time players keep returning to it as a reference
- About 59 percent of 6,045 reviews are five stars, with fewer than 200 at one or two stars
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- Last updated in 2017 with video first published in 2015, so presentation and camera work look dated
- A two-star reviewer says shapes go by fast with no close-ups and questions went unanswered
- Exercises are mostly film yourself applying the theory, with no example songs, which one reviewer found monotonous
3
Acoustic Guitar and Electric Guitar Lessons: Getting Started (2022)
A four-hour starter from YouTube guitar teacher Erich Andreas covering fretting, strumming, fingerpicking and nine core chords, rated 4.7 by nearly 4,000 students.
Best for: Nervous first-week beginners who want an encouraging teacher and a short course they can actually finish.
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- Reviewers repeatedly call the teaching encouraging, with accuracy stressed over speed.
- Short enough to finish in a weekend: about four hours across 28 lectures in four modules.
- PDF handouts attached to most lectures, plus a bonus section on thumb muting and strumming.
- Works as a taster of Erich's much longer full course; one reviewer went on to buy it.
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- Last updated in June 2022, and the course page still describes itself as free when it's a paid listing.
- One reviewer finds the opening lectures slow, and another questions the string muting technique.
- No full practice song to tie the chords together, and one reviewer hit blank PDF pages in Mac Preview.
4
The Professional Bass Masterclass - Bass 1, Bass 2, Bass 3 (2024)
A ten hour bass course from a Musicians Institute graduate that teaches theory, fretboard and technique from scratch, with practice modules and a riff trainer instead of song tutorials.
Best for: Beginners or returning players who want to understand theory and the fretboard, not just copy bass lines.
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- Rajiv explains theory in plain terms; one reviewer says it clicked faster than books did
- Practice modules and a riff trainer sit between the four parts so theory gets applied
- Covers reading standard notation alongside playing, a bonus one reviewer singled out
- Updated July 2024 and holds a 4.7 from about 3,750 reviews
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- Music is shown in standard notation, not bass clef, which annoys some players
- Camera is sometimes too far from the fretting hand to see finger placement
- Theory-heavy; a few low-star reviews want more hand exercises and chord diagrams
5
The Total Beginner's Guitar Course (2017)
A free 85 minute primer from Guitargate founder Michael Palmisano that walks a first-time player from buying a guitar to open chords, power chords and a first progression.
Best for: Complete beginners, or people who own no guitar yet, who want a free hour to test the water before paying for lessons.
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- Free, and short enough to finish in one evening: 16 lectures, about 85 minutes.
- Clear, joke-friendly teaching that reviewers call easy to follow and straight to the point.
- Starts before the first chord: how to buy a guitar, name its parts and use a tuner.
- Goes past open chords into power chords, palm muting and distortion.
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- Very basic and stops short of a full song; one reviewer calls it an advert for the full courses on the Guitargate site.
- Last updated in 2017, with a single section and no certificate.
- Leans electric; one reviewer wanted more for classical guitar.
6
Learn Guitar in 21 Days (2012)
What You'll Learn
- By the end of this 21 day course, you will be able to play thousands of songs on the guitar.
- In this course, you will learn how to play guitar chords, how to play guitar chord progressions, how to play songs on the guitar, and much, much more.
7
Ultimate Beginner Electric Guitar Masterclass (2022)
What You'll Learn
- Play Really Fun Riffs Everyone Loves
- Understand And Implement Flawless Technique
- Read Tabs With Ease
- Master The Guitar Fret-board
- Understand And Implement Basic Music Theory
- Learn To Play To Backing Tracks
- Learn To Improvise
- Understand And Implement The "Penatonic Scale"
- Friends And Family Will Be Amazed
- Exercises That Will Sharpen Your Chord Transitioning, Strumming, Fretting, Picking, and More
- You will take a quantum leap by getting feedback from a teacher
- You will finally get out of that playing RUT and feel excited again
- Youll move from imitation to knowledge and realization
- You will enjoy a fresh feeling of discovery
- Youll learn new songs that will get your listeners attention
- Your playing will get people to tap their feet
- Your technique will feel EASY as if it is gliding you right through the songs
- Your satisfaction wil
8
Learn Guitar: Zero to Guitar Fingerpicking in 30 days (2022)
What You'll Learn
- Play the most common guitar chords in a fingerpicking style
- Be able to play a bassline with your thumb at the same time as playing a melody with your fingers
- Understand how to break down fingerpicking patterns into the bass/thumb and the melody/fingers and how to practice building up the component parts
- Read tablature and play along to a metronome
- Have a formula for composing your own fingerpicking patterns
- Play in alternate bass, travis picking and clawhammer styles
- Fingerpick
9
Classical Guitar Essentials - The Basics Part 1 (2024)
What You'll Learn
- Know the basics of Classical Guitar techniques
- Play well known tunes
- Read standard music notation
- On your way to be a finger style guitarist
10
SONGWRITING SIMPLIFIED: Music Theory, Melody & Creativity (2019)
What You'll Learn
- Fundamentals of music theory, to Chord Progressions, Melody Writing, and Lyric Writing
- You WILL write a complete song by the end of this course following 5 simple steps!
- You'll learn the same Chord Progressions used by hit songwriters. (Pop, Country, and Rock)
- You'll be able to Transpose your song into any Key, to make it comfortable for you to sing - no matter what your vocal range is.