Price: $14.99 a month/$149.99 a year
Trial: 14-days free
Features: Graded learning pathways, daily exercises, personalised feedback, master classes, 5 minute lessons, artist lessons, downloadable exercises
Online guitar lessons have become more and more prominent in recent years. There’s no denying that they have their limitations when compared to face-to-face lessons, but Pickup Music does everything possible to limit those and bring a level of personalisation and interactivity that many online learning platforms lack.
The website is easy to navigate, but upon logging in, you’re greeted by a chat bot that can helpfully point you in the right direction, should you perhaps be overwhelmed by all the different options. So, if you just want to start learning to play the guitar from scratch, then you’re sent there, without having to scroll through everything else.
The lessons aimed at beginners are great. They explain things clearly and concisely, without ever being patronizing. They go through the basics like tuning, how to read TAB so absolutely no prior knowledge of the guitar is required beforehand. One of the bonuses of video lessons is that you can of course pause whenever you need to, so if things like tuning take a little bit longer when you’re just starting out, you can pause the video and do it at your own pace. What we really liked was that even in the first couple of lessons, you’re playing straight away so you feel like you’re instantly progressing, which makes you want to carry on.
Learning Pathways
Pickup Music has what are called learning pathways – these are step-by-step lessons, with daily exercises and practice plans. These cover your general beginner and intermediate guitar lessons, but also certain styles of playing and genres of music. With these you can get personalized feedback and even play along with a live recorded band to give you that ‘playing with others’ experience. At the start it outlines what it will aim to teach you, as well as the time commitment you’ll need to dedicate to it which is really helpful.
These are done in grades, so you can easily monitor your progress. At the end of a grade, you choose a piece from a list that they give you, then film yourself playing along to the supplied backing track. You then upload this, and one of the team will watch it, and give you personalised feedback on your performance, so that you can then hopefully progress to the next grade.
The learning pathway videos remember where you get up to aswell, so if you need to stop a lesson suddenly, you can just carry on from where you left off. It would be nice to have the facility to download the videos for use offline, but that’s about the only downside. You can however download the exercises set out in many of the video lessons. You can leave comments on the videos too, and it looks like one of the team will reply to you - again, this helps it feel a little more like one-to-one lessons. There are also masterclasses that generally take slightly less time and really dive deep into a particular genre or technique.
Pickup Music is great for beginners, but that’s not its only purpose – it’s got a wealth of content for players of all abilities. I consider myself to be a fairly competent guitarist, having played for two decades, but there’s a ton of stuff on there that would make me better. If you want to improve your solos, learn a particular technique, a certain genre of music – it’s all there, waiting to be utilized. So, say you’re an experienced guitarist playing mostly pop or rock for example, but you want to get into playing jazz or fusion, then there’s a module there for you.
Bitesize lessons and artist content
Another great thing about Pickup Music is that you don’t have to commit loads of time to see improvements. There’s a whole section called 5 Minute Lessons, so if you’re short on time, you can sit down, blast through a few of these and you’ll learn all sorts of neat tricks, licks, riffs, or even bits of theory that you can put to practice in your playing straight away.
There are also a lot of lesson videos by well known artists such as Isaiah Sharkey, Ariel Posen, Melanie Faye, Daniel Donato, Arianna Powell and more, so if you dig one of these players’ styles, then you can learn directly from the source! In addition to this, there’s a series called Essential Licks which comprises bitesized videos that show you how to play loads of different licks. This is another area where, if you’ve only got a bit of time, you can jump right into it and add something new to your repertoire instantly. These videos are grouped into difficulty and genre so it’s easy to find something you’ll be interested in.
In general, Pickup Music has a very contemporary feel to it. From the website layout, to the delivery of the lessons in the videos, to the actual content, it feels fresh and modern. There’s some really cool stuff covering neo-soul and fusion so, if you’ve ended up here by following some of the many incredible Instagram guitarists out there, then you’ll easily find what you’re after. That said, Pickup Music doesn’t forgo the more traditional guitar styles - there are incredible lessons for learning rock, blues, country and more. There are also videos that help you play in the style of people like Eric Clapton, SRV, Jimi Hendrix and more.
Conclusion
Pickup Music is a fantastic resource for any guitar player. Whether you’re learning from scratch or you want to improve on the knowledge you already have, their content is well presented, covers a wide range of music and manages to be fun whilst improving your playing.
