For players who’d like to join the smooth side of the force, there are some great online jazz guitar courses. These courses focus on the genre of jazz and its subgenres, so some experience with guitar technique and theory is required for most of them.
Courses such as Jazz Guitar Online, Jazz for the Curious Guitarist by Udemy, True Fire, and GuitarTricks are some of the online courses that offer the best content for the cost.
Thankfully, some of these courses offer free trials. You can check them out, and if you don’t feel comfortable after the first few modules, you can have your money back. But trust us, you won’t want to quit. Read on for our rundown of the top jazz guitar courses.
Jazz Guitar Online
Learning jazz can be tough, but with this course, your path to becoming a jazz master will be easier and much more fun! Jazz Guitar offers a variety of forums, courses, and lessons that will help you understand the theory and technique behind this great genre.
This online platform offers several free lessons that introduce you to the more complex areas of jazz. Whether you’re a beginner or an experienced player in any other genre, these courses and lessons will help you start grooving in no time.
Jazz Guitar also features a printable PDF that contains 87 classic jazz patterns, 75 jazz guitar licks, 8 different explanations on how to put these patterns in a musical context, and 7 small studies on how to use a single pattern through a jazz standard.
Jazz for the Curious Guitarist
This course is offered in the vast and incredible selection of courses that Udemy has in store. Jazz for the Curious Guitarist promises to teach you all that’s needed to start playing jazz, such as theory, chords, patterns, scales, and arpeggios.
The course is offered for any kind of level. Whether you’re a beginner, intermediate, or advanced, Jazz for the Curious Guitarist has something for you. The best part of this is that each course has a reasonable price of $18.99.
The only requirement for this course is that you own a guitar with 6 strings. It doesn’t matter whether you have an electric, acoustic, or classical guitar. No basic level is needed — only you and your instrument.
GuitarTricks
Jazz is one of the most desired genres to understand among musicians, and GuitarTricks offers 39 different jazz courses that will help advanced players. Even though not all of these courses are jazz, many touch on aspects of jazz that are very important when it comes to musical assembly and theory.
It’s important to note that all of these courses aren’t for beginners. The guitar player who would like to approach these courses must have an advanced level. For anyone who’d like to start from the beginning, we recommend another course or private lessons.
TrueFire
TrueFire, the learning platform built with famous artists, offers a wide variety of jazz-related courses. These include video lessons, eBooks, PDFs, and much more. This website features courses taught by excellent teachers as well as legends of music.
The platform offers the user countless courses that go from complete beginner to advanced, and there’s even a course dictated by the one and only Pat Martino.
Not only that, but the jazz modules also include lessons about bebop, smooth jazz, and jazz blues. If you don’t know where to start, we recommend you go with this website, as it has amazing options and good prices.
ArtistWorks
Artistworks has great courses for any kind of genre, and jazz guitar is no exception. They have brilliant tutors that have years of experience in the matter and can dissect the theory and technique in understandable ways.
One specific course that’s dictated by Dave Stryker breaks down different warm-up exercises, explains different jazz standards, and pushes students to go beyond their current guitar technique.
The way Artistworks evaluates the performance of their students is by encouraging them to submit videos of them playing a piece. These performances are reviewed by tutors and help students fix those little mistakes we all make.
JamPlay
Beginner players might want to start with the jazz courses that JamPlay offers to their customers. This website allows students to learn at their own pace, and its video lessons are taught by professional tutors.
Possibilities are infinite, and you can start learning any jazz skill you’d like to work on in your own time. JamPlay also tracks their students' progress, so you can check how far you’ve come and go back to any lesson when necessary.
Online Guitar Institute
Just like the other platforms, Online Guitar Institute offers courses and lessons for guitarists that would like to enhance their skills. Through this website, guitarists can learn any genre that they want, including jazz!
Since jazz is one of the most desired genres to learn, Online Guitar Institute has designed a series of courses and lessons that will help any player start their journey through this amazing genre and its subgenres.
Online Guitar Institute has online tutors that must be booked through the website. These lessons are delivered on platforms such as Skype, Zoom, or any other that’s convenient for both the teacher and the student.
Jazz Guitar Academy
Jazz Guitar Academy, as its name states, focuses on jazz and its subgenres. Anyone who’d like to learn about the way guitar is approached in this genre can start taking lessons on this website!
The courses are designed for everyone to understand. Regardless of whether you don’t have any experience or you’ve been playing music for years, this website has something for you. You can learn at your own pace.
This website also offers music sheets and diagrams, and they also offer loops with other instruments so you can groove on your own and put into practice all that you have learned!
Elite Guitarist Jazz
Like many other websites on this list, Elite Guitarist Jazz focuses on this genre. Their courses are suitable for any kind of guitarist, at any level of knowledge. Elite Guitarist Jazz has courses that teach you all you need to know about jazz and its related genres.
They have a wide variety of categories that you can explore, which enables you to specialize in any aspect of jazz that you like the most. The courses and lessons that this website offers have pre-recorded videos, allowing you to retake any lesson.
Andy Guitar
Beginner, intermediate, and advanced guitarists can sign up for this course taught by Andy Crowley. This website includes tons of courses that will help any kind of guitarist enhance their skills. Among all the lessons that Crowley teaches, there are some that help you understand jazz in a theoretical and technical way.
In his jazz guitar lessons, Andy Crowley includes a video introduction to the genre and how it works. After the introductory videos, you should be able to start practicing through the actual jazz lessons that Andy has put together.
