JamPlay

What JamPlay is

JamPlay is an online guitar lesson membership: one subscription opens a library of on-demand video lessons for guitar and bass, along with live courses, practice tools and reference libraries. It is a learner product, built for someone who wants to learn to play rather than for an instructor who wants to sell a course. The site gives its address as St. Petersburg, Florida, and the membership page says the company was bootstrapped in 2006. The homepage now presents the offer as JamPlay + TrueFire, an All Access membership shared with TrueFire, and the site's company menu links to TrueFire Studios.

The FAQ counts 10815 lessons from 151 instructors, averaging 13 minutes each, with some as short as 5 minutes and others running to 60. Lessons are filmed in the company's own studios; the FAQ says it has 3 studios across the United States and typically films, edits and publishes 5 new lessons every week, calling itself "the most active publisher of video guitar lessons on the web." The combined JamPlay + TrueFire figures on the homepage are larger: 1500+ courses, 70,000+ video lessons, 400+ educators, 450+ song lessons and 3,000,000+ students served.

The lessons and who teaches them

The catalog runs from day-one beginner material to Master Courses. The homepage lists the basics a beginner works through: how to hold a guitar pick, proper fret hand position, chords and scales, reading sheet music, simple music theory, time signatures and good practice habits. From there a learner can follow a Learning Path from beginner to advanced, browse by genre (the membership page counts 20 genres, among them blues, rock, funk, jazz and flamenco), pick skill-building lessons, or move to song lessons, which the homepage says break hit songs into bite-sized chunks. There are also sections for kids and for bass.

The membership page says the teacher roster was built to deliver results and names Steve Stevens, Billy Idol's guitarist, and Berklee educators among its teachers. The homepage adds a Grammy Award winner, Music Hall of Famers, the National Flatpicking Champion and hundreds of professional touring musicians. Master Courses are included with membership and feature artists such as Brent Mason, Aaron Marshall, Yvette Young, Mike Dawes and Phil Keaggy. Because many teachers cover similar ground, the FAQ suggests that if one teacher's explanation does not click, a similar lesson from another may.

Scales get unusually detailed treatment. The features page says every box of a given scale has two videos: one demonstrating the notes within the pattern and one showing a teacher improvising with it, so a learner sees both the shape and how it is used.

The lesson player and practice tools

Each lesson comes with supplemental material, including tabs, chord charts and backing tracks where needed. The player offers slow motion at 10%, 25%, 50%, 75% and 100% speed, A/B looping that works together with slow motion, bookmarks you can title and save with your own notes, and automatic progress tracking that feeds a Progress Report. Interactive tabs run in the browser without plugins, slow down without pitch loss, show standard notation alongside the tab, and print. Lessons are filmed with 3 to 5 cameras depending on the material, and the FAQ says they stream from 360p up to 1080p, with 4k for newer lessons.

Around the lessons sit the libraries. The membership page describes a chord finder with over 950,000 chord diagrams for various tunings, a scale library with theory, videos and fretboard diagrams for over 40 scales (for 6, 7 and 8 string guitars), a JamTrack library of over 600 professionally recorded backing tracks with tabs and recommended scales, a lick and riff library, a metronome, a tuner that uses your microphone, and interactive games for pitch recognition and fretboard memorization.

Feedback from teachers

JamPlay is not purely self-serve. The FAQ describes a live, interactive Q&A every day with chat and webcam-to-webcam capabilities, live courses just about every week, and the option to ask a teacher a question about any lesson and get a response, all "100% free, and included with your membership." The membership page adds 1 on 1 Reviews, in which teachers review your playing and award badges for progress. The FAQ lists a 1-on-1 consultation as exclusive to JamPlay Pro: you choose a time and a channel (Skype, phone, email or another medium) and the company provides a teacher.

Membership, toolkits and pricing

A membership covers every published lesson, all live courses, teaching tools and libraries, with no extra charge for rewatching. The FAQ says you can upgrade a monthly membership to quarterly or annual from your account settings, and cancel with "just 2 clicks." The only membership price the FAQ prints comes in its comparison with instructional DVDs: "imagine having hundreds of them for just $19.95." It offers "a no questions asked, hassle free refund within 30 days of your signup," and accepts Visa, Mastercard, American Express, Discover, Diner's Club and PayPal.

Annual members also get Guitarist Toolkits, downloadable content packs on a genre or skill that you keep for life. The FAQ says an Annual Standard Membership includes 1 free toolkit and an Annual Pro Membership all 8, and that toolkits are not yet sold separately, though the company intends to price them at $99.95 each. The membership page describes the 2021 toolkits as 47 individual courses, 686 lessons, 441 JamTracks and 600 pages of tab. The Pro section of the FAQ also describes ownership credits, which let you download chosen lessons and keep them without a membership.

The apps are free with a paid membership. The membership page lists apps for iPhone, iPad, Android and Amazon devices, plus support for Chromecast, Apple TV and internet TVs, and the FAQ says the site works on Macs and PCs. Gift cards are sold on the site. Each month the company runs free giveaways of gear such as pedal boards, amps and guitars, and the membership page says over $200,000 has been given back to members.

Track record and support

The membership page says JamPlay has served 500,000+ subscribers from over 220 countries, shows 527,284 customers and a 9.1/10 Trustpilot score, and calls the company "a leading provider of guitar education." It invites readers to check its Better Business Bureau and Trustpilot profiles. Support staff answer by phone, email and chat message from Monday to Friday, 9:00am to 6:00pm Eastern time, and the contact page says replies normally come within 15 minutes to 2 hours, with weekend messages answered on Monday.

Who it suits

JamPlay suits a guitarist or bassist who wants a very large, well-organized lesson library and the tools to practice with it: a beginner who needs the basics in order, an intermediate player who wants genre depth, scale theory and Master Courses, or a returning player looking for song lessons and backing tracks. The daily live Q&A and the teacher reviews make it a better fit than most video libraries for a learner who wants some human feedback, and the 30-day refund lowers the risk of trying it.

The caveats are about clarity rather than content. The site prints only that one $19.95 reference price, and it mixes JamPlay figures with combined JamPlay + TrueFire figures, so a buyer should read the plan details at checkout. Some FAQ material, such as the toolkit descriptions, is dated to 2020 and 2021. A learner who wants a weekly one-to-one teacher should look at the Pro consultation option specifically, since the standard membership centers on recorded lessons.