Yousician Review - A Beginners Guide - Should Yousician Teach You Guitar?

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Yousician is kind of like a music teacher inside your computer and it can help you learn the guitar, bass guitar, ukulele, and voice. I've tried yousician for the last week and I put together a list of pros and cons from a musicians perspective to see if yousician is right for you to learn the guitar.

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#yousician #yousicianreview

[CharlesCleyn]

Are you a Yousician student? If so, let me know in the comments, I'd love to hear your experience.

[henningolsen]

pro tip for watching this video is putting it on 2x speed or 1.75x

[Nagzzzski]

As a 20 year old who used it for about 60 hours, I can say it helped tremendously. I’ve become a pretty skilled player in only a year. It’s not meant for teaching you things that you necessarily want to play but it gets your fingers playing a ton of notes and it builds the muscle and the calluses needed for becoming a great musician. Between that and learning a bunch of stuff off YouTube, I don’t think I’d be where I am today without it. Learning guitar is a grind no matter how you approach it but this app keeps you focused as a beginner.

[maggiechen]

When I clicked on this video I got a yusician ad !

[Sparkey]

I've been using Yousician for nearly 6 years. It's very addictive and has great instant feedback which is totally priceless. BTW I'm in 2 gigging bands now as lead guitarist

[travis]

"Do you remember the game Rock Band?" Damn, that made me feel old lol

[josiechas]

I'm an older man learning guitar. I bought Yousician basic plan. I've had it for about 5 months now and I am making fairly good progress. The main thing it has taught me is chord changes and playing individual notes up and down the fretboard. Yousician sort of forces me to practice with structure. Right now, my opinion of Yousician is ....it's pretty good!

[francisdasta]

I'm old. Back in '78 when I started playing I found that hanging out with good guitar players and watching them was a good way to learn. I suggest learning your basic major and minor chords first and practicing how to switch chords smoothly. Single note stuff is putting the cart before the horse. Once you can play chords pretty decent then you can work towards playing lead stuff. Another suggestion is to pick a song you really love and learn it before moving on to another one. You will learn faster by not overwhelming yourself with too much. Playing guitar is hard. It takes a while before you can play a chord that doesn't sound like ass. Be patient. Keep it simple at first. Almost all rock music songs are three or four chords max. When I started there was no internet. Now things are much easier. Just about any song you want to learn you can find lessons on YouTube where they're pretty good at breaking a song down. You can find lessons for the solos after you learn the rhythm. Don't get hung up on playing something exactly like someone else. I can break down about any rock song in a few minutes by listening to it. YouTube can be very helpful when there's a chord I just can't quite figure out. It's especially helpful when learning solos. When I want to learn a song quickly I usually check out how several people play a solo and pick different things from different people because I like the way this guy plays this part or that guy plays another part. If you can hum it you can play it. It's that simple. Playing lead for most songs is about learning what I call basic rock manouvers. Hotel California is a good song to learn the lead for someone who doesn't have a lot of experience. It's not too fast and is chock full of those manouvers. Playing songs note for note will only get you hung up and frustrated. When you get enough experience you can fake your way through a lot of songs by just capturing the guitar player's style and feel. Have fun and practice

[siofranicliam]

I've only just started using yousician 2 weeks ago and I love it. I did some classes 12 years ago but wasnt great at practicing by myself.
I find that, apart from songs I've learned almost by accident from playing along so much, I wonder what's the point of spending a couple hours a day practicing when I'm not learning songs the same way I would in a class with a teacher.
Despite that, I think it's great, and I find it easy enough to learn from, and challenging enough to keep me interested, that I'm more likely to pick up my guitar and practice.
The levels and gold start system helps me aim to a certain standard - I think I wouldn't keep in time as much, and would slow down, if I'm just playing for myself so the fact that I'm playing along forces me to get quicker.
I'll start a new song or section and I might hate what I'm doing to some extent - I didn't like power chords at all ha - so my initial aim is to just get through the challenge so that I can move on to something better, but I'll always go back and try to get the gold stars, and in the course of doing so, realise how easy I find something I thought I'd never learn a couple of days ago.
Obvs that's also motivated by me wanting to be good guitar player.

I love yousician for the moment at least. I am a beginner, and I like the majority of the songs on the app. I'll probably use YouTube videos as well at some point but I want something with a curriculum, and YouTube can't listen to what I'm doing.

Just on your point about plucking as a first lesson and missing the beat. The ball is there as a guide to when to pluck or strum; its def easier if you know the song but I think easy to pick up the beat and where notes are meant to be anyway.
And I think plucking strings before chords seems okay imo because it starts to break down the different notes you get from the instrument. They go into learning the notes along the fretboard which I like.

I can see how it might be limiting after a while from having looked at the singing lessons (I'm a trained soprano), I'll have to look a little more at how much they have, but when you can open an app like that and get all gold stars on a supposedly difficult song, you're not gonna be compelled to use it to improve.
The think I dislike about it is the ear games. Apart from how annoying the sounds get every time you tap the phone, for people who have a bit more than basic knowledge on music theory it can be a bit mind numbing.

[jdavis]

I've been using Yousician for about 3 months on the paid subscription. I'm working on unlocking level 6 on the lead and working on gold starring American Pie on level 5 of the rhythm track. I like the app a lot, I think because I've played a lot of video games and I'm a perfectionist and completionist when it comes to that. It gets to me when I don't have a song gold starred, so I'll go back and keep doing it over and over until I get it. I can look back even a month ago and remember how I played then and feel that I've progressed quite a lot, so I'm happy with it. I still only know a couple power chords, but I have the open cowboy chords down pretty solid. The hardest thing is maintaining discipline on your technique and making sure you're taking things like musicality and movement economy into account because the app doesn't teach you that (at least at my stage.) It may come later, though, for example different strumming patterns did come later on and I thought that would be something I would have to learn myself. The structure and not having to sort through all the YouTube videos out there is a huge plus for me.

[Sylvester_Kim]

Been using Yousician for 6 months now. Never played a guitar at all, and now i am progressing really well, level 7 on lead and rhythm. Still trying to get my pinkie finger to work.

At times i get demotivated but then again those weekly challenges made me try harder and play even more. I play about 2 hours a day and felt really guilty if i missed a day.

They even have quick lessons if you want to learn but in a rush.

[jasonrobaina]

Thank you Charles. I was hesitant to get Yousician. Im a beginner at guitar and I see that there are free videos on YouTube. I appreciate the honesty.

[ashleyray]

I have been using yousician for learning bass guitar. I really like it, but I feel like it's hard to learn music theory with it. It definitely has taught me to read tabs and play along quickly. It also seems more rewarding to me than taking in person lessons (I took guitar lessons for 6 months and hated it)

[henrikpetersson]

As an experienced guitar player looking to learn the piano I ended up using Yousician for piano. But I’ve found that I really like it as a practice tool for guitar. The gamified approach really works for me because I get much deeper into the practice. I’m so easily distracted otherwise.
I especially enjoy the challenges.

There are a few things I don’t like about it. A lot of the music is pretty cheesy. But since it’s a practice tool it doesn’t bother me that much to be honest.
Also the software does not teach you or reward tone and expression. Which is fine for a beginner, but once you are getting the hang of the instrument you should really start to become more expressive in your playing. And and sometimes the app will tell you that you are playing wrong when doing so.
A good example is timing. Especially with the bass module I’ve found that even though I play with the groove of the song Yousician will tell me that my timing is wrong because I don’t play according to their notation.

But overall I think it’s a great complement to other tools. I would not use it as the only source for learning an instrument. But if you like the gamified approach, like I do, it’s a really good practice tool.

[Mayaa]

I’m a Yousicician student but only for Piano. I totally recommend new piano players to use it. I’m using the free plan so only get a few minutes to practice but doing it everyday I’ve gotten so much better. And beforehand I already was pretty educated on music theory but Yousician teaches it fairly well. However, recently I’ve tried the guitar section and don’t recommend using it to learn guitar. At the beginning it just lets you play one notes or just a select few notes. So, no chords are being taught or anything. I love Yousician for learning piano but not to learn to play guitar.

[mylifeasravenholly]

Nice video! My father is a guitar teacher and he recommends this app for his students as practice. Although he doesn't suggest using the app as an alternative for in person lessons. I play the guitar but I haven't tried the app, I prefer just my dad's lessons.

[needmorejoy]

Great review. I would rather learn playing an instrument from a live instructor. I love JustinGuitar. This is the type of instructor I enjoy because he explains things in layman terms. I’ve always had problems with rhythm strumming and after going through Justin’s videos I enjoy playing my guitars now and just playing the different chords and different strumming patterns. Thank you. What do you think of Jamstick?

[Colpaertje_]

Thank you for being so honest in your opinion! Because of this video I didn't subscribe to Yousician. I'm gonna try and learn it through YouTube as there are a ton of video's available to learn the guitar.. If anyone of you has tips for good video's to learn playing an acoustic guitar, let me know below! Thanks!

[tarrynfisher]

Very helpful review. Thanks for the well thought-out advice! Your perspective makes my choice easier.

[ktsung]

I started from zero five months ago and now I’m at level 10. I learned mainly in yousician but also learn songs I liked via youtube. I like yousician since the gamification kept me motivated. I’m a gamer and always enjoyed guitar hero type rhythm games so you could probably say I’m their target demographic. I think it’s good tool to build up speed and muscle memory. But I feel it fell short teaching you to count in time. I played some piano so keeping in time isn’t totally foreign to me, but for a complete novice it could be hard switching from rhythm game style to actually playing on time from tabs. Another cons is that it doesn’t really teach strumming patterns especially on rhythm track. They mostly focus on switching chords. This is probably technical limitation as they can’t detect up and down strum, also it has problem when strumming is too fast.