How Much Do Lessons Cost?

That depends on which membership option you choose. You see all lesson options & pricing after filling the evaluation form.

That said, be careful about choosing your guitar teacher based only on price per lesson or tuition per month.

“Cheap” guitar teachers can often be the most expensive.

Here is why:

When you pay for guitar lessons, what are you really paying for?

The answer is:

Results in your guitar playing. (For example: to increase your guitar speed, become a more creative musician, learn how to write songs, etc.)

So, the real cost of your guitar lessons is: how much are you paying to learn, achieve or become X?” (X being: the musical result you want in your guitar playing.)

Let's look at a real life example of how this typically works:

Imagine 2 guitar teachers. Teacher A charges $30 dollars per lesson. Teacher B charges $50 per lesson.

And your goal is to learn how to sweep pick on guitar.

Let’s say, with teacher A you get your result after 6 lessons.

That means: the cost to get the result you want with Teacher 1 is $180 and 6 months of your time.

(This is actually quite common among average guitar teachers.)

Let’s now look at guitar teacher B. Teacher B gets you the same result after only 3 lessons.

That means: the cost to get the result you want with teacher B is only $150 (less money overall) … and you got the result in half the time.

Teacher B is clearly the cheaper of the 2 when you look at the big picture. But most people wouldn’t think about this and waste a whole lot of money (and time) by choosing a guitar teacher based on wrong criteria.

Ok, I know this is a hypothetical example. And I don’t claim that I’m the best guitar teacher for everyone.

My point is: when you choose a guitar teacher, look at more than just the price per lesson or monthly cost.

What other factors should you look for?

A great guitar teacher should have a lot of proof helping guitarists like you play guitar the way you want to play. This is the best way to tell if a teacher is right for you (or not).

For example, here are the results my guitar students are getting:

Watch even more of my guitar students play at:

Student Spotlight Page

Here are even more of my guitar students' success stories:

"When I came to Tom for online guitar lessons, I already had a decent overall level of technique and understood the basics of music theory pretty well. I had taken lessons with other teachers before, and went through several guitar method books that promised to teach me how to become a great lead guitar player. I learned all the materials in these books and courses and picked up some useful tips and knowledge along the way. Yet for some reason I still wasn't feeling like a musician. I struggled very much with writing my own songs, creating my own solos and pushing my guitar technique and speed to a higher level (especially sweep picking, alternate picking, and playing clean at high speeds).

When I started learning from Tom, the main thing that made him different from other teachers was that he was showing me how to excel in all aspects of my guitar playing by applying the skills that I already knew together with the new material that I was learning from him.

He made me aware of both strengths and weaknesses in my playing that I did not even know I had. From there he gave me the knowledge, tools and guidance to literally transform my guitar playing by enabling me to overcome things that were preventing me from becoming a truly creative and self-expressive guitar player. These were the kinds of things that none of my previous guitar teachers and books I studied were able to do for me.

After Tom made me aware of all the things I was missing in my guitar playing and provided me with the strategy and tools for solving them, I began to make very fast progress in all areas of my guitar playing.

I can now write my own music and can create lead guitar solos that I am happy and fulfilled with. I also have the technical skills to confidently and easily play anything that I want to express. I have overcome all of the lead guitar challenges that I struggled with before, and increased my guitar speed to virtuoso levels. More importantly, I have the knowledge and understanding of how to continually improve my guitar playing and musical skills to higher and higher levels to continue expressing myself with my music. Overall, I have definitely transformed in a huge way as a musician and as a person through my lessons with Tom Hess. I am grateful to him for guiding me towards becoming the guitarist I always wanted to be!"

Mike Philippov, Indiana, USA

“Before I took lessons with Tom Hess, I wanted to learn how to do some sweep picking and I also wanted to fill in a few gaps that I thought I might’ve had in my playing. And also I was feeling a little bit frustrated with not knowing where to take my playing. I didn’t really know how to get better. I felt like I reached a plateau, so that’s why I sought out Tom.”

I’ve had a few other guitar teachers before I took lessons with Tom, and most of them weren’t very good. And after reading a few articles online that Tom had written, I could tell that this guy was going to be the teacher for me.

The biggest thing that I really like is the actual guitar lessons themselves. I’m finding that I’m learning new things that I never even considered every single time I get a lesson. Something new to apply to my playing each time. But of course, I really enjoy the forum as well, because thanks to the lessons with Tom, I’ve been able to meet people from all over the world who have similar experiences and similar goals, so that’s been really motivating as well.

Before I took lessons with Tom I really didn’t like improvisation. I knew scales, and I knew kind of how they applied over chord progressions, but I just didn’t like it. Since taking lessons with Tom, some of the lessons are focused on that specific issue, and now I feel really comfortable about getting up in front of people and playing over any type of… in any key any backing track, I feel pretty comfortable doing that.

Tom actually knows what my goals are and gives me specific lessons that will help me achieve those goals. Other teachers that I’ve had before just do it their way… it’s either their way or the highway. And they don’t really care about what I wanted to do, and they didn’t really listen, and they didn’t really look into what I was doing or what my interests were and didn’t really play into that.

It’s really motivating to get to know people who are also students of Tom. It’s really good to have positive-minded musicians around even if I’m just talking to them online, or if I meet them in person, either way it’s still really motivating.
The forum has helped me because I am able to ask any music theory related questions or technique questions and I get those answered very very quickly. And I also like to participate in discussions and help share my knowledge as well with other people, which when I do that I feel that it’s reinforcing the things that I know as well, so it helps with my music theory knowledge when I share as well.

Greg Trotter, Melbourne, Australia

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