TrueFire Guitar Lessons

You can never get back to the home page without closing the app and restarting it. I just started using this app again. I had to do that 8 years ago and was thinking they would have fixed that by now. This isn’t a judgement of the content. The content is great. I’ve kept my phone and app updated and I’m using an iPhone 14 Pro at the moment. But I don’t see any difference between now and then which I find surprising. I wish they’d do a little makeover with the app just to fix its navigational abilities. Am I the only one with this problem? Without getting back to home page I can’t find the tools/tuner menu unless there is another way to get there. But I couldn’t find it. Just need to get back to that home page to check tuning once in a while. And then I’d go 4 stars. 5 stars would be if they improved pop up and casting performance. Pop ups seem to be hard to get rid of and the casting button can get hidden behind a pop up. Sometimes I have to close the program and restart just to get rid of pop ups just like I do to get back to the home page. Generally I’m rebooting 2 or 3 times a lesson. It’s annoying. I love True Fire but it really is time for them to come along and fix these things in the app. I generally use my phone for this. Everything works much better on a laptop and there is no issues. Just the iPhone.

I did some research prior to deciding on TrueFire for guitar lessons. Some of the research criteria covered in the various reviews were things like providing an app across all of our devices, instruction style, curriculum layout, customization abilities, instructor notoriety. I have read some TrueFire reviews that address the challenge of the curriculum layout. I do agree that if you are a complete beginner and are in need of some guidance, Truefire’s approach could be a little intimidating. However, if you spend some time researching their various ‘Learning Paths’ offerings, you will quickly see there are common beginner courses that are sort of prerequisites for each Learning Path genre. What that means is if you invest the time in the beginner courses ,you can pick a particular Learning Path genre, whether it be country, blues, rock, jazz, etc and be very prepared when you start your chosen learning path. I have been playing guitar for more than 40 years as a hobbyist, in performing bands, song writer, etc. But, I decided to start at the very beginning and I am really glad I did. The beginner course in my chosen Learning Path have corrected some of my bad habits regarding how I hold the guitar, my fretting hand posture, etc. Now I am in the 3rd course of the Blues Learning Path and and it is really starting to pay off for me. I am playing better than I ever have, and the instructors do a really good job of sneaking theory into the lessons without you being aware of it. But you are indeed learning it while having fun and making great progress. Really happy I made this purchase. Well worth the investment.

First off, I want to differentiate between the service, lessons and content, and the applications. Like the title says, I think the content is great. That said, I am not a fan of any of the interfaces into accessing it, whether it’s the web, the native Mac app, or the iOS app on an iPad. They all have some annoying quirks and glaring bugs that really need to be addressed. I’ve caught issues with keeping things in sync across the apps as well. The most annoying thing on this app is that it will start auto playing when I bring it to the front, and the only way to stop it is to find which specific lesson is playing and stop it. Starting a different lesson will just cause ANOTHER thing to start playing in addition. The preference for background playing is off. I just kill the app and then start it again instead. I’d love nothing more than to come back and give this five stars, because I think the content deserves it. But, the quality of the apps has to improve. As is, I think it’s bad enough that it detracts from the over all solution. Haven’t had any bad experience on the TV app. Yet. Please, put some attention on tightening things up. The content deserves it.