Ultimate Guitar Pro Review: Is it worth it? - Guitar Chalk (2024)

Ultimate Guitar Pro Review: Is it worth it? - Guitar Chalk (1)

Updated by Bobby

Updated on May 8th, 2023

Some major updates to the Ultimate Guitar Pro pricing, which changes a lot about this review, and not for the better.

Ultimate Guitar Pro ReView

Is it worth it?

Plain text guitar tabs are a thing of the past, thanks to tools like Ultimate Guitar Pro. While you can get tabs in a lot of places, UG Pro is one of the most helpful and functional tab resources on the market. That said, the increase in price to its current $99 per year or $25 per month is far too high.

Ultimate Guitar Pro Review: Is it worth it? - Guitar Chalk (2)

The Ultimate Guitar Pro membership is an add-on to the popular website's guitar tab database, which runs directly in your browser as a web application. While Ultimate Guitar has always been a tab website, almost all of the content is user-submitted as a plain text file.

CONTINUE READING

Ultimate Guitar Pro provides tabs that are structured similarly to theGuitar Pro softwareand put together by the Ultimate Guitar staff instead of just user submitted.

This means they're 100 percent accurate, or at least very close.

It also means they're properly scored likestandard notation and played with sound and a backing track.

Ultimate Guitar Pro Review: Is it worth it? - Guitar Chalk (3)

Lots of tabs that aren't plain text.

Video Ultimate Guitar Pro Review

Prefer to watch the review? I did a screencast and walk-through of Ultimate Guitar Pro a couple of days after publishing the written review. You can check that out here as well:

Please note, this video review likely contains some information that is outdated, and may not be correct.

Comparing from UG Tabs with UG Pro Tabs

Just for comparison's sake, let's look at the free Ultimate Guitar tabs and the Ultimate Guitar Pro tabs for "Invincible" by Tool.

Ultimate Guitar Pro Review: Is it worth it? - Guitar Chalk (4)

Pro tabs are listed as "Pro" and "Official" and only accessible to those with a Pro membership.

Free Version: User-Submitted

Below is a screen shot of the plain text tab that we're used to seeing on Ultimate Guitar:

Ultimate Guitar Pro Review: Is it worth it? - Guitar Chalk (5)

Plain text tabs (old style) on Ultimate Guitar.

Pro Version: Staff Created

The Pro version looks like a Guitar Pro file with properly scored notation and a red line that follows along as the song plays:

Ultimate Guitar Pro Review: Is it worth it? - Guitar Chalk (6)

The Pro tab is easy to distinguish from the plain text variation.

This version is dramatically different from the free version, for a number of reasons. First, let's look at the basic features of this Pro tab and see what you're getting in a quicker list.

Compare to Other Online Guitar Lesson Programs

Guitar Chalk is a reader-supported magazine which means we recommend programs that we like, and if you buy through (or even sign up for a free trial), it helps us out without costing you any extra. In addition to Ultimate Guitar Pro, checkout some of the other programs we've reviewed and recommend, perhaps if you need something to supplement Ultimate Guitar Pro.

PROGRAM

DETAILS

RATING

TRY

Ultimate Guitar Pro Review: Is it worth it? - Guitar Chalk (7)

Guitar Tricks

  • Song section is the best available
  • Strong at all skill levels
  • Organization is top-notch

92.8

Ultimate Guitar Pro Review: Is it worth it? - Guitar Chalk (8)

JamPlay

  • Lots of specialized courses and nuanced styles
  • Strong content depth
  • Pay/download as you go

88.7

Ultimate Guitar Pro Review: Is it worth it? - Guitar Chalk (9)

TrueFire

  • More content than any other guitar lesson website
  • Lots of single-topic, specialized material
  • Most courses available for a one-time fee and download

86.7

Ultimate Guitar Pro Review: Is it worth it? - Guitar Chalk (10)

Ultimate Guitar Pro

  • Licensed tab content in the style of Guitar Pro
  • Chords and staff-developed tabs for thousands of songs
  • Integrates nicely with UG's existing free content

n/a

Table of Contents (click to jump)

Video Ultimate Guitar Pro Review

Compare to Other Online Guitar Lesson Programs

Features of Ultimate Guitar Pro Tabs (quick list)

Notation-Style Tab Sheets

Multiple Instruments (bass, synth, drums, etc.)

Fretboard View

Chord Versions of Each Song

Printable

Miscellaneous Features

Ultimate Guitar Pro Cost: How much is it?

Conclusion

Features of Ultimate Guitar Pro Tabs (quick list)

There's a lot of nuance to the Pro tabs in Ultimate Guitar, making them vastly more functional, accurate, and useful compared to the free, plain text versions. You can see this by simply looking at the two screenshots above, but I'll list the most obvious improvements that Ultimate Guitar Pro offers their users:

  • Guitar Pro-style tab notation with time signatures and sight reading elements
  • Multiple instrument parts, often including bass, synth, vocals, and drums
  • Fretboard view for multiple instruments
  • Chords-only versions of the songs
  • Printable
  • Tonebridge compatibility and other misc features

These are the main features representing the bulk of what you're paying for if you buy Ultimate Guitar Pro. For those wanting a little more detail, I'll go into each feature, one at a time.

Notation-Style Tab Sheets

Guitar tabs are traditionally displayed in a Courier font typed up in a plain text file.

While this can be useful in certain contexts, it's limiting in terms of the information you can display on your tab sheets. The Guitar Pro-style tabs solve this by showing timing, bars, and a wide range of notational elements that can't be displayed in a plain text document.

For example, you can see bends, time signatures (lines beneath notes), and bars displayed in "Sweet Child O' Mine" in the Pro tab version:

Ultimate Guitar Pro Review: Is it worth it? - Guitar Chalk (11)

Guitar Pro tabs are far more complete and musically accurate than plain text tabs.

These tabs can also be played back audibly, with some helpful sound features like section looping, slowing down, speeding up, transposing, and even a metronome.

Ultimate Guitar Pro Review: Is it worth it? - Guitar Chalk (12)

Some of the control features for Pro tabs in the Ultimate Guitar app.

Of course, you could buy the Guitar Pro software itself from Arobas music, but they don't have a tab database like Ultimate Guitar does. This feature is the main thing you're paying for, plus the work that Ultimate Guitar staff has gone through to curate and maintain all the pro-level tabs.

Multiple Instruments (bass, synth, drums, etc.)

I think what's most remarkable about Ultimate Guitar Pro is that most tabs have multiple instrument channels for each part of the song. For example, they might have bass, but then they'll also have different channels for each bass part.

To stick with our Tool example:

  • Bass 1
  • Bass 2 (drive)
  • Bass solo

Here's what that part of the interface looks like:

Ultimate Guitar Pro Review: Is it worth it? - Guitar Chalk (13)

You'll often have multiple parts for each instrument added.

And then for Adam Jones' guitar tracks:

  • Lead guitar
  • Solo guitar
  • Rhythm guitar

My guess is that Ultimate Guitar has access to some kind of database where official scores and tab sheets are stored for licensed music, because doing all this manually would be an incredible time investment. Either way, they deserve credit for getting so much material to their users. Here's another look at the instrument selection interface:

Ultimate Guitar Pro Review: Is it worth it? - Guitar Chalk (14)

Another look at the instrument selection interface. This conveniently pops out on the left side of the tab, making instrument selection super easy.

You'll often see piano, synth, and multiple guitar tracks included, each with their own tabs. This can be extremely helpful for dissecting different part of a song you might be trying to learn.

Fretboard View

The fretboard view in Ultimate Guitar Pro shows you a fretboard from an angle that seems like you're looking down at the fretboard and plays along by showing you the fret location for each corresponding note in the tab sheet. Here's what the interface looks like:

Ultimate Guitar Pro Review: Is it worth it? - Guitar Chalk (15)

The fretboard view combined with the speed adjustment makes an already excellent resource even more helpful and functional.

As the tab and audio play, this element will light up with a yellow dot on the fret and string corresponding to each note. In combination with the ability to slow down the tab, this is extremelyhelpful and should also be noted as a valuable teaching tool.

When I taught lessons I'd have a lot of students ask me to help them learn a particular song and this resource would have been incredibly helpful for that task.

Chord Versions of Each Song

One of the coolest, "low profile" features of Ultimate Guitar Pro is the inclusion of chords-only versions of each song. This lets you quickly pickup the basic chord progressions for a song, regardless of whether it's played in a traditional acoustic or chord-friendly rhythm style. The chords for "Africa" by Toto are a great example:

Ultimate Guitar Pro Review: Is it worth it? - Guitar Chalk (16)

I found myself using the chords-only resource more than any other feature.

The tab/chord toggle is above the instrument selection panel:

Ultimate Guitar Pro Review: Is it worth it? - Guitar Chalk (17)

You can easily toggle back and forth between the tab and chord version of each song.

While the song itself isn't exactly a "strumming tune" it's great to have a chord reference like this for getting the general idea and following a bass line. Then, if you want more detail, you can look at the instrument sections for different parts of the tab. I can't confirm that every song has the chords listed, but after using the program several times - at length - I didn't see a single Pro tab without it. It's a great feature and an under-emphasized aspect of the program.

Printable

It's technicallypossibleto print the free Ultimate Guitar content, but it isn't really supposed to be (there's no print button) and the printable version of each song is only available in Pro tabs. You can see the print button to the right of the screen over where the tab starts.

Ultimate Guitar Pro Review: Is it worth it? - Guitar Chalk (18)

Printing or a printable format is only available in the Pro version.

Both the chord or Pro tab version of each song are printable, similar to a PDF file.

Miscellaneous Features

There are a few other features that I won't give a full paragraph to. Instead, we'll just list them here.

  • Zoom in/out
  • Tonebridge functionality (effects and amp settings app)
  • Left-handed view
  • Countdown for starting songs
  • Metronome

Ultimate Guitar Pro Cost: How much is it?

To get a feel for the value of this program, we need to know how much it costs. This was surprisingly tricky, though after going to an incognito browser (I already had a testing Pro account for this review) and filling out a form about what kind of music I liked and what instruments I played, I finally got to see the pricing structure.

I did the same thing this year to get updated pricing which, as I mentioned, has changed dramatically.

Ultimate Guitar Pro Review: Is it worth it? - Guitar Chalk (19)

The price of Ultimate Guitar Pro has gone up significantly.

Here's what it cost when I initially published this review.

Ultimate Guitar Pro Review: Is it worth it? - Guitar Chalk (20)

The prices for an Ultimate Guitar Pro membership, when we first published this review.

This increase in price is pretty disappointing, especially the month-to-month cost. The $25 per month is actually higher than Guitar Tricks, which is a vastly more comprehensive program. The thought process that went into this price increase is something we can only speculate about, but the bottom line is that it's too high.

Again, this is a bummer, because they have a great product on their hands. They're just charging way too much for it.

Here's a quick summary of the Ultimate Guitar Pro cost:

  • $25 per month
  • $99 per year
  • $65 per year (spring sale)

Conclusion

All together, Ultimate Guitar Pro is one of the easiest and most functional ways to learn a song on the internet. It makes the plain text tab essentially a thing of the past.

And my experience with Ultimate Guitar Pro has been entirely positive. It's a simple, extremely helpful resource that significantly improves over what the site offers for free. However, I have to revise how I feel about the value of the program, given the increase in price.

For tabs, $25 per month is absolutely too high. Even the $99 per year is too high. And this is even more of a bummer, since their price points used to be really good.

So in summary, it's a great program that takes a hit because of what they charge.

Your Questions and Comments

Do you have questions about our Ultimate Guitar Pro review or the cost of the program? If so, leave them in the comments section below and I'll be happy to help out. I've also got contacts at Ultimate Guitar I can refer you to if I can't personally answer your question.

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  • Ultimate Guitar Pro Review: Is it worth it? - Guitar Chalk (21)

    Bobby Kittleberger

    Bobby is the founder of Guitar Chalk, and is responsible for developing most of its content. He has worked with leading guitar industry companies including Sweetwater, Ultimate-Guitar, Seymour Duncan, PRS, and many others. You can shoot him an email to get in touch.

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Ultimate Guitar Pro Review: Is it worth it? - Guitar Chalk (2024)

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