GuitarLove offers live, small-group guitar lessons for kids across Cochrane, Calgary, and Alberta — all taught by passionate guitar teachers who make learning fun and confidence-building. Every week, our online classes help young beginners make real progress — and love their instrument along the way…
Hi, I’m Ali — the founder of GuitarLove!
After years of teaching and more than 10,000 lessons later, I tried something new – an online group class for kids – and I discovered something incredible:
Group lessons helped kids progress faster, stay motivated, and feel proud of what they could do!
There’s nothing like having to play in front of others to build skills and confidence quickly.
GuitarLove was born!
Our mission is to change the way kids learn Guitar with Live Small Group Lessons that help kids build real skills, confidence, and a lifelong love for music.
“Ali” my mom called from the hallway, “the audition for that band is this Friday… Are you ready?”
I was 14, sitting in my room, practicing on my guitar, and preparing to audition for an all female teenage band based out of Toronto, Canada.
I’d fallen in love with guitar 3 years earlier and had gone from playing Stairway to Heaven (the first song I tried to learn!) to playing regularly for my parents’ friends and in local venues.
I stared at my sunburst Les Paul guitar – a gift from my parents that I’m grateful for to this day – and lightly placed my fingers on the strings imagining playing at the audition.
Was I ready?
I thought I was – but I had no idea what was in store and where my love for guitar was going to take me…
“Ali, are you ready?”
Lights flashed, music pounded on my ear drums, my palms were sweaty with nerves.
Same question but this time from our band’s stage manager.
He had to yell over the sound of the crowd – over 50,000 people – packed into an overflowing amphitheater in Niagara Falls, Canada.
Our band Morae’s Fate was opening for Styx and Glass Tiger – two classic icons in the music industry, and it would be broadcast live to millions of people across Canada on major TV channels and networks.
The past two years had flown by with gigs, recitals, and high school homework done on the road while our band had worked its way from a little known rock female trio to playing the main stage at one of the biggest concerts of our life.
Was I ready?
Guitar in hand, now a custom purple Carpparelli made for me, I stepped into the bright lights and onto the stage…
GuitarLove is about you and your child’s guitar love journey. It may not be as wild as the journey guitar took me on – thousands of hours practicing and touring isn’t for everyone! – but it is just as important.
Because every time we learn something and unlock a skill we couldn’t do before we uncover an important side of ourselves, a side that we need in every aspect of our lives. The side that steps up to a challenge – instead of turning away. The side that attempts something slightly beyond our reach, a bit before we are ‘ready’ and it builds a foundation that will serve us for the rest of our lives. So when we’re asked to step up to the stage – we know we can handle it.
Because the truth is – I was never truly ready. I was actually shy and preferred quiet environments – not performing in front of thousands.
So when everyone asked me if I was ready? I never truly was… but by taking the next step I learned what I needed to learn and started to build the foundation for my life along the way.
My guitar journey has taken me on a wild ride that not many people get to take. I didn’t know that day so many years ago would be the last time I would step on the stage with my band. We ended up with a 10 year contract offer from a major record label – but faced with signing away the next ten years of our lives as 16 year olds, we decided to step away…
I moved to Alberta and started concentrating on teaching guitar – something I had done and was passionate about since I was 14 – but never seriously considered doing full time. I built my personal studio in Cochrane Alberta to almost 100 students weekly, but in 2019 I was faced with a problem that I was lucky to have but couldn’t figure out how to solve – a long waitlist of kids excited to learn guitar and no space to fit them. I was faced with the simple question ‘How could I help more kids?’
Then covid forced the world online and I taught my first kids group class.
What started as a solution to help more kids learn guitar quickly turned into something bigger. The kids in my group classes were learning quicker than my 1 on 1 students! They were motivated and inspired to play for each other throughout every lesson, and were learning so fast!
GuitarLove was born.
Every student who joins GuitarLove starts their own story, one that might look completely different from mine, but begins with the same spark and excitement at the sound of those first few notes.
Maybe your child dreams of playing their favorite songs. Maybe they just want to try something new. Or maybe you simply want to see them light up doing something that’s theirs.
What I love the most is seeing our students learn to work through challenges, start to hear the results of their efforts, and to see them light up when they play their first song. I love seeing the kids’ confidence grow with every lesson!
Because when our students feel capable, when they can play something they couldn’t before, their confidence grows in every part of life.
And that is what GuitarLove is all about.
Every guitar story starts somewhere.
Are you ready for theirs to begin?
Gratefully Yours,
Ali Stead
Founder, GuitarLove
Ready to see how our small-group lessons work?