Archive for the ‘Reviews’ Category

Guitar Tricks is dedicated to helping it’s students learn guitar online through the power of the internet.  It’s excellent curriculum, thousands of lessons, dozens of expert instructors and easy to navigate site design have earned it my number one rating for online guitar courses just slightly above Jam Play.  So why choose Guitar Tricks? Read on my friend…

The Guitar Tricks Instructors

Without at least one good instructor, you might as well forget about learning anything.  So how does 46 instructors sound?  That’s right, there are 46 instructors currently posting video lessons on the Guitar Tricks site.  These aren’t just people that can play guitar.  They are passionate musicians with a special knack for teaching.  As I browsed the site and began going through lesson after lesson, I quickly realized how big of a deal this is.  Having many instructors means having many perspectives, styles of teaching, and styles of music being taught.  I really enjoyed having that many instructors to choose from and quickly found several instructors that were teaching the styles and methods I wanted to work on.  Visit their featured instructors page to learn more about them.

The Videos

I think the quality of the videos is an important deciding factor to consider in any video lessons regardless of whether they are online or offline.  Guitar Tricks lessons are all presented in high definition, professionally shot videos.  Instead of having the tablature or music on the video screen like most DVD courses do, it is presented directly below the video.  The actual video is full of close ups and their video player even has a feature where you can have it repeat just the part of the video that you are working on.  I found this to be a valuable feature when I was trying to practice along with the videos.  Check out the sample lesson below to get an idea of how the lessons work.  You can also see a few more free lessons with the lesson notes included.

The Core Learning System

So, the curriculum (that’s a big fancy word for how the lessons are organized) at Guitar Tricks is called the Core Learning System.  It is such a great system that it was probably the deciding factor in choosing Guitar Tricks over Jam Play for the highest ranked Guitar course.  What I especially like about it is that you can start where you need to start and then choose the playing style that you want to master first.  So if you are a complete beginner then you start with the Level 1 Guitar Fundamentals and then move on to level 2 followed by the level 1 intermediate course of your choosing.  Each level is comprised of a series of tutorials that teach you everything you need to know to learn guitar online the right way.  As you progress you will probably want to also move away from the core learning system some and do some of the individual song lessons.  There is a difficulty scale in place to help you determine if the song lessons are too difficult or not.  There are lots of fully licensed songs for you to learn in just about every playing style imaginable.  There are also Artist Studies, lessons based on guitar styles or genres, and  The Top 20 Techniques Reference Lessons.

Learning Tools

Guitar Tricks also comes with a suite of software tools to help you learn guitar online.  You can use all of these tools online and most of them can be downloaded to your computer for use even when you are not connected to the internet.  The tools available include The Ultimate Chord Finder, The Ultimate Metronome, and a Reference Tuner.

They also have a downloadable video player.  The video player allows you to play downloaded video lessons from the site.  You can set it to repeat a portion of the video that you are working on in a loop so that you can practice.  You can also queue up multiple videos to play one after the other.  Most of the videos on the site can be downloaded unless they are one of the licensed songs that is copyrighted by the original artist.

The last tool is the one that I found the most useful on the Guitar Tricks site.  The Jam Station is a tool that plays backing tracks in just about every music style. It is meant for you to play along with and learn to improvise with a full band playing behind you.  I have found this to be a very valuable tool when learning guitar online and I think it is the next best thing to actually playing with a band.

The Community

The Guitar Tricks Community of students and instructors is part of what makes it work so well.  The community is based in the very active Guitar Tricks Forum.  There are always discussions going on regarding every guitar related topic imaginable.  Each instructor has their own Q&A section of the forum and there are also general discussion areas about gear, famous bands, recording, song writing, playing techniques, music theory and more. There is even a place for you to show off what you have learned.

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The Bottom Line

Guitar Tricks gets my highest rating in the online guitar lessons category because of it’s very affordable price, it’s thousands of online lessons, the ability to download lessons for offline viewing, and all the extra’s they throw in. I especially like the way they organize their thousands of lessons to make everything easy to find.  I did notice that a few of the lessons did not have a high quality version but most of them do and it didn’t really affect my ability to go through or learn the material.  I also noticed that they did not have any webcam sessions with their instructors like Jam Play does.  However, they still come out on top  in terms of value for the money and quality of videos.  You can sign up or learn more about Guitar Tricks below.

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JamPlay is an online guitar lesson site featuring 40 instructors and over 436 hours of instruction. It includes professionally shot video and plenty of lessons for beginners and advanced guitarist alike.  There are many community features and tools geared toward getting any guitarist started and playing songs in no time at all. Here’s a rundown of everything that JamPlay offers.

Instructors

Just like with Guitar Tricks there are plenty of instructors to choose from with JamPlay.  There are 4o instructors, each with their own teaching styles.  If one instructor isn’t working out for you then you can always check out some of the other instructors.  You are sure to find a few that you really enjoy learning from and even communicating with through the JamPlay forums.  The instructors are carefully interviewed and matched with the teaching needs of JamPlay.

The Lessons

The lessons are made up of a series of high definition videos. The videos are professionally shot and include several camera angles so that you can see what the instructor is playing on the fretboard.  There are also additional resources included below the lessons showing the music and the tab for each song/exercise being taught.  The video player has a feature that allows you to replay the specific part of the video that you are working on in a loop so that you can practice it until you get it down.  I have included a sample series of lessons below from the JamPlay website.  There are also plenty of free sample lessons to be found on the site.

What They Teach

The JamPlay site teaches just about every guitar style and level of playing imaginable. They teach songs from popular artists and techniques that lay a foundation that will allow you to play more difficult songs.  Their teaching curriculum consists of 3 different phases.  Phase I includes basic guitar instruction that is aimed toward the beginner guitarist. In this phase you will learn how to hold the guitar, your first chords, basic finger picking techniques, barre chords, and basic lead scales.  Phase 2 lessons focus on individual genres and help guitarists further their knowledge and playing skills in a specific style of music.  Phase 3 is all about learning your favorite songs.  They have a difficulty rating to help you determine if you are ready to learn a specific song or not.  Overall, I found the structure of the lessons at JamPlay to be a little less organized than Guitar Tricks.

Community

So, just like a lot of the other programs and sites out there, JamPlay makes several bonus features available to their subscribers to assist them while learning the guitar.  One of these tools is their question and answer section. This area is set up so that subscribers can post a question to their instructors and get a video response.  I found this to be a helpful tool but also noticed that they do not seem to be posting responses very often.

They also have webcam sessions with their instructors every day.  They almost always have a session going but the problem I found with this was that there was rarely an instructor teaching a technique or style that I was interested in actually in a webcam teaching session when I was online.  This means if there is only one acoustic guitar instruction session during the day and I can’t be online during that time then I’m out of luck when it comes to live sessions and being able to actually ask questions.  However, this is still a very valuable resource.

The site has many social features such as searching for other guitarists and messaging them, chat, and JamPlay forums.  Their user forums did seem a little less active than some of the other communities I have seen but I did notice that the instructors are in there answering questions on a constant basis. Their chat rooms were almost always active every time that I logged into the site.

Tools

There are also several other common guitar tools for your use. One of these is the interactive guitar tuner that plays the tones for several common tunings so that you can listen and tune your guitar by ear. Another of these tools is a basic online metronome that helps you keep time while you are practicing your guitar lessons. The third and my favorite is the chord library. It contains almost every chord that you could ever need to form. It shows you multiple voicing of each chord and even has pictures of someone playing the chord properly.

The Bottom Line

JamPlay is an excellent resource for beginner and advanced guitarists alike.  However, as you can see, their price point is a little higher. In my opinion they don’t add enough extra value to the site to be worth the extra 5 dollars a month or $60/year. They do offer a couple of other payment options that charge a little bit less for paying for more time in advance. I found the webcam learning sessions to be a valuable feature but there isn’t always a applicable session going on and it seems to take longer to learn the concepts this way.  All in all their members will tell you in the testimonials section, and I agree, that the JamPlay site is a great way to learn guitar online.

I reviewed the Jamorama program quite some time ago but since then they have made a lot of changes (good and bad) to their program. Because they have made so many changes over the past couple of months I thought it was most definitely time for me to take another look and give them a fair review.  The first thing I noticed was that they have added a lot of material to their courses and have integrated some of the content from their previous Team Method Guitar program that they have since retired.  What this means for you is now you get everything in one place and for now at least, in one version.

Jamorama is currently being offered in a standard version with plans to release a deluxe version very soon. The deluxe version will include their lead materials and lots of extra’s to keep you learning for up to a year.  The Jamorama program is now headed up by an entire team of musicians working to teach you to be playing your favorite songs in the shortest time possible. At $49.95, Jamorama is definitely the most cost effective solution for guitar lessons that I have reviewed.  However, there are a few reasons for the lower price.  Read on for my FULL review….

The Instructor(s)

I always like to start my reviews with a little bit about the instructor or instructors that are teaching the course.  However, what really makes Jamorama stand out is there isn’t a single instructor actually teaching course.  I think this can be both good and bad. The good side is that instead of a single instructor, you actually have an entire team of musicians and recording professionals that have put together the information.  The bad side of it is that you never get that connection that you would normally have with an individual instructor because the videos rarely show the instructors face.

What’s Included?

Jamorama comes with over 250 pages of lessons. These are split into two major parts of the course. The beginner to intermediate course and the intermediate to advanced course.  Although this part of the course is print rather than video, the teaching style is very simple and takes a step-by-step approach to learning the guitar. It also comes with 148 high quality short video clips to help you learn the skills discussed in the printed materials.  These videos cover just about every angle so that you can watch the exercises as they are being played on the screen. Eight styles of music and 55 different strumming patterns are also covered in the course. In addition, you get 26 jam tracks to play along with.  Each jam track has a version with and without the guitar part included.

Extra Tools and Software

As with all of these programs, there are always a few bonuses thrown in to add even more value.  With Jamorama you get several pieces of software including GuitEarIt! which is meant to help you train your ears and enable you to transcribe music right from the radio and teach yourself any song.  There is also Jayde Musica Pro which helps you learn to sight read music by playing a fun game. Then there are the standard tools such as a chord kit, metronome and tuner. All of these tools together make this one of the strongest “bonus” packages I have seen with a guitar learning course.

Bottom Line

I rank this one best for someone who is on a budget but still wants to get going playing the guitar quickly. As you can see above, my only complaints about the course involve the navigation and that it has less video than I prefer. The course comes packaged in a couple of .zip files that once extracted contain the e-books in PDF format.  Anytime the e-books reference a jam track or video you must go to that folder and pull up the appropriate file. While this is a bit inconvenient, it isn’t a huge issue and I still highly recommend this course for someone on a budget wanting to get almost a years worth of lessons.  However, if you want to spend a little more for the year you can get a much better value out of some of the other courses on my guitar lesson review page.

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Having experienced both high quality and poor quality guitar instruction in my 10 plus years as a guitarist, I jumped at the opportunity to review this how to play guitar course and the others you will find at Learn2PlayGuitars.com. If you are ready to learn to play the guitar on your own, and you want to learn more than just a few chords and a few songs then read on. This Learn and Master Guitar course might be for you. The goal of these reviews will be to help you find the guitar learning resources that are the best for you and your needs as a beginning or intermediate guitarist.

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What is Learn and Master Guitar?

Learn and Master Guitar includes all that you would expect to find in a typical guitar course. However, it doesn’t just stop there. The goal of Learn and Master Guitar is to take you from guitar basics, through intermediate concepts, and place you well on your way to guitar mastery. Included with your purchase of the course are:

I found Learn and Master Guitar to be well organized and very easy to use. The first thing you will notice is that the course is broken down into twenty “Sessions.” Each Session builds upon the previous one, so they are meant to be completed in order. Each concept is introduced in a simple and logical sequence. You can of course begin at any point you feel comfortable with but I found that it was best to complete each session in order before continuing to the next to effectively learn how to play guitar. Among the topics covered are:

• Strumming Techniques
• Reading Both Music and Tab
• Major, Minor, and Pentatonic Scales
• Music Theory
• Basic and Advanced Chords
• and More…

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About the Instructor

The instructor for Learn and Master Guitar, Steve Krenz, is by far the most qualified professional instructor out of all of the courses reviewed here. He is not only a trained musician with a degree in music but he also has a passion for teaching and training other guitarists to develop their talents. He has a ton of playing experience and is actively playing and recording professionally in Nashville, Tennessee. His playing experience includes everything from playing with jazz big bands to symphony orchestras. He has played alongside artists like Israel Houghton, Tommy Sims, The Fifth Dimension, and Donna Summer. His recorded work has been used in promotional campaigns for Coldwell Banker, Prudential, and the World Cyber Games.

Even with all this experience, you can easily tell that his passion is teaching and helping guitarists. He conducts many how to play guitar workshops and events in venues all over the United States. He has taught thousands of guitar lessons to people of all ages and his skill level definitely shows in the quality of his instruction in Learn and Master Guitar.

What’s on the DVDs?

The DVDs are the most important part of Learn and Master Guitar because this is where Steve Krenz himself sits down and shows you step-by-step even the most complicated of concepts. Each Session on the DVDs have an instruction time followed by a workshop time. Each concept is explained during the instruction portion and then practiced in the workshop. The workshop time is great because this is where you get the specific exercises to practice in order to properly learn each technique.

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The workshop time can be used each day during your daily practice time and typically runs about 10-15 minutes in length. When you are ready to practice you can simply turn on the workshop and Steve Krenz will go through each exercise right there with you. Also, if you purchase the “Expanded Edition” of the course including all 20 DVDs then you will have the Bonus Workshops. Each Bonus Workshop will include additional instruction and exercises for each of the twenty sessions. These extra Workshops are not completely necessary in order for someone to begin learning guitar. However, I found the extra practice for each session extremely helpful, especially in some of the more advanced sessions.

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What’s a Jam Along CD?

A Jam Along CD is exactly what it sounds like. Steve has taken recordings of all of the songs that you learn during the lessons and included them on 5 CDs. What is special about these tracks though is that the referenced guitar part from the lesson is recorded in the left channel of the recording and the rest is in the right channel. This means you can remove the recorded guitar part by simply adjusting the balance on your stereo. You can also play along with the guitar part and the band by leaving the balance in the middle.

I think that no complete how to play guitar course should be without Jam Along tracks such as these. Listening to and playing along with a band can considerably shorten the amount of time it takes to learn a song or technique. Playing along with a band also builds confidence, helps to develop rhythm, and is much more fun and relaxing than using a metronome for tempo. A lot of guitarists, including the pros, will tell you that they still play along with CDs when learning how to play guitar parts for a new song.

The Book

The book is what ties the whole Learn and Master Guitar course together. It contains over a hundred pages of all of the songs, exercises, and examples that are on the DVDs. It contains worksheets that help to learn the music theory concepts as well as chord charts, tablature, and the actual music written out. If you want to practice with the Jam Along tracks or just without the TV then you will need this book. Steve Krenz also took it a step further and created a bonus resources book that has additional exercises, songs, and worksheets for each of the sessions. It is primarily meant to go along with the Bonus Workshops in the “Expanded Edition.”

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What Happens if I Get Stuck?

Learning how to play guitar isn’t always an easy task. In fact, soon after purchasing Learn and Master Guitar, I was playing through one of the intermediate exercises when I got stuck. No matter what I did, I just could not get my fingers to cooperate. That is when I was looking at the back inside cover of the course and discovered a link to the community website. I checked it out and what I found was a community site that includes a forum with a TON of resources including other students who were going through the same session and running into the same problems as I was when learning how to play guitar. I quickly introduced myself and was given some pointers on how to practice the technique. Steve Krenz even chimed in on the conversation with some great advice. I now frequently check in on the forum even offering my own advice and can say that it is one of the better guitar forums that I have participated in.

Video Review

PROS

I think the best part of any video course is the ability to pause and rewind and relearn the concepts over and over again at your own pace. Learn and Master Guitar is no exception and is particularly well organized for this purpose. The completeness of the course is also a strong point with up to 20 DVDs, a lesson book, and Jam Along CDs. The quality of the instructor and the materials is outstanding. This course is as good if not better than having a private instructor in your own living room teaching you. It also costs far less than private instruction would cost for a year. If you get stuck, the support on the community site is excellent. I noticed that they even have a gathering once a year.

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CONS

You may have noticed by now that I have really enjoyed Learn and Master Guitar. However, it may not be for everyone. Some people learn better in a classroom setting or prefer one on one interaction with an instructor. Also, many prefer to learn how to play guitar more by ear. And others have a hard time getting motivated to practice on their own (which actually becomes a roadblock with a private instructor as well). However, for the majority of beginner and intermediate players wanting to learn or sharpen their guitar skills this course is great.

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Should You Buy Learn and Master Guitar?

Well, if you are serious about learning guitar the right way and want to work towards complete guitar mastery, then of course you should buy it! This is hands down the most complete, best organized, and even the most fun guitar course I have had the opportunity to review. Are you ready to be playing the songs you hear on the radio within a few weeks? If so, then you shouldn’t waste another minute. This just might be the chance you have been waiting for to finally learn how to play guitar.