Monday, 30 May, 2011 11:17 Written by Joshua
Today I’m looking at a new guitar learning product that is very unique. This one is different from anything else out there because never before have all of these resources been put together in one place. In fact BBQ Hero is not just one guitar course at all. It is a bundle of 5 different services that are being put together all in one place to create the ultimate resource for anyone wanting to be that person that can pull a guitar out at a party and know all the classics, that everyone knows and loves.
A lot of these tools are available individually and in fact I have recommended a couple of them on the site and to my email subscribers in the past. But when you put all of these tools together in one place you really do have the ultimate learning package. Each part of this bundle just complements the others so well.
It’s Over $300 Worth of Music Training for Less Than $79
4 Month Subscription ($80 Value)If you have not heard me talking about JamPlay before then I must tell you this is probably my favorite resource for learning guitar online. Their 2,000+ video guitar lesson library just keeps on growing. They cover just about every style of music and have tons of instructors. There are a ton of community features on the JamPlay site as well including practice games, backing tracks to play along with, an online metronome, a chord library, progress reports and more. They also have 8+ hours of LIVE lessons every day where you can follow along with an actual instructor and ask questions. If there isn’t a class in session when you log on, you can bet there is one starting soon. You can see my full JamPlay review here
4 Months Access to 50 Song Lessons ($134 Value)This is where you’ll learn all those popular songs to play at social gatherings and parties. You’ll find many of those instantly recognizable songs taught here in professionally shot videos. Each song is actually broken into several videos, teaching a different concept or part of the song in each one. Some of the more popular songs on the site include “Stairway to Heaven” by Led Zeppelin, “Santeria” by sublime, “Hey there Delilah” by Plain White Tee’s and many more songs from virtually every genre. You will find both electric and acoustic guitar lessons on this site.
Click Here to Learn More About the BBQ Hero Guitar Bundle
Guitar tabs with rhythm ($40 Value)Guitar tabs to 70,000 songs with more being added all the time! You’ll get the plus version with this bundle which includes the ability to speed up or slow down the audio demonstration as you go through each song. It also allows you to learn each guitar part in the song. You can listen to only the part you are learning or even choose to focus on that part but still hear the rest of the track in the background so it’s great for playing along with and learning each guitar part. You will also be able to print every song with simple and easy to read chord charts.
Audio slow down and pitch change software ($59 Value)Song Surgeon is an excellent piece of software that will take any audio recording and change the pitch or tempo with very little or no distortion at all. What this means is that you can practice along with an audio track that you have and it enables you to slow down or speed up that track and also change the key that it is in. This allows for you to practice in a key that is easier to play or sing along with and to slow things down while you are learning and then speed them back up as you progress. Other features include the ability to reduce the vocals in a track, loop a certain section of a song you are working on, and store notes and tablatures with each audio file or project.
($105 Value) – Add $20 to get this vocal trainingA top of the line, best selling and most effective vocal training program that has been used by many celebrities and superstars around the world. This course includes tons of audio, video and workbook training and guarantees that you can add a full octave to your vocal range with just a few lessons. If you are going to learn to play guitar then you will most likely want to sing along too. You will get a 3 month subscription to Singing Success TV where you can watch unlimited lessons and even download 5 lessons per month. You will also get 3 Top 7 Vocal Packs which will teach you vocal exercises and more.
This is the best part! The price will start out at around $79 for all of these great resources. If you want the top of the line vocal training program, Singing Success, as well then the price is $99 for everything. They added this option since some only want to learn guitar at the moment but the extra $20 is well worth it if you plan to be singing at parties 
.
The thing is, I don’t know how long the launch price will be good so I would definitely hop over there and take a look at it soon if you are even slightly interested.
I only review and recommend guitar courses that I really believe will help you succeed based on my own personal experience as a guitarist and instructor for over 15 years. So believe me when I say this is a great bundle of products. Seriously, this is the best value in guitar and singing instruction that I have ever seen. I don’t think it is for everyone though. If you learn better from one on one time with an instructor then you might decide to go that route instead (though it will be far more expensive).
One thing is for sure, if you are serious about playing guitar then it is going to take more than just a few free lessons on the internet to get you there. You need to find great guitar instruction in a community that encourages constantly improving your skills and this guitar instruction bundle is the perfect place to start.
Wednesday, 04 August, 2010 08:54 Written by Joshua
Rating: 
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…
Disclosure: We are a professional review site that receives compensation from the companies whose products we review. We test each product thoroughly and give high marks to only the very best. We are independently owned and the opinions expressed here are our own.
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.
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.
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.
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 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.
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.
Wednesday, 04 August, 2010 08:53 Written by Joshua
Rating: 
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.
Disclosure: We are a professional review site that receives compensation from the companies whose products we review. We test each product thoroughly and give high marks to only the very best. We are independently owned and the opinions expressed here are our own.
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 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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Friday, 11 June, 2010 12:34 Written by Joshua
Rating: 
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….
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.
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.
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.
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.
Learn to Play Guitar at Jamorama
Sunday, 04 April, 2010 08:45 Written by Joshua
Rating:
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 Gibson’s 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.
Disclosure: We are a professional review site that receives compensation from the companies whose products we review. We test each product thoroughly and give high marks to only the very best. We are independently owned and the opinions expressed here are our own.
What is Gibson’s Learn and Master Guitar?
Gibson’s 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 Gibson’s 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:
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| 10 DVDs (20 DVDs in the “Expanded Edition”) | 5 Jam Along CDs |
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| 100+ Page Lesson Book | Access to the Community Website and Forum |
