Jam Babble

I’ve written quite a bit about my love for the Learn and Master Guitar Program. I own it, I use it and suggest most beginner get a copy.

I’ve been using a couple of their newer courses lately and I wanted to share them with you.

Blues Guitar

The first is a course from their newly created “Spotlight Series” grouping of courses.

The spotlight series are smaller (fewer DVDs and CDs) programs that target a smaller niche of a larger learning area.

The first Spotlight Course I got to see was the blues guitar DVD, Learn and Master Blues Spotlight. The course is again instructed by Steve Krenz, the same instructor from the Learn and Master Guitar Course, but they’ve made some improvements in video and on screen post production quality.

Like the blues, which is very grass roots, they’ve carried that into the course. Rather then having this clean studio area where all the lessons take place, some of the lessons are done with Steve on Stage with a full band. This gives a great feel to what you’re learning and allows you to envision the over all sound of something that might sound boring alone with you’re guitar but sounds fantastic when played with a full band.

Guitar Setup

There’s been a second guitar course released as well from Legacy in the spotlight series. That course is Guitar Setup and Maintenance. While most of us opt to just get our gear setup by a professional lutheran at our local guitar shop there are those of us who have the DIY attitude.

This course will walk you through everything you need to know about setting up your instrument properly form changing strings, checking intonation and adjusting the neck.

This course won’t be for everyone, but for those that are interested in know how to do some of the more regular setup work to their guitar this is worth the $50 bucks.

As always, if you’re a complete beginner, check out our Learn and master guitar review. This is the course that started it all for Legacy Learning Systems. It’s the best self study guitar program available not just online but probably any where.

This service has been online for more then 10 years, which kinda blows my mind that I haven’t looked around yet.

Guitar Tricks is a huge online database of video guitar lessons recorded by some 40+ odd teachers that each have their own specific specialty.

I was reviewing the site for some of my other beginner guitar sites as I felt it was likely a good alternative to some of the DVD and online lesson videos I’ve used thus far. I wasn’t disappointed at all.

While Guitar Tricks might not look like it offers all the same bells and whistles of some of it’s competitors it does every bit a good of job at actually instructing students on how to play guitar.

They have a very well thought out and organized teaching system that works for beginner and intermediate players a like.

If you’re looking for an easy way to improve your guitar skills, learn for the first time or learn something new on the guitar check out my full Guitar tricks review.

I give some more detail info on how their service works, price and lessons offered.

I just finished doing a comparison for another site on the best online guitar lessons.

As I was going through the lessons, styles, topics, instructors etc. for all the different sites out there I started to realize just how little difference there is in fact between many of these guitar websites, pending your current skill level.

So I had to break it down some what like a scoring system.

The features I compared:

Price: Of course you cannot do a comparison of anything these days without taking price into consideration. How ever this was the least weighted part of the entire comparison since only $5 a month separated the different sites.

Lesson Quality: This was a big one. Since it’s so cheap today to make multi screen video and HD recordings I figured this was the standard for all online lessons, surprisingly it is not yet though.

Styles Taught: Again, this is used as a differentiator by a lot of different sites out there but truthfully I don’t know how many people are signing up to JamPlay to learn some abstract styles.

Teachers: It’s nothing to have 50 different teachers doing lessons for your site since the cost is so low. All you need is a back drop, a couple of cameras and then the video can be sent to someone who does the editing.

Bonus & Practice Features: There are a few key features you need here (backing tracks, scale and chord charts/tools, metronome and tuner). Some sites have a long list of bonus features although I don’t know that many of your members would be using them.

So what was my conclusion? There are a couple of really good sites out there (primarily JamPlay and GutiarTricks) but they’re very evenly matched when it really comes down to it.

Check out the full comparison.