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Interactive Guitar Clinics Product
Review by Jack Loganbill |
Over the years I have spent big bucks
to learn how to play the guitar. I have taken guitar lessons at
$20/half-hour, purchased a mountain of instruction books/methods, and
more recently, I have purchased several computer-based instruction CDs.
The mountain of
instruction books has not been a great help. No matter how good the
instruction, unless I can see and hear it I have trouble learning it.
There have been exceptions, such as the Newell Kimball course I am
currently working through, but for the most part the books just have not
been much help.
Guitar lessons
taught by a capable teacher are essential for most of us to get
started and, later, to get motivated to improve. Nothing beats a live
teacher to catch your mistakes and problems.
However, taking
private guitar lessons can be intimidating. I have had teachers who
blazed through a run and then expected me to reproduce it. This has been
a problem because I have difficulty following someone's fingers when I
view them as a mirror image (face to face).
Another problem
with guitar lessons is that a lot of great instruction and nuances
are soon forgotten. And with the high cost of lessons, who wants to
"waste" time reviewing and repeating?
I have found
CD/computer-based guitar instruction to be the best fit for my
personality and learning style. Not only can I view and hear the
instruction, but I can replay it for eternity. All instruction and
nuances are captured--nothing is lost. Plus, there is no intimidation
factor, trepidation, or other phobias/emotional hang ups involved. The
computer can't tell if it took me a dozen tries to learn a passage.
Lately I have
started and completed several instructional CDs from
RiffInteractive
and
WillLandrum. Both companies offer excellent instructional
products. RiffInteractive provides a larger catalog of products than
WillLandrum,
but I prefer the look and feel of the
WillLandrum products. Allow me to explain why....
I recently
completed
both WillLandrum's "Essential Rock Guitar
Techniques" and
"Powerful Modal Theory and Soloing"
Interactive Guitar Clinics.
The "Essential
Rock Guitar Techniques" course is beneficial
for beginning to intermediate students who want to learn rock
guitar techniques such as hammer-ons, pull-offs, string bending, string
scraps, natural/pinch harmonics, tapping, picking techniques--in short,
virtually all of the techniques a rock guitarist should/must know
and would learn if they were jamming a lot with experienced players.
Each technique is described with one or more screens of text and
demonstrated with a large video window and clearly
recorded sound. The student must read the actual instruction--it
is not voiced. The screen format is very clean,
easy to read, simple to navigate. All music notation and tab is
displayed as
very clear, easy to read graphics.
The "Powerful
Modal Theory and Soloing" course is beneficial
to any player of any level who wants to learn modes and soloing.
It shares the same instructional and video format of the Rock Guitar
Techniques course. The instructor provides modal theory (how to
construct a mode scale), how to choose modes for specific chords, and so
forth. The course builds the modes starting from G (G Ionian, A Dorian,
B Phrygian, C Lydian, etc.) The instruction expects the student to use
the modal theory to build the scales/modes for other keys. The CD also
includes jam sessions in various keys/modes
so you can apply the soloing techniques
to the
instructor’s accompaniment. Very cool.
The content of
both courses is excellent.
I also thought both the camera work and screen layout is quite special
and unique.
Every guitar
instruction video/CD I have seen was produced with the camera
positioned facing the instructor. This is the "accepted" way of teaching
and evidently filming, but for some of us, trying to follow the
left-hand fingerings of someone sitting opposite you can be difficult.
The
WillLandrum videos are filmed from over-the-shoulder of the
instructor--in essence the same view you see
when you look down at your own guitar fretboard. I immediately
found that this
over-the-shoulder filming technique made it easier
to follow and learn the instructor's left-hand fingerings. It is
simply a more natural way to learn
fretboard activity.
The screen layout
of the WillLandrum CDs is very clean, easy to navigate, and the
video viewer screen resolution is much larger than those of other
courses (RiffInteractive). And this is my biggest gripe of the
RiffInteractive courses: the screen layout is way too complex-busy. They
pack too many media players into the right-hand (main) window and
squeeze the instruction and music notation into the narrow left-hand
column. Second, it takes a while to figure out which media player in the
right-hand window to select to view/hear a particular media object
listed in the narrow left-hand window. Third, the
RiffInteractive video media objects are much smaller than those of the
WillLandrum courses.
Bottom Line
You can learn a lot
from both the RiffInteractive and WillLandrum instructional CDs.
I prefer the layout and camera work of the
WillLandrum CDs, they just need a larger variety of CDs.
RiffInteractive has a slick but over-complicated interface, but they
cover a lot ground with their wide variety of courses.
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