Product Description

The new version of the world's best-selling beginning guitar CD-ROM! Over 160 comprehensive lessons cover everything from the basics to chord strumming, playing melodies, and fingerpicking. A modern rock chapter includes various strumming styles, movable power chords, and power chord riffs. Over 50 large-format videos from instructor Kevin Garry, Ph.D., include split-screens and close-ups of both hands. Learning guitar is made fun with over 70 songs, including famous hits from artists such as Bob Dylan, the Grateful Dead, and Steve Miller. Many of the songs are recorded live with multi-track full band accompaniment. As the songs play, an animated fretboard guides you through the fingerings, and MIDI tracks allow you to slow down and loop parts of the music for practice. This new version includes larger easy-to-read screens, enhanced audio and video, and custom animated fretboard skins. eMedia Guitar Method is the ultimate way to learn how to play guitar! Guitar Method 1 features many hit songs, including: Knockin' on Heaven's Door Acoustic version – Bob Dylan Rock version – in the style of Guns N’ Roses Little Red Rooster – made famous by the Rolling Stones Rock N' Me – Steve Miller Band Downtown Train – made famous by Rod Stewart Uncle John's Band – the Grateful Dead Scarborough Fair – made famous by Simon & Garfunkel Ode to Joy – Ludwig van Beethoven House of the Rising Sun – made famous by the Animals La Bamba – made famous by Ritchie Valens and Los Lobos Midnight Special – made famous by Creedence Clearwater Revival Newsweek "Top 50 educational CD-ROM of the year!" Peter Frampton "The ultimate way to learn how to play guitar!" Jon Chappell, editor of Guitar One magazine "eMedia's Guitar Method 1 is the best CD-ROM package I've seen for guitar instruction."

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #752 in Software
• Brand: emedia
• Model: EG08063
• Released on: 2007-10-11
• ESRB Rating: Everyone 10+
• Platforms: Windows Vista, Windows NT, Windows 98, Windows 2000, Windows Me, Windows XP, Mac OS X
• Format: CD-ROM
• Dimensions: .0" h x .0" w x .0" l, .15 pounds

Features

• 165 comprehensive lessons with options for either tablature or music notation
• Over 50 high-resolution, large-format videos including split-screens and close-ups of both hands
• Over 70 hit songs from artists such as the Rolling Stones, Bob Dylan, Steve Miller, and more
• Animated Fretboard displays fingering positions as the music plays; support for left-handed animated fretboard with custom skins
• Includes automatic tuner, metronome, digital recorder and 250-chord dictionary

Amazon.com
The latest version of the world's best-selling beginning guitar CD-ROM! Over 160 comprehensive lessons cover everything from the basics to chord strumming, playing melodies, and fingerpicking. A modern rock chapter includes various strumming styles, movable power chords, and power chord riffs. Over 50 large-format videos from instructor Kevin Garry, Ph.D., include split-screens and close-ups of both hands.

The latest version of the world's best-selling beginning guitar CD-ROM. Click to enlarge.

Learning guitar is made fun with over 70 songs, including famous hits from artists such as Bob Dylan, the Grateful Dead, and Steve Miller. Many of the songs are recorded live with multi-track full band accompaniment. As the songs play, an animated fretboard guides you through the fingerings, and MIDI tracks allow you to slow down and loop parts of the music for practice. This new version includes larger easy-to-read screens, enhanced audio and video, and custom animated fretboard skins. eMedia Guitar Method is the ultimate way to learn how to play guitar!

Over 50 large-format videos. Click to enlarge.

Animated fretboard displays fingering positions as the music plays. Click to enlarge.

Built-in Tools Included Chord Dictionary Digital Recorder Digital Metronome Automatic Tuner

Guitar Method features many hit songs, including:

"Knockin' on Heaven's Door"
Acoustic version--Bob Dylan; Rock version--in the style of Guns N' Roses

"Little Red Rooster"
--Made famous by the Rolling Stones

"Rock N' Me"
--Steve Miller Band

"Downtown Train"
--Made famous by Rod Stewart

"Uncle John's Band"
--the Grateful Dead

"Scarborough Fair"
--Made famous by Simon & Garfunkel

"Ode to Joy"
--Ludwig van Beethoven

"House of the Rising Sun"
--Made famous by the Animals

"La Bamba"
--Made famous by Ritchie Valens and Los Lobos

"Midnight Special"
--Made famous by Creedence Clearwater Revival

Makes Learning Easy as 1,2,3!

1. Watch the video for a demonstration of the technique.
2. Practice the technique slowly with warm-up exercises.
3. Play along with the songs as the animated fretboard guides you through fingerings.

Animated Fretboard
Displays fingering positions as the music plays. Double-click on any note or chord for fingering. Features right-handed, left-handed and mirror views. Choose from six different fretboard skins!

Built-in Tools Include:

Automatic Tuner
Tune your guitar quickly and easily! Play into your computer microphone and tune up interactively. Reference tuning notes are included.

Chord Dictionary
Includes fingering charts and recorded sound playback for over 250 chords. Helps you learn songs with new chords quickly.

Digital Metronome
Set your own speed and keep a steady beat with audio or visual feedback.

Digital Recorder
Save your recordings and play them back to share and compare.

Customer Reviews

Not Perfect, But Useful
Good Points
Animated fretboard, chord dictionary, electronic metronome, electronic tuner, recording/playback capability. It'll get your feet wet if nothing else.

Bad points
Lots of holes in the information that you will probably still seek through Google or other search engine to connect some of the dots when you realize the holes. Also, the pace of most of the songs are not for the beginner in my opinion (to play along at least). The chord transition is a difficult skill to master, and there weren't enough confidence boosters in the songs used. Of course you can play the chords and execute the chord transitions at a slower pace without the play along, but I ended up going to a music/book store and finding some good books with limited chord ranges per song and songs that interested me (motivation).

If you want to skip to skill sections that you want to learn, you will be at the disadvantage of having not learned chords presented in previous lessons, which every lesson builds upon. 75% of the program is the introduction of new chords in each successive lesson, working up to a song at the end of each lesson. When I finally got to power chords and reading notation for instance, it was months after purchase in my case. I was like, "gee I didn't know this was in here!" I had already gotten those tricks off of the web. There are many finger exercises, warm up exercises, scales, fretboard memorization techniques, etc. that never get mentioned in this program. I found these topics in other places and they seemed like essential tools to have as soon as possible. But, I guess maybe that is what they sell in volume 2 of this program.

General comments
Mostly covered above. I would still recommend to absolute beginners with this one qualifier: be prepared to supplement your learning through other sources. I've purchased many books and viewed many online resources; none of them have been all inclusive with information (maybe it wasn't very wise to expect such, but the packaging on these programs make some pretty grandiose claims). I need them all, and I know where the information is between them. If I don't have what I'm looking for, I hit the internet. When I'm ready to get back on some more structured path, I continue with the lessons in the program.

True story: when I started getting the music books and actually applying learned chords to familiar tunes, my family would come into my office one at a time and say "how did you get so good all of a sudden?" So, I guess everything played a role in my progress, including this program.

Conclusion:
I'm fairly immersed in learning guitar, having gotten a rather late start in music (by about a couple of decades!). So, I'm grabbing hold of as many avenues of learning that I can pursue. This is by no means a one-stop solution to learning guitar. But, if you can spare the cash though, it ranks as the best software available from any side-by-side feature comparison reviews that I've read. Learning guitar is a long process, don't expect miracles.

By far the best way to learn guitar!
This program is by far the best guitar tutorial out there. You really don't need to know anything to get started, but it will steadily teach you everything you need to know about playing the guitar. The songs are a bit basic at first, but they teach you what you need to move on to more interesting songs, like "Knockin' on Heaven's Door" or "Ode to Joy". Other than a guitar, everything else you need is right there - a simple digital tuner, chord dictionary, metronome, and an animated fretboard that shows you what to play. I've had no problems with the program on Vista. If you want to learn how to play guitar, get this program.

Past compatability issues with iTunes.
Apple iTunes uses the most recent version of Quicktime. eMedia's Guitar Method uses an older version of Quicktime: This compatability issue may be resolved in the new versions of Quicktime/iTunes. If not, you may have to uninstall iTunes and the most recent version of Quicktime in order for this software to run properly.