Interactive Guitar Review

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(More customer reviews)The software would be about okay as Guitar tutor software but it does not include any well known songs to learn (unlike some other packages like eMedia's Rock Guitar which I prefer). Also, the Comp-U-Pare feature - the main reason I bought the software - does not work and actually crashes the software. There is a support website but it is terrible with lots of broken links on the website (that are supposed to go to pages on the website that are no longer at the given URL rather than linking to missing external pages). In particular, there is a dead link that is supposed to download an upgrade.

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Interactive Guitar is a multimedia-based instructional program for beginners to advanced students. First you plug your guitar into your PC soundcard using the included 1/4-inch to 1/8-inch adapter. The program shows you how to properly tune your guitar using the virtual tuner . Then you learn about picking styles and notes. After you have that completed you progress to chords, learn about the 12-bar blues, as well as runs and phrases and turnarounds.

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eMedia Guitar Method v5 Review

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(More customer reviews)I'm a guitar instructor who teaches a once a week high school guitar class. I've started recommending Emedia to my students as a great at home guitar program. As an instructor, I really like the step by step approach to the lessons. The video are very helpful in demonstrating techniques between lessons. Kids that are using the program progress a lot faster than those that don't. This is a fine program either for those that want to learn on their own or that are also taking lessons.

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The latest version of the world's best-selling beginning guitar CD-ROM! 165 comprehensive full-screen lessons cover everything from the basics to chord strumming, playing melodies, and fingerpicking. New interactive feedback on melodies and interactive quizzes help make learning tablature and music notation easy. Covers folk, blues, classical and rock styles, including a modern rock chapter with 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. Songs are recorded live and hits even have 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 latest version offers fully scalable lesson screens, an option for full-screen video and interactive feedback for melodies. The Note Tracker shows you what note you're playing and Instant Feedback tracks your progress through the melody as you play. eMedia Guitar Method is the ultimate way to learn how to play guitar!

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Guitar For Dummies Review

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(More customer reviews)Guitar for Dummies is a good place to start learning how to play. It's pretty straight forward in teaching chords and strumming techniques and I really enjoyed that it had the built in recorder, metronome and tuner. The only drawback is that with SOME lessons the teacher assumes you know certain things already. I've never picked up a guitar in my life before buying this and now I can at least play along to simple songs. It was worth it for the price.

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The eMedia Guitar for Dummies CD-ROM makes learning quick and easy with over 80 step-by-step lessons. Songs and exercises are accompanied by full-motion videos, live recorded audio and variable-speed MIDI tracks. The easy-to-follow lessons range from basics like stringing the guitar to playing chords and strumming techniques. Professional guitar instructor Kevin Garry, Ph.D., guides you with video demonstrations of techniques. The costs for the same number of private lessons and all of the accessories included in eMedia Guitar for Dummies would run well over a thousand dollars which is why this software is an excellent value!

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EarMaster 5 Review

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(More customer reviews)I love this software. I'm a pretty crappy guitarist who decided to go back to the basics and learn some music theory (which I'm doing via the "absolutely understand guitar" DVD set by Scotty West -- I recommend that product as well -- the presenter has a tendency to ramble and excessively repeat himself but ultimately the material is solid and a lot of things are starting to click so it was worth hanging in there). Anyway, this software is a perfect complement to your music theory studies. I think that unless you're just lucky to be born with a natural talent, you're going to need some dictation of intervals, chords, scales, and rhythm to atune your ear to how they sound. Playing it on your own instrument isn't as effective because you can't help using your eyes and fingers as a crutch. With this software, you have nothing but your ears to find the answer.
Some small nits to pick, which I'm writing here hoping that emedia will read this and include in its next upgrade: (1) the sounds are pretty crappy and hardly like the instruments they're supposed to represent. I'd rather get a choice of three instruments (say, piano, violin and steel string acoustic guitar) that sound realistic than 60+ crappy MIDI ones. (2) I wish an exercise were included that helps you train absolute pitch. For this, I think the Deburgh method is good. It starts by playing two notes (Eb and F#) and you have to listen in to the character of each and once you can distinguish them you progress to other/additional notes. (3) Another thing that I would find extremely useful is if the scale identification (which is what I'm working on now) could be expanded beyond ascending/descending. My hunch is that a program could be written to pick out notes from a scale in a sequence that still sounds relatively musical (following some musical rules). Or alternatively, plenty of examples (a couple of hundred, so you can't rely on memory) could be stored of existing music pieces in those scales. Ultimately, I would like to be able to hear something on the radio and be able to pick up by the character of the music that it's in this or that scale/mode (even if I can't tell the pitch) and the included exercise (just ascending/descending) is a bit too easy.

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If you want to sing, improvise or jam with complete confidence, you need to recognize all the sounds around you. Ear training can make this possible. Making music with others will become easy and fun! EarMaster is your personal teacher. It is easy to use and provides instant feedback. EarMaster includes a Standard Tutor with over 400 lessons as well as a Jazz Tutor with over 200 lessons. Both will guide you and automatically increase in difficulty as your ear improves. Create your own customized exercises to improve the way you play, compose and notate any style of music!

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eMedia GuitarPro 5.1 Win/Mac Review

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(More customer reviews)This review is written from the prospect of using Guitar Pro for Classical Guitar purposes. I have tried many notation programs for classical guitar. None are perfect. I've concluded that you need a high end music notation program for professional looking scores and another program for doing transcriptions for personal use or sharing.
On the high end, the choices are Finale, Sibelius, or Lilypond. I chose Finale for this purpose. You can do anything with it, but there is a steep price to pay. It is not intuitive at all, and it's expensive. The interface is a cluster of years of buildup. One wouldn't design a user interface like this from scratch. If I didn't already own Finale, I'd might go with Lilypond, or look more carefully into Musecore.
But I decided that I needed a notation program for simple transcriptions. Here are the ones that I tried in increasing order of my preference:
1) TablEdit - seen some decent scores for this one on the web. Deal breaker the UI is confusing. I'd just as well use Finale for everything.
2) Power Tab - interface OK, free, lots of features. Deal breaker most of the focus is on the tab representation, very little on standard notation.
3) Tux Guitar - nice interface, very similar to Guitar Pro, free. Deal breaker can't add fingerings. This program may eventually catch Guitar Pro.
4) Guitar Pro - nice interface, will do just about everything necessary easily. Can display/print standard notation only, tab notation, or both. Output is very good. ASCII import. Drawbacks for standard notation are that fingering are unconventional in location and labeling, bar can only be specified though text input, crescendo specified through volume control which is tied to a track(s).
In the end, the decision was an easy one. It just took a while to download all of the programs and try them out. Hopefully, I just saved you a little time.
Update 11-04-2010:
Since I wrote this review, I've switched from Finale to Lilypond. Even though I am a programmer, I was intimidated by Lilypond until I discovered using Frescobaldi (available on Linux only) as a front end. This system is just a pleasure to use and way easier than Finale. Lilypond doesn't do tab very well at the moment, so I'll likely continue using Guitar Pro when I need tab.

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Guitar Pro 5.1 has all the tools you need to improve, compose and accompany yourself on the guitar. It's got a multitrack tablature editor for guitar, banjo, bass and other stringed instruments. Scale tools and a chord diagram editor lets you create the perfect score and the guitar composition you've always wanted.

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