Saturday, January 8, 2011

JamPlay Review

I recently got a chance to try out JamPlay, and I am thoroughly impressed by the site. For those who haven’t heard of it yet, JamPlay is a guitar membership site that offers high quality video guitar lessons with a variety of instructors. The site hosts a wide variety of content (more than 20,000 minutes worth) and you’ll find all the lessons you need to learn and master the guitar. Let me go into some of the pros and cons of the site in this JamPlay review.

JamPlay divides its lessons into three phases. Phase 1 is for beginners while intermediate and advanced guitar learners may want to jump in at Phase 2 and 3. Phase 2 focuses more on specific genres and styles of guitar while Phase 3 is centered around learning to play actual songs. In Phase 1 you will the guitar basics and fundamentals. The lessons start of assuming that you have no previous experience, so absolute beginners can start off here. After the first couple of lessons, you will understand how the guitar works, and how to play your guitar properly. Once you’ve advanced past the very basics, you’ll then start learning other beginning guitar essentials including proper posture, basic chords, strumming techniques, scales and much more. All in all, the beginner lessons do an excellent job of setting you up for the future phases.

JamPlay video lesson

Each of the video lessons are filmed in HD, so the quality is excellent. Most lessons are around 40 minutes in length and are divided into chapters for easy navigation. If you ever want to repeat any part of a lesson, it is quite easy to move back and forth. The lessons also include useful supplementary material that you can review after each lesson, and there is a place for you keep your own notes to refer to at a future time. You can also manually track your own progress on each lesson. This integrates with the Progress Report feature of the site which tells you at a glance which lessons you’ve started, mastered, and still need to work on. This is a nice way to make sure you stay disciplined with your guitar learning.

One unique aspect of the JamPlay site is that the instructors have filmed their own sets of lessons independently. Since everyone’s learning style is different, it is great to have to choice to find a teacher who’s teaching style is compatible with your way of learning. I recommend before start out, to browse through the first couple of lessons from each teacher and find the instructor that appeals to you the most. It is also possible to mix and match and if that works well for you. JamPlay has an impressive stable of 30 experienced guitar instructors. A few of them have over 30 years of guitar teaching experience so they definitely know how to teach you properly.

The other part of what makes JamPlay unique are its social networking features. You can make your own profile, share your interests like favorite bands and make new friends on the site. By participating in the JamPlay community, you will feel a lot more involved and will help your motivation for learning. The site also includes a very active forum, where you can get answers to your questions or just plain hang out. There’s also a daily webcam sessions with a particular JamPlay teacher which allows you to interact with the instructor over streaming video in a group chat environment. This is a really fun feature that I don’t think any other site offers.

JamPlay Instructor Chat

Compared to a similar guitar membership site like Guitar Tricks, JamPlay does cost a little more per month ($19.95 to $14.95). However, the monthly fee is still quite modest, compared to what you would pay for private guitar lessons. Another downside with JamPlay is that you have the be online with a good broadband connection to enjoy the best possible experience. As far as I can tell, there’s no way to download the videos to your computer for offline viewing.

If you are serious about learning to play the guitar and enjoy the idea of being part of a guitar learning community, you should definitely give JamPlay a serious look. At least check out the free lessons they offer on the site to see if you like it. JamPlay suitable for guitar learners of all levels, and it’s definitely a fun and enjoyable way to learn the guitar.

Visit JamPlay Website

Topics: Reviews | 1 Comment »

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