Well, OK, we all wish we could do this, unfortunately it takes a few good years and a couple of good ears just to start it.

However, a good learning program could help a lot. There are more programs out there that offers you to teach how to play the guitar, or in this case, to learn and master the guitar, and I personally give them credit, because I can tell you I have started to learn to play the guitar from a book.

Really, when people ask me how I started to play the guitar, I give them the facts: I started with a book of less than 100 pages, that gave me the basics, like basic chords, notes on the guitar neck, rhythms (ok, maybe not much to learn from a book when it comes to rhythms) and…the rest is, how they say, history. Or at least I wish it would be.

All I know is that I would have loved that at the moment I started to get interested in playing the guitar, such a resource be available (not that I had at that moment any mean to watch DVDs)

However, today there are plenty, and people interested in learning how to play the guitar don’t have why to complain.

So, as the title states, the reason I started this post is actually the method called  Learn and Master Guitar (http://www.learnandmaster.com/guitar/), which is actually pretty acclaimed and not only that, it is an awarded program, as it is the winner of the 2008 Acoustic Guitar Magazine Players’ Choice Awards, two Telly Awards and an AEGIS Award for Excellence in Education! Wow! Not your regular guitar tutorial, right?

If you also count the 20 professionally produced DVDs, 5 Jam-Along CDs, a 100+ page lesson book, and a free online student support site, then I think we really have a winner!

The instructor on these DVDs is Steve Krenz. I must admit, I didn’t know about him, but the association to Donna Summer, Bruce Springsteen and Eric Clapton and the 20 years of professionally playing the guitar recommended him quite well.

As a second Learn and Master Guitar review, I could point you to www.guitarlessonsreviewed.com (they provide reviews for more than one such tutorial programs, such as Jamorama or JamPlay so you can compare for yourself)

Also, to make a long story short, there are 2 price packages there, one for 10 DVDs and one for 20 DVDs, price is either $139 or $149.

I don’t live in US, but honestly, how many lessons can you get from a guitar tutor for, let’s say, $150? Cause here I can tell you…not many!

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I have discovered www.teachwombat.com a few days ago, by being pointed to it by Ken, one of the guys behind it. How do you say that in English? I think you’d say I’ve been pitched, right?

Well, I started to look at the site, to see what it is about, Ken also handed me a copy of the material there for this review and I can tell you he managed to get me interested…

TeachWombat.com is actually, what I could name “the starting guitar teacher resource“. The material on the site is actually a great collection of guitar chords, progressions, scales, all in a graphical form, all marked on a guitar neck, a wide range (250, they counted!) of student handouts that can be printed over and over again. Complexity ranges from first position 3 notes chords to extended jazz chords, has exercises, patterns and modes. Pretty much all you need to start teaching guitar. Handy…

The whole site is aimed actually to provide materials, “how to” and guidance for the guitar player that wants to start a guitar teaching business. As I was saying, very handy if you consider that you get all the materials for $15, in pdf format, so you can print them over and over again to give to your students. The fact is that with such materials, anybody that knows how to play the guitar can start teaching guitar.

I enjoyed the fact that you also get “blank necks” that you can draw on, to show your students how to play and the materials for bass players. Yeah, they rule! I will show them to my bass player buddy, he’ll enjoy them, I’m sure.

Also, I liked the materials about how to plan your lessons, what to tell your students or about how to manage the whole activity.

And all these come in a $15 package…

Now get there and see for yourselves, maybe some of you will discover a hidden vocation! If so, let me know, I will feel proud for making the teacher in you come out in the wild!

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Starting today I will start a new category, “Scrapers (the wall of shame)”. This is because today, Mad Stratter sent me an email pointing me to www.discountguitarsinfo.com, informing me about the fact that this site scraps our content. I can tell you I recognized there a lot of the articles we all post day by day, a lot of articles from Mad Stratter’s blog, from Jon’s GuitarNoize, from Stratoblogster, and a lot more blogs I enjoy and read every day.

This is not the first time I see this. A couple of weeks ago, Danny from GuitarPlayersCenter.com sent me an email complaining me about the same thing, but about another site.

A couple of good months ago, Jon started a conversation with me and IG about another site scraping content.

I guess we all know how difficult it is to come up with original content each and every day so this kind of situations should not go unpunished. There are ways to fight this. I know a few and I am sure you also know a few. I will tell you my best one, IMO: the only reason this kind of websites exist is to build content for AdSense or similar advertising systems. Content builds search traffic. Traffic means money, the reason this kind of sites exits. Google gives you the possibility to report such sites for duplicated, scrapped content, terminating the account associated to the site. No money, no reason for the site to exist.

OK, there are other ways to make money, but in such cases, AdSense is a very important one.

You add here your own methods, let’s see if we can fight this! And when you find other sites scraping our content, share it with the rest of us, we might be interested…

I think that we join our forces, we might just start a movement here: “Say NO to scraping!”

What do you say?

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Corey from MusicGoat.com told me today about a new guitar site around, www.musicleeinclined.com, that one of his friends recently started.

So I started to think, OK, why not give him a push, just as a warm welcome? I understand from his site that he lost contact to guitar playing for a while and he would like to get back to playing and I guess we all know how important is to keep contact with the guitar! For me this blog I run was the most important support in the last year for playing the guitar, so why not give the guy a hand?

So, guys, without any more words, I give you www.musicleeinclined.com! Enjoy!

The community is growing! Yeah, baby, yeah!

PS: Anybody else would like to push him a bit?

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There are not that many guitars in the favored position of Brian May’s Red Special. I mean there you have Gibson Les Paul, it’s a classic that everybody loves and recognize, you have a Tele, a Strat, but let’s face it, everybody can recognize the Red Special.

Red special became a brand, a guitar that made history because of ONE SINGLE MAN, Brian May!

There are so many famous Les Paul players, so many fantastic Strat or Telecaster players but, hey, there is only one that made this guitar famous, and that one is Brian May.

You know, in Romania, after 1989, when music and western culture suddenly bloomed, there were a few musical currents, like you were either a rocker, a dance music fan, a disco(OK, I think it was too late for this even in Romania), etc, or you were a…Depeche Mode fan!!

There were so many bands playing rock, so many bands that played dance, pop, disco, but hey, THERE WAS ONLY ONE BAND playing, well, Depeche Mode, right? And still, this started a whole new category for music lovers. I paid some thinking over the years how this could happen and I still can’t explain it.

Somehow the same thing here with Red Special. One man, one guitar, one brand facing the rest of the world. A fair situation, I’d say.

…and when you think the actual reason for this post is the official site of Brian May guitars, www.brianmayguitars.co.uk…

Enjoy, Stumble and comment!

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Following 2 articles on this blog, Jack Pribek’s and IG’s guest posts here’s another statistic chart about acoustic guitars being sold (on eBay this time). It is interesting that Martin and Gibson are on the first 2 positions. If you would have asked me before this chart, I would have said Ovation is doing better, but it may be a subjective view.

The chart is a gadget from TeraPeak and shows you more views, like average price, total sales, etc.

The same for electric guitars, select electric guitars on the above chart. Here Fender seems to be the leader, in front of Gibson. Well, I guess the fact that Fender has a line of cheaper electric guitars comparing to Gibson, may be a reason…

Later edit: I was totally confused by the curvy lines on the website stats(on the small chart there are bars, not curvy lines, so it is obvious), Gibson is doing better. Stupid me…

By the way, stats are based on stats gathered in the past 30 days.

What do you say?

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…when I feel like being mean!

And for that, my dear friends, I propose you another website strongly related to our musical education as guitar players and musicians in general, a site where you will experience great sensations, where you will have a lot of fun and a lot of pain! You’ll see what I mean in a minute…

This is a site that I like to visit once in a while when I feel like testing my limits. And limits is the word here…

Without other words, I give you Good-Ear.com, a site dedicated to ear training (www.good-ear.com).

No much to say there, beside the fact that you need to recognize intervals, major/minor/7th chords, scales, perfect pitch notes, a lot of things to make your day…

And by the way, after testing your ear, come back and let me know how you find it!

Isn’t it great, or what?

Buy from Amazon:

Mel Bay Country Electric Guitar Ear Training Course
Mel Bay Rock Guitar Ear Training Course
Mel Bay Blues Guitar Ear Training Course

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Lately I have decided to put much more weight on reviewing guitar related websites because we spend so much time on the internet these days, so today I am going to speak about www.guitar123.co.uk.

Guitar123.co.uk is a site dedicated mostly to guitar enthusiasts located in UK and presents guitars by type and brands, telling you where you can buy them from and at what prices. The main advantage (and I think the value of the site) is the fact that once you decided what guitar are you going to look for/buy you can see a list of shops that sell that particular guitar and their prices. Pretty convenient, I’d say, especially if you are located in UK.

The fact is that this site is a start-up at this moment, the guys behind it still work to grow it so every passing day will bring new guitars and new opportunities for the guitar enthusiast.

Considering the fact that things are still moving, what I would add if I would build this site is a subscription form where people enter the email address to be informed about new guitars, or a “inform me about this particular guitar” option. Maybe you found what you are looking for but you are not yet happy with the price. I think it would be interesting.

A feature that I really enjoyed is the fact that they present a YouTube video with that particular guitar, where it is available. Yes! That one is a good thing, because I can not remember how many times I have been searching for YouTube videos for a particular guitar after reading a review and seeing prices, because I just wanted to see how that particular guitar sounds. Having a video embedded right on the site helps the visitor make an idea of how it sounds. Like for example you look for a Fender Telecaster or a PRS guitar and beside models, prices and resellers you see the promotional video of this great guitar.

For the moment, only 4 types of guitars are available, electric guitars, electro acoustic, acoustic guitars and bass guitars but I am looking forward to modeling guitars and midi guitars since I have my Variax guitar from UK so I am curious about the prices there…

And speaking about prices, I find it somehow difficult to convert prices to USD or Euro, I wonder if an online converter would help. But again, the site is dedicated to UK guitar enthusiasts so I should keep my mouth shut.

So, to conclude, if I were to live in the UK and didn’t want to spend my last penny on buying an overpriced guitar I would pay this site a visit to feel the market and find the best price around!

What do you think?

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