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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Lately I have listened Finger Eleven’s album Them VS. You VS. Me a lot, usually in my car, on my way to the office. While listening it I had a lot of ideas crossing my mind, because, you see, at one moment in time, we (me and my band) also tried to find another approach to out classic pop-rock music, and we started to play alternative rock.

I can tell you that it’s not an easy thing to do, especially when you come from outside that area. It is not easy to do because your creativity works in the cultural area you were educated in, meaning that if you listened a lot of hard rock, well, you will have a lot of musical ideas in that particular area of music while trying to compose a song in another style, jazz, let’s say, would not be that easy, because your mind does not have the habit of thinking the jazz way.

It’s the same with alternative rock. Even if for a classic rock musician alternative rock may sound simple, or simpler that the heavy riffs or the complex bluesy licks he’s used to, it is not this way. Try to cross the border and come up with a song in a style that you are not very familiar with. Oooh, trust me, it ain’t easy. I know because when we tried to cross over to alternative, we struggled to put up a few songs, even if in the end, some of them are quite good, I’d say (I am also a modest person)

So, I took Finger eleven as a case study of an alternative rock album from a band that has roots somewhere deeper than this and I was surprised to see the variety of ideas that I haven’t thought about.

I can tell you that personally I enjoyed listening this album, even if in the beginning I had the idea it has a bit too many acoustic songs. After a short while I’ve got used to it.

While listening a record for more than one time, you will come to like some particular songs more than others. Personally I’ve got hooked by Paralyzer, but that’s no surprise because it’s the main song of the record and it is supposed to hook up the listener, but also by Them VS You VS Me and Change the world.

Change the world is a beautiful song that I found myself searching on the CD almost every time I was driving home in the evening. It is, I guess, an evening song. Not something to make you happy, but clearly something to bring a bit of peace to your heart. Clearly can be played on acoustic guitar cause well, it is an acoustic song, after all.

I can also tell you I liked the bass sound and the drums, but I consider the acoustic guitars a bit too tensed and dry, but probably it wouldn’t fit any other way, cause it’s alternative rock with hard rock influences, after all, it’s not 80’s hair rock, so an acoustic guitar like in To be with you (Mr Big) would not be appropriate for this.

Bottom line, I liked it, and even if it is not something that I’d listen at home everyday, I would recommend it as a window to a brand new world.

Buy Them VS. You VS. Me from Amazon now!

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