Learn to play guitar like a professional with an online course? Is it possible?

Can any online course teach you to play guitar like Eric Clapton, Eddie Van Halen, or Bruce Springsteen?

Is Jamorama a genuine product or another online scam?

Read my report -  as a committed sceptic -  and reach your own conclusions!

Report dated: 16 November 2006
Subject: investigation of guitar lesson courses


Are you an aspiring guitarist? Then read on ...................

Let me start off by saying that I am a skeptic.

I don’t trust anyone or anything until I have overwhelming proof that what they say is true.

That, of course can have its downside – I’ve missed out on a few good opportunities because I thought they were ‘too good to be true’ – but they weren’t – they were actually true!

But on the other hand it has also stopped me going down the path of buying just about everything the gurus offer me as ‘the next great scheme.’, so I guess it breaks even in the end.

With that in mind, let me tell you about my search for help with playing the guitar.

I always thought that I was musically ‘deaf’ (and so did my family), and apart from taking a few piano lessons at school (and the teacher gave up on me instead of the other way round!), I’ve never really aspired to being a musician.

However I am an avid jazz and blues fan and I thought it would be nice to at least be able to strum a few chords on the guitar and wile away a few hours believing I was the next Wes Montgomery or whatever.

So I visited the local library and took out a few books on guitar lessons for beginners.

Big mistake! When you see it written down in the book it looks easy – but translate that into my two-left-hands technique and you have a situation where even the cat gave notice of departure!

And how can a book describe such things as bending, sliding, hammer-ons and pull-offs? It seems you need to be a contortionist to accomplish some of those tricks!

And as for motivation – well that lasts about one week and then you begin putting the next lesson off until ‘I feel more like it’, and the gaps get longer and longer.

So my next decision was to go online and see what was available – preferably free.

If you Google “guitar lessons” you get almost 3 million returns, and ‘”free guitar lessons” over 2.5 million - so it’s a daunting task.

But I delved in – and found that my skepticism was well and truly justified.

What a load of scams there are out there! Good money ‘down the drain.’

And the ‘free’ ones? Well they either were next to useless – virtually duplicating what I had read in the library books – or they gave you some basic skills but really wanted to upsell you to their own courses.

So I started being more selective and visited a few sites that seemed to give unbiased reviews of the online courses available, and one course seemed to strike the right balance between price and quality – Jamorama.

Now to be honest the sales page almost put me off.: “Who else wants to discover the astonishing step-by-step secrets of how to play guitar like the Eagles, Eric Clapton, Jimi Hendrix, Red Hot Chilli Peppers, Nirvana, Bob Marley, Eddie Van Halen, Bruce Springsteen, … and so on?”

Yeah, right!

And to be honest, the mug shot of the writer didn’t exactly inspire me with confidence either.

But then I noticed what seemed to be a cast-iron 60 day 100% refund policy so I thought “what the heck, I’ve tried everything else let’s give this a try.” So I bought it with every intention of returning it if it didn’t come even close to what it promised.

Now bear in mind my inborn skepticism and bad experiences to date. So you will understand that I was not the most motivated of students and I approached this with a great deal of doubt in mind, especially as everything had been downloaded from the internet!

But – hey – I was more than pleasantly surprised!

I stared off with the basics and within a short space of time I was playing a few chords more-or-less musically. And you have not only a video (148 of them in fact) showing the techniques required (so I didn’t need to be contortionist after all!) but you also had some great tracks that you could jam along to and actually feel like you were making real music!

Now my enthusiasm climbed to a new level and I started getting more adventurous. Now such things as bending, sliding, hammer-ons and pull-offs were no longer mystical, highly-technical techniques, but they were actually things that I – the musical idiot – could do!

Boy – now it was fun.

So I next thought “is this just for beginners?”. So I introduced the course to a friend of mine that played in a small rock band locally.

Within a week he was raving about it! “This is fantastic” he said, “I’ve leant a whole lot of new skills just in the last week.” He was converted!

Now I can guess what you are thinking. “He’s telling us all these positive things so he can then go on to sell us the course and make some money out of it himself.”

Well you are half right.

I am telling you these positive things because they are genuinely positive.

And I do want you to buy the course.

But the reason is, not because of any small commission I might get, but because I believe if you have even the slightest pretensions about being a guitarist, this course will set you on the right road to doing so.

And like me – with a 60 day 100% refund policy  -what is there to lose?

But I’m not going to ask you to take my word for it. Head over to http://www.reviewsnest.com/GuitarLessons/Jamorama.htm (which site has nothing to do with me) and read their review of the course to see what they think.

So, my friend, I leave the choice to you. If you are skeptic like me – good. Go through all the due diligence you feel you need to find a good course – or learn from my experience and give Jamorama a try.

Send a copy of your receipt to guitar@info4u-services.com to receive the free books mentioned above (Subject: please send me my free guitar ebooks)

Best wishes for your guitar-playing future!