Jamorama Review

Our Rating Overall: Beginners: Intermediate: Advanced:

Overview

Jamorama consists of a series of downloadable guitar lessons, which incorporate written, audio and video elements, using downloaded software that presents the material on your PC.

Course Author / Instructor

Course Contents - What You Get

You first get access to the Jamorama members area, from where you can download all of the course materials:

• Maestro: this is the ebook software that you use on your PC to view the different lessons, and also control downloads of additional lesson modules.
  
• Book 1 - Beginners: this is the first section of the course, and is suitable for total beginners, taking you through the foundations of learning the guitar.
  
• Book 2 - Advanced: the second section of the course goes through more advanced chords and techniques, following on from the first section.
  
• Bonus Software: GuitEarIt, a game designed to improve your ability to recognise various different notes & chords; Jayde Musica, software to help you learn to read music, and also guitar tuning and metronome software packages. Another bonus is a 30-day access to the 'SongPond.com' site.

Each book is divided up into a number of lessons, and these may be downloaded individually as you need them, rather than downloading the whole lot at once. Downloading these lessons is all handled from within the Maestro software package, using a straightforward interface, you just select the lessons you need, and click to download them.

Course Description -  What's in the Lessons

The Jamorama lessons, once downloaded, are presented on your PC by using the 'Maestro' software that you download from the Jamorama site. The lessons combine several different types of material - written (tab and chord  notation), audio (e.g. Jam tracks and other audio samples), and video clips. There are a total of 148 video clips, and 26 full jam tracks in the course.

The Maestro software combines all of these types of material together, which makes for an extremely integrated learning environment. A couple of screenshots from the lessons are shown below:

As you read through the lesson content, there are audio and video icons shown throughout the text. Clicking on these  activates the audio (e.g. jam track) or video clip relevant to that part of the lesson.

The video clips are very clear, with a nice combination of 3 views, one view showing the right hand (strumming / picking action), one showing the left hand (chord fingering), and the other showing a standard fretboard diagram with the notes and left-hand fingering being used. You can easily pause and rewind the video clip, say, if there's a section you want to see in more detail.

The Jamorama course lessons are divided into two main sections, Beginners and Advanced.

• Beginners: consists of 15 lesson modules, covering topics including: Reading TAB, Simple Open Chords, Musical Notation / Theory, More Open Chords, Minor Chords, 8th Note Rhythms, Dominant 7th Chords, More Complex Strumming, Blues Progressions, Bass Note Picking, The Major Scale, Suspended Chords
  
• Advanced: consists of 29 lesson modules, covering topics such as: Bass Note Runs, Maj7th Chords, Triplet Rhythms, Barre Chords (all shapes), Percussive Strumming, Palm Muting, Advanced Rhythm Techniques, Major and Minor Scales, Power Chords, More Complex Time Signatures, 9th Chords, Diminished and Augmented Chords.
  

The beginners section starts right at the basics, showing you how to hold the guitar, and read & understand the TAB notation that's used throughout the course.

The lesson modules in each section are in easily digestible 'bitesize' portions, just right for going through the whole lesson module once in a single practice session. Each module usually incorporates some video clips to explain the technique being covered, and often finishes with an audio 'Jam Track', where you get to put what you've learned in the lesson into practice, by playing along with the Jamorama 'band'.

The jam tracks themselves are very well done, good quality, and a full band sound. They can be played in 2 modes, 'play guitar' and 'mute guitar'. The first time through, you'll probably want the 'play guitar' option, where you can hear the guitar part being played on the track as you play along. Using the 'mute guitar' option lets you 'be the guitarist' in the band, which is great for your confidence once you've practiced it a few times.

Support

Support for Jamorama is handled through their website, there are some FAQ topics, if your question isn't answered there, you can submit a support ticket. A ticket we submitted was answered fairly promptly, within the time they specified.

Overall - Our Verdict

Jamorama is a good solid, reasonably priced introduction to learning the guitar for beginners and early intermediate players. It will give you an excellent foundation in playing a variety of different chords, reading musical notation, and practice at playing rhythm guitar along with band tracks (good practice for the real thing!).

It's not aimed at teaching soloing / lead guitar, which is why we probably wouldn't recommend this course for advanced players, and more advanced intermediate players.

We had some minor issues with the Maestro software, in particular navigating from one lesson to another seemed a little clunky. Since you would mostly be spending practice time on a particular lesson though, this isn't a massive issue.

Overall, the integrated presentation of written lessons, video clips and audio jam tracks works very well, assuming you're OK with using your PC while practising your guitar (you can print out the lesson modules also, for 'offline' study), just by clicking on the audio / video icons accompanying the lesson text.

We liked the fact that throughout the lesson text, Ben has placed occasional motivational tips, to help keep you going, just as a personal guitar teacher would do.

The GuitEarIt bonus software is good fun too, and really achieves the aim of getting you to recognise chords just by their sound, which is a vital skill to learn when playing along with CDs and other musicians.

Price and Guarantees

Jamorama is currently priced at US$39.95, with a 60-day refund guarantee period. Quite often on their site they have a special offer, where you can get Jamorama and their lead guitar product, Jamorama Lead, as one package, for a reduced price.

More Info

For more info on the Jamorama course, or to order, visit the Jamorama website.