Learn & Master Guitar Review

Our Rating Overall: Beginners: Intermediate: Advanced:

Overview

Learn & Master Guitar is a comprehensive DVD-based guitar course, which is aimed at taking students from being complete beginners through to advanced players, giving a good foundation in several different styles and techniques.

Course Author / Instructor

Course Contents - What You Get

Learn & Master Guitar comes in a very compact package, which contains the following:

• Lesson DVDs: there are 2 versions of the product, the 'Original Edition' has 10 DVDs, and the 'Expanded Edition' has 20 DVDs.
  
• Jam Track CDs: both versions of the product come with 5 CDs filled with around 100 good quality, full band jam tracks.
• Printed Workbook: this is a 106 page workbook, with content from the various lessons, and music / chords for the exercises and jam tracks.

Course Description -  What's in the Lessons?

The lessons themselves are organised into 20 sessions, there are 2 sessions on each DVD (that's 10 of the DVDs). Each session is split into 2 parts, the main lesson content and a workshop segment. The idea is that you go through the content section for that particular session in detail a few times. The workshop part is intended for daily practice, and should cover all parts of the lesson topics.

The 20 session topics are outlined here:

1. Starting Off Right - String Names, Technique, Tuning, Finger Exercises, C & G7 Chords
2. Reading Music, Notes on the 1st & 2nd Strings - Musical notation, 1st & 2nd String Notes and Exercises
3. Notes on the 3rd & 4th Strings -Ties, Dots, Repeat Signs, Eighth Notes, 3rd & 4th String Notes & Exercises
4. Notes on the 5th & 6th Strings - 5th & 6th String Notes & Exercises, Sharps, Flats, Natural Signs, Am & E Chords
5. Basic Open Chords - Open Chords & Chord Exercises 1-3
6. Minor Seventh & Suspended Chords - Minor Seventh, Suspended Chords & Strumming Patterns
7. Barre Chords on the 6th String - Half-Steps & Whole Steps, 6th String Barre Chords & Exercises, Major Scales
8. Barre Chords on the 5th String - 5th String Barre Chords & Exercises, Keys & Key Signatures, Parallel Major & Minor
9. The Secret to Great Strumming - Strumming Technique, Intervals & Worksheets
10. Fingerstyle Guitar - Technique & Exercises, Merle Travis & Classical
11. Pentatonic Scales - The Foundation of Soloing - Pentatonic Scales, Forms & Pentatonic Patterns
12. Advanced Chords - Two Chords, Major 7th Chords, Minor 11th Chords, Exercises & Chord Substitution
13. Playing the Blues - Blues Scale, Minor Pentatonic with Blues Notes, Blues Chord Progression, Triads & Worksheets
14. Giving Your Playing Some Style - Sliding, Bends, Hammer-ons, Pull-offs,Tapping & Harmonics
15. Electric Guitars - The Heart of Rock & Roll - Power Chords, Chicken Pickin', Country Bends, Arpeggios, Sliding 4ths, Harmonized Major Scale
16. Advanced Strumming - 16th Notes, Strumming & Exercises
17. Going Beyond the First Position - '3 Note on a String' scales, Seventh Chords
18. Jazz - Jazz Chords & Chord Progressions
19. Soloing - Soloing Techniques & Ear Training
20. All the Chords You Need to Know - Chord Formulas, Abbreviations & Inversions

The sessions start with the absolute basics, and progress in difficulty, ending up with some quite advanced sessions on soloing / improvising and jazz chords.

Here are a few screenshots from the DVDs of some of the above sessions, showing a mixture of beginner and advanced sessions:

The DVD menus are clear and easy to navigate, showing the sub-topics within a session. As you can see from the screenshots above, the video lessons combine shots of the guitar and the chords / notes being played. Taken together with the printed workbook, this makes the content easy to follow.

With the 'Expanded' edition of the product, you also get another 10 DVDs, which have bonus workshop content. So each bonus DVD accompanies the standard DVD for those particular sessions, but provides additional exercises and material for the workshop sessions.

As well as the lesson content and workshops, each session has a 'tips' section, which covers some aspect of guitar playing, such as tuning advice, or tips on getting the best sound when playing fingerstyle.

Support

Support for Learn & Master Guitar is provided via a set of community forum boards on the Legacy Learning Systems website. There are good FAQ posts, and Steve himself often responds to queries posted on the forums.

Overall - Our Verdict

Learn & Master Guitar is an extremely comprehensive package, ideal for beginner and intermediate players. If you're a very advanced player, it's probably not the right course, although there are definitely some elements of the later sessions that cater for advanced levels.

The DVDs have been produced to a very high standard, it's very easy to follow the content of each lesson. Steve Krenz has a relaxed presentation style that makes the lessons enjoyable to watch and play along with. We liked the clear diagrams that accompany the video footage when an exercise or particular chord is being shown, again, these make it easy to follow.

The jam tracks are also good quality, with a professional band sound. The guitar part on each jam track has been recorded only on the left channel, so by switching the balance on your stereo, you can play along without hearing the guitar part. This is a good feature, and makes it easier than having two sets of jam tracks.

Another useful feature is that on the community boards, there are separate topic sections for each one of the different sessions. So if you have questions on a particular part of one of the lessons, you can go straight to the forum topic for that session, and add a post.

Some of the practice songs used in the earlier sessions could have been updated to some more 'contemporary' songs, but the later sessions make up for this with some good modern songs and exercises.

If you're a beginner / intermediate player who wants to make a serious investment (of both time & money!) in learning to play the guitar, then this course certainly provides the instruction and practice material to ensure that, providing you put in the practice time yourself, you should be a competent guitarist in a variety of styles after completing the course.

The course doesn't go massively in depth in any one particular style or area, but rather gives a good solid foundation in all of the topics it covers, and after completing the course, you will have the tools and skills you need to go on and develop any particular style or type of guitar playing more easily.

Price and Guarantees

Learn & Master Guitar is currently priced at US$249 for the standard edition, and US$299 for the expanded edition. They quite often have sales available, where you can get up to $100 off these regular prices.

They also have payment plans, where you can spread the cost over four months, which can help spread the cost over time.

The product comes with a 60-day guarantee, if you're not happy with it during that time, you can return it for a full refund.

This is certainly one of the more expensive courses, however, considering the quality and quantity of lesson content, it is actually quite reasonable, considering the equivalent cost of private lessons.

More Info

For more info on the course, or to order, visit the Learn & Master Guitar website.