Acclaimed music educator and recording artist Chris Standring has certainly produced a winner with his latest program, Guitar Made Simple. Developed for beginner guitarists, the program is well constructed, extremely well thought out and features a fresh and thorough approach. The Guitar Made Simple CD ROM is perfect as a beginning instructional tool for guitar players just starting out or those wanting to brush up their skills.
The teaching style is personal and relaxed, and the CD layout is excellent. Guitar students can move forward, while simultaneously adapting and customizing the course material to suit their experience and personal learning style. The principal key here is simplicity.
Guitar Made Simple Overview
The program interface is web browser, which is easy to navigate and features a powerful “search facility”. Users can always return directly to the initial page they were working on, then “tab” with ease to the next relevant segment.
Standring has made sure the course provides lots of fun, using plenty of song examples and videos which are entertaining and interactive. Each diagram, image and exercise allows students
learning guitar to listen to the way it sounds on the guitar with one click of the mouse. This not only personalizes the learning, but clearly emphasizes each guitar technique being taught.
Sound and Video Quality
The sound quality is extremely high. This clarity of sound further adds to the feeling of experiencing private ‘one-on-one’
guitar lessons. The featured videos are also well produced and of a very high quality.
One nifty feature is the ‘selective’ interactive audio which allows students to click on an sound example performed on the guitar by Chris Standring. Students can listen to the example omitting either the melody or the rhythm, which allows individual practice play along for the melody and rhythm parts. As well as being educational, this feature is heaps of fun and guaranteed to accelerate the pace at which students can learn the guitar.
Music Theory and Guitar Tablature
The songs, samples and exercises all include guitar TAB charts as well as traditional music notation. Students also can receive help with chords by clicking a chord diagram which then shows that chord shape… from the perspective of the student. There is also a feature where clicking on any chord symbol in the course will display three different versions of that same chord.
The Upside
This innovative guitar course has been developed on the assumption that students want to learn guitar the right way. For that reason, it is a fairly serious
guitar course. Standring does not advocate ‘not having to learn theory’, or avoiding ‘lots of pointless exercises’. Instead, he clearly demonstrates theory and exercises to learners in their most simple form, explaining exactly why they are fundamental to becoming an accomplished musician.
His unique and gifted presentation style makes sure that despite the dedication, commitment, dedication and hours of practice required, learning guitar can also be fulfilling and fun. The program is one of the most popular we offer at our busy
guitar resources centre - GuitaroJam.
The Downside
It’s difficult to find a downside to this package. Those who prefer instant download products might be impatient waiting for a CD to arrive in the mail. But even here, Chris Standring’s team has ensured a speedy order response time, with CD’s arriving to most addresses promptly in double quick time.
Overall, a brilliant guitar instruction package for beginning guitar players and those with gaps in their skills what want to improve. Click here for a 30% discount on
Guitar Made Simple specially available only to GuitaroJam subscribers.