eMedia Guitar For Dummies

I've had the product for only 2 days now and I love it. I play a wide variety of instruments but the guitar is something that I've wanted to play for years now. This product truly can assist anyone young or old how to play. It will go above and beyond the expectations of anyone who purchases it. Each time I use the program it feels like I'm somewhere like Guitar Center paying out the a$$ for guitar lessons. Don't get me wrong, I love Guitar Center and there one-on-one lessons are great, but if you're on a budget and you're determined to learn how to play within your available free time (night or day) then this is the way to go. Not only is the product great but the company who shipped me the item was terrific. I purchased the item on the night of 1/27/12 and received it by mid afternoon on 1/29/12 without even expediting the shipping. Why buy the product???...It's inexpensive, very comprehensive (videos, articles, pictures) and will exceed your expectations for a software program. Read more

This program is exactly what the title says it is. It gives a pretty good introduction to guitar playing. Most of the songs have an option to view a picture of the top of the fret board while someone else is playing the song. What I dont like about this feature is that the "fingers" show up as simple dots, and don't really show how a persons hand is supposed to move for the chord changes. This program also gives the option to watch someone else play the song, which sounds like a great idea but it really doesn't add much. My biggest problem with guitars is that I cannot figure out what I am doing wrong in some sections. I was really hopping that the feature where you get to watch someone else play would help me figure it out. What I really learned is that wrong or right people look the same playing the guitar. This program does not help you figure out problems. If you started from a cold start not knowing anything (as the Title says "For Dummies") then this might have worked better for me, but I'm not sure I wouldn't have run into the same problems. Previous programs by Emedia have allowed for the option of plugging in a MIDI device that allows the program to test and tell you based on what you are playing if you are doing something right. I was really looking forward to being able to use that on this program, however there is no such thing on this program. I felt that was a draw back to other EMedia Programs, and this product is made by Emedia and "For Dummies" so I felt that was disapointing. The other problem with the program is that once you get past several lessons they get into real songs, and instead of focusing on the guitar playing they have someone singing and its very distracting. As a musician of many instruments (Brass/strings) any musician practices again and again the parts they are having difficulty with and the goal is to play your part correctly. The singing on a guitar playing tutorial program was very distracting. The good parts of this program are that it does explain concepts very well. The idea of the slash chord vs power chords are explained well and the exercises reflect the lessons they are teaching in each chapter. I feel that this is a great alternative to taking a class filled with other people- however I'm not convinced that its much more effective than a book and a music CD could have been. This program is focused on rock/blues and does NOT touch at all on standard music notation or classical guitar in anyway. Once a lesson is done there are "review" screens that go back and quiz you or become reference screens for chords. It is very easy to see this book as a sequence and really see how to have a great foundation for guitar playing. Read more

The program did not load up on a Mac using System 10.8.2 even though product info on box states the program works with Mac computers with System 10.4 and above. The program itself is 3 years old and it's obvious the creators had not anticipated System 2.6 and above. Contacted eMedia and they concluded the disc, Version 1.0 was bad. Version 1.0 is three years old, which indicates how long the product may have been sitting on Amazon stock shelves, but maybe not. The eMedia folks immediately sent me a new one. Just tried it out, and it doesn't work either, exhibiting same symptoms of the same script error. Did some research and found out that a later version of the program does exist for newer Macs called Version 1.0.1, but this has to be downloaded from the Apple Store. Product may work fine on PC machines, but be careful with newer Macs. Like most digital products these days, it is one disc in an oversized box with no real documentation. The diagnostic program to troubleshoot problems can be downloaded from the eMedia website, but it doesn't work either because the diagnostic program presumes there is a Serial No. for the product. Emedia said there is no serial no. I have not even contact Amazon yet. Read more

I was taking guitar lessons and I wasn't going anywhere until I purchased this program. First of, it has its own set of tools and is interactive I have advance so much that even my daughter was amazed of how much I had progressed and although I have long ways to go before I get more proficient this product has helped me a whole lot. It is easy to follow and you learn at your own pace. I would recommend this product to anyone who wants to learn to play guitar at an affordable price. Read more

So far, I'm impressed by the quality of this software. The only qualification to this is that it is like traditional musical instruction - that is, it starts with the most granular building blocks and works its way upward. For many students, especially younger ones, this might be a bit too slow. There's always a desire to try and jump right into more advanced techniques. The only other thing to mention is that to really use stuff like the built-in tuner, you need some method to get the input into your PC. I took the simple route of just plugging the guitar into the amp, then running the headphone jack on the amp to the line-in on the PC. Honestly, I'm not quite sure what I would have done if I were using an acoustic guitar. The times I just tried to use the PC's built-in microphone, it picked up far too much environmental noise to be of any use. Still, I like this software a lot and unhesitantly recommend it for a complete guitar beginner like me. Read more