Introduction

Nearly everyone tries to play air guitar along to their favourite songs but not many people put that air guitar ‘talent’ into practice, this is where eMedia come in. They say that you can become a rock star while sitting at your computer – ideal!

eMedia specialise in music software which can help even the most deaf tone of student. They have various products available to customers such as Piano Method, Rock Guitar Method and of course today’s review, Guitar Method v4, and many more on their website. Click here to visit eMedia

Let’s test it out…

Features

• Past and Present hit songs
• Precision Gauge for effortless automatic tuning
• Over 50 full-motion videos to learn real-time playing techniques
• Audio tracker that highlights music and lyrics as you play
• A 250 chord dictionary
• Learn Basic and simple chord progression and riffs
• Then go on to the ‘Ear splitting chords and riffs’

System Requirements

Windows: Windows 98/NT/2000/Me/XP/Vista CD-ROM drive, sound card, 256+ color display 16 MB of free RAM, 40 MB of free disk space

Macintosh: Power PC (or faster), Intel OK Mac OS X 10.1+ CD-ROM drive, 256+ color display 16 MB of free RAM, 83MB of free disk space

The Package

Like other Avanquest products, the box is a simple yet effective design. It’s also very informative with a door on the front where inside there is lots of pictures and useful information about the product. This includes pictures of the guitar tuner, digital metronome and the digital recorder so you can save your recordings and play them back to see how you sound.

Inside the box you get the installation disc which comes with some instructions for different operating systems. Also with the CD, I found that there is a red eMedia guitar plectrum which I found to be quite useful as mine has disappeared, heh.

The plectrum is one of the thicker varieties and is designed more towards acoustic guitars as they have thicker strings than electrics, but they can also be used with electrics to get a more heavy sound. It also has the eMedia web address on it.

Impressions

Not to sound too full of myself but, I’m actually quite a good guitar player! [Ha, how can you say that!? - Rhys] This software appealed greatly and seemed to be quite a good product as with all the features included, it could easily improve an intermediate guitar player’s performance and techniques.

With a 250 chord dictionary and an automatic tuner, this is a very good product as tuning a guitar is always a hassle for most players and even I don’t know all of the chords – I doubt many people do – this would be a great help for anyone who wants to find chords that go together well so that they can effectively write their own songs.

This software also has many songs and lessons that you can watch and learn and as they are extremely clear and to-the-point, they’re very quick to learn from. The options to track back through lessons are also there should you happen to miss anything. However, this rewind feature on the videos was missing on some, this was a real nuisance.

Also, with the ability to print any lesson, you can go out and learn them from paper until you can get a song or technique perfect.

Installation

This is just a basic CD installation with nothing else needed (apart from a guitar of course). So first, insert the CD and it will pop up asking you where you want to install Guitar Method. It will then prompt you to accept the licence agreement. If you’re using Vista, a message is shown unique to only Windows Vista users (see below).

After you have finished installing Guitar Method, QuickTime 6.5 also asks to be installed so that the videos will play properly whilst you are using the software.

The whole install took about 1 minute which is quite good seen as though it had to install all of the video files, lessons, songs etc…

Testing/Usage

When you first open Guitar Method, you will be shown the homepage where the beastly song ‘House of the Rising Sun’ plays in the background.

You then just have to click anywhere on the homepage to be taken to the contents page where you can browse any of the many sections.

While Guitar Method is open, you can go to the options menu and go into different settings as you can see below.

Overall, there are 164 lessons to enjoy. Each section is separated into about 10 lessons which gradually get more difficult towards the end of a section.

When you have finished the course, a video pops up of the instructor where he plays a cool blues riff and talks about some other products that eMedia have to offer.

Conclusion

Guitar Method has been a great product to use and has given me some very useful tips and methods that I had not learnt before or covered in as much detail.

At the retail price of £34.99, I would say that this is definitely worth it because if you’re considering learning the guitar, this software is a fraction of the price of lessons and with Guitar Method, it’s very easy and quick to learn from.

Pros

• Easy instructions for people to understand
• Useful recorded chord dictionary
• Fair price for what you are getting
• Easy installation – with no other setup required
• A variety of songs to learn
• Many different techniques including how to play blues, rock etc…

Cons

• Really bad songs
• Unable to rewind some videos