Without a question guitar is the most popular instrument amongst beginner musicians looking to learn to play something. After all most popular songs are written on the guitar and it’s much easier to lug a guitar around as opposed to drums or a piano.

Do you know what the second most popular instrument is with beginners?

The piano, that’s right. The guitar and the piano go hand in hand for a couple of reasons. One they are both used to write much popular music we hear today. Also a singer can use just the piano or guitar to accompany themselves, making it easy to perform for others (large or small groups).

What about learning the piano? Is it a lot more difficult to learn piano as apposed to guitar?

If you’ve spent much time on this site you’ve probably realized that we’re big supporters of the learn and master guitar course. Well guess what, there’s a learn and master piano course as well.

The piano lessons dvd program is similar to the guitar course in that it comes with a lesson book, several lesson dvds and Jam along discs for practicing. The target audience for this course is adults looking to learn piano but don’t have the time for private instruction and would like to save a little money as well.

The course is taught by a world class pianist, Will Barrow. Like Steve Krenz, the instructor for Learn & Master Guitar, Will is a professional performing, composing and teaching musician. He has the knowledge to teach beginners quickly and help them along their journey to mastering the piano.

Legacy Learning Systems Releases New Guitar Course

Legacy Learning Systems, the creators of Learn and Master Guitar, have been busy. They’ve recently released a new series of self study music guitar courses entitled their “Spotlight Series”.

This spotlight series basically focuses on topics that Legacy feels don’t require a full 20 disc course to cover the material needed. The topics covered in this series are:

• Blues Guitar
• Bass Guitar
• Guitar Setup

The most logical one that I had been waiting for was the blues guitar dvd, learn and master blues spotlight. The blues is generally the most popular form of guitar that most electric players are interested in learning after hammering down the basics.

For owners of the original guitar course who have completed it I am sure purchasing the new blues guitar course will be a no brainer.

The bass guitar course is another logical expansion for Legacy Learning. It makes sense that they’d want to incorporate bass guitar into their suite of learning tools, especially since it’s not as heavily covered in the market place as the regular guitar. The bass instructor for the new bass guitar spotlight course is the same bass player used in the jam along band of the blues course.

Finally the guitar setup course is a nice add on, or gift idea (wink wink, nudge nudge), for all those guitar players who are the DIY types. You can always take your guitar into a shop to be professionally setup by a lutheran (guitar maker), but if you want to know a bit more about how to do it yourself this course makes sense.

To learn more about the original guitar course check out our learn and master guitar review. It covers everything you need to know about the course, what you’ll learn and who it’s best suited for.

Got my copy of Learn and Master Guitar

I received my copy of Learn and Master guitar a few days ago, but I was just so tied up I didn’t have the chance until today to really get into it and take a look at what comes in the package. Here are a couple of pictures of the packaging, and dvds, cds that come with the package.

The Package (binder like holder for everything dvds, cds, workbook etc.)

The dvds and jam along cds there’s two to each package one on the front and another on the back

The first thing that struck me with Learn and Master guitar was the packaging. I’ve bought quite a few learn to play guitar products, both digital, and hard goods from my local music store, but nothing Ive bought came with this much stuff.

On first glance after opening the package I saw a “How to use this course” page fixed to the inside cover of the binder like packaging. It was a clear road map for what I was about to embark on to sharpen my guitar skills (I already play guitar and have been for sometime, how ever my theory, music reading, and technical abilities are sub par in my opinion).

The “how to use this course” page explained that Learn and Master guitar is broken up into sessions, each session builds on the previous one and of course it’s best to follow them in order. This is the first teach yourself guitar package that has handed me a plan on how to use their lessons, videos, and printed material.

The ‘How to use this course’ page I found when I opened the package up

I won’t get into all of it, but it goes on to talk about practice time requirements, the dvd’s that come with the course, lesson book, jam along cds, and the members only website for asking questions and getting support on each session.

I popped the first dvd into my player and pressed play. Each dvd appears to have 2 sessions each, and each session is further broken down into the exact parts. You can see from a sample screen shot I took of the table of contents on disc 1, session 1. I think this would make it very easy to go back and relearn just a small piece of a lesson if you needed a refresher, rather then having to fast forward though an entire lesson.

The video quality is excellent, although I’ve only gone through the first 2 sessions, Steve, the instructor, speaks slowly and the camera zooms in and out according to what is most important to be shown on the screen.

From an initial glance this product is well put together and organized. The accompanying printed material that is supplemental to each session is well put together, and gives an estimated time line for how long it should take to master each section. I’ve included a couple of pictures below of the workbook that comes with the package (my apologies for the poor photo’s I’m no pro with the digital camera).

Front cover of Lesson Book

Inside the lesson book, showing the quality of instruction provided

All in all, I think this course is going to be great. I haven’t gotten into using any of the jam along cds but I’ll be sure to post my thoughts on them when I start using them.

Get your copy of Learn and Master Guitar Here