Jamorama has been around for years, and they haven’t been resting on their laurels. They appear to be the market leader, not that that’s a necessarily good indicator. (“Transformers 2″, anyone?)

Media

I like learning books and ebooks over video almost every time. I just tend to learn better through words, at least with academic concepts. Learning an instrument is a huge exception. Here, video excels. Jamorama comes with a reported 148 videos (I haven’t counted, nor have I gone through all of them yet). Jamorama also comes with an ebook, so it scratches both my itches. The ebook is 250+ pages and matches the videos well.

Extras

When you buy a book at the bookstore, you don’t get “extras”, but with ebooks you very often do. Jamorama’s extras shine. The best to me are backing tracks so you can jam over instrumentals. Unlike practicing with a metronome, you can’t cheat because you can’t start over (at least for 12 bars). Considering you spend about half as much as Jamorama costs at the music store just for a backing tracks CD, this rocks.

Just as important is the tuner. Beginners often sound terrible not because they’re doing poorly, but because they aren’t tuning their instruments properly. It’s so much easier now that you don’t have to use a piano, pitch pipe, or tuning fork. While I tend to like the pocket Korg tuners when they go on sale at MusiciansFriend.com, software tuners like the freebie with Jamorama are godsends.

The extra that the mosts guitarists will avoid is GuitEarIt, a horrendously named ear training program. Guitarists tend to hate ear training (okay, most musicians do) and this slightly clunky program will do nothing to get them back to the fold. I dutifully tried GuitEarIt and found it did help. Then I gave up like anyone else would because I’d rather jam.

Summary

Jamorama was easy to review. It’s a solid product, and does as well as could be expected without plopping a teacher down right in front of you.

Jamorama Review
Value
You get a lot for your money, plus a ton of extras
Suitable for beginners
Takes you from tuning to some impressive blues licks
Video quality
Looks great-much better than the DVDs I've bought
Overall
Average score