Amazing Guitar Secrets Review

Amazing Guitar Secrets is a course that combines video, audio, and printed workbooks, to accelerate the process of learning both the electric and acoustic guitar.

Though Amazing Guitar Secrets touts itself as a guitar course for beginners, much of the content is better suited for slightly more advanced guitarists. The course is fairly heavy on theory and technical guitar playing. In other words, if you’re just wanting a guitar course for the grandkids, this ain't it.

Amazing Guitar Secrets was designed and taught by guitar instructor, Dan Denley. Dan has a solid musical background that includes a music degree from the University of Memphis, several years of band playing experience, and classical training in piano and vocal performance. Dan Denley has also created several more advanced learn-guitar courses, such as Blues Guitar Secrets, Lead Guitar Secrets, and Acoustic Guitar Secrets.

Screenshots

Amazing Guitar Secrets DVD screenshots.

Features

Parts of the course:

DVDs - The Amazing Guitar Secrets DVDs contains approximately 4 hours worth of lessons. Production values, while not exceptional by any means, are definitely acceptable. For the most part, the video quality is sharp and the audio is clear. When necessary, on-screen graphics and diagrams are shown to better illustrate a topic.

On the flip side, we had a few complaints with how the lessons were produced, such as the lack of multiple cameras for showing the right and left hands simultaneously. When teaching, Dan tends to uses a lot of technical terms, and sometimes doesn’t give adequate introductions to difficult topics, which can be frustrating for guitar newbies. We also found errors scattered throughout the course material, which actually isn't all that uncommon in self-published courses.

While not as important as the prior points, it’s worth mentioning that the graphic design of the course material is sub-standard in terms of quality. While it doesn’t make or break the course, it would have been nice if it was better produced, especially considering the price.

Workbook – This huge 401-page ring-coil binder contains 10 black-and-white workbooks that supplement the DVDs. You’ll find a progress tracker where you can keep an eye on how fast you’re learning, the Amazing Guitar Secrets Guide Book, and several smaller books that help you learn more about guitar theory, rhythms, scales, and more.

CD – On the included CD are 40 high-quality audio jam tracks in .wav format. These tracks are a nice addition to the course, but unfortunately aren’t nearly as useful as they could have been. They were recorded using only the guitar, and not with a full band, which is a lot more fun to play along with. Obviously, the ability to play solo isn't an option either, since there aren't any other instruments to jam with.

The CD also contains .pdf versions of all 10 workbooks that are included in the binder as well as 30 flash tutorials that cover how to:

• Read chord charts/diagrams
• Read and play barre chords
• Recognize rythmatic patterns
• Learn pentatonic scales
• Learn minor caged chords
• Learn 7th chords (Major and Minor)
• Learn Movable barre chords

The Amazing Guitar Secrets course should keep you busy learning guitar for many months. During that time you can expect to learn: How to build your finger strength, an very important but overlooked part of learning guitar, how to play all sorts of essential chords and scales, and how to recognize different rhythm patterns. Musical theory is also a big part of this course.

Support

Customers of Amazing Guitar Secrets receive a phone number that they can call if they have any questions. Email support is also available.

Amazing Guitar Secrets also has a mid-sized guitar forum/community where you can discuss any of Dan Denley’s courses or just guitar-playing in general. It is a public forum, which means that you don’t have to be an AGS customer to join.

Note: When we were checking out the forum we found that it had been infiltrated by spammers, which injected a large amount of adult material into many of the forum threads. We expect that they will clean it up shortly and implement better security measures to keep the community clean.

Ordering Information

Amazing Guitar Secrets is available exclusively from their website. Payment methods are limited to PayPal and Major credit cards.

Since this is not a digital course, there are shipping fees to consider. If you are shipping outside the USA, it will be a few dollars extra.

Amazing Guitar Secrets reduced their product guarantee from 90 days to a 30-day trial, which is only half as long as most guarantees. If for any reason you don’t feel that the course is worth your time or money, you will have the option to return the course and get your money back (minus shipping costs if applicable).

Conclusion

If you want a guitar course that emphasizes music theory as well as some of the more technical aspects of playing guitar, Amazing Guitar Secrets isn’t a bad choice for the money. It covers a lot of guitar basics and gets you up and running quickly, though beginners may quickly feel left behind due to the rapid pace.

When compared to other DVD guitar courses we’ve reviewed on this site, we’d place Amazing Guitar Secrets a distant third behind the Beginner Guitar System and Gibson's Learn and Master Guitar, both of which are much more comprehensive, better structured, better produced, and more effective guitar-learning curriculums.