Guitar and Bass Review

If you are a wannabe musician who wants a good introduction to either bass guitar or regular guitar, you are in luck. There's a piece of software available that teaches the basics of how to play both instruments for a very affordable price. It’s called Guitar and Bass, published by an Australian music education company by the same name. This guitar software was designed by Aussie Brian Piggott, a longtime guitarist and performing artist.

Though admittedly, Guitar and Bass is not nearly as detailed or comprehensive as many other higher-rated courses, it still makes a decent alternative if you just want learn the basics of how to play guitar on the cheap.

If you want to familiarize yourself with how the software works, they have a demonstration lesson available on their website for both the guitar and bass guitar versions. Definitely take a look and see what you think.

Screenshots

Screenshots of the Guitar and Bass lessons.

Features

With Guitar and Bass, you can either login to your lessons online or download the lessons to your computer, though we experienced some difficulty in accomplishing the latter. The lessons are completely browser-based and rely on Adobe ® Flash technology.

About the Lessons:

The heart of the course is the 50 interactive multimedia mini-lessons that are conveniently organized by category. The different categories include Guitar Basics, Rhythm Guitar, Lead Guitar, and Songs. With Guitar and Bass you’ll learn the guitar basics like how to tune your guitar using relative and harmonic methods, plenty of useful chords, some cool licks, and several great songs from different musical genres.

Some great features of the lessons include being able to view notes on a virtual fretboard as well as on standard guitar tablature as they are being played. Within the lesson pages you can also access a built-in tuner and drum machine. The drum machine doesn’t have much in terms of customization, but it’s a nice add-on.

If you are someone who learns primarily in a visual manner, it’s very likely that Guitar and Bass won’t be your “cup of tea”, as there isn't many video lessons. The video that is present, isn't the greatest in terms of quality either.

Audio on the other hand, is excellent. Not a few of the lessons include high-quality jam tracks which have a full-band version as well as a a solo accompaniment version. They do tend to be on the shorter side, but they do have the functionality of automatic looping.

Support

We’re not quite sure if Guitar and Bass is still supported by it’s founders, though they still have a phone, fax, and email address listed on their website. When we tested out their email address, their mail server rejected our email as their mailbox was full. We can safely say that you’ll be on your own if you get the software, unless you want to make expensive long-distance calls to Australia.

On our newer test computer that runs Windows Vista, we had a fair amount of trouble trying to get into the PC-based lessons and downloading them to our computer (In the end we gave up and used the web-based lessons). The online lessons work fine, but there are some substantial delays when loading in new lessons, and you obviously have to be on a computer that’s connected to the internet. Another significant annoyance with the online version of the lessons is that when you spend any kind of time on one of the lessons and then try to view another, it will log you out, and you’ll have to re-login on the Guitar and Bass’ website.

Compatibility Alert: Macintosh users are able to use Guitar and Bass’ web-based lessons but not the version that is included on the physical CD that they ship.

Ordering Information

For international customers, Guitar and Bass accepts only the major credit cards. Australian residents however, can also pay via cheque or money order.

Buyer’s Tip: Because the Guitar and Bass course is priced in AUD (Australian Dollars), the actual cost to you will be substantially lower when buying from the USA, Canada, the United Kingdom, or Europe.

Of the many learn-guitar products reviewed on this site, Guitar and Bass is one of the few that offers a lifetime money-back guarantee of their course. However, you do have to call them to start the refund process, and of course any shipping costs incurred aren’t refundable.

When you order Guitar and Bass, you can choose to have a CD version sent to you via the postal service. If you do however, you’ll have to pay an additional $10 bucks, though shipping is advertised as free (That’s one expensive CD!). However, due to the technical issues we experienced above, it may not be a bad idea to get the CD if you want to work through the lessons on your computer.

Conclusion

Guitar and Bass is a very good value proposition for those who just want to get a head start on learning guitar at a low price. Sure, there are a few things lacking with the software, such as a absence of high quality images and sharp, detailed video illustrations, but all in all Guitar and Bass is a rockin’ deal for those on a low budget.