Jamorama Review

If you want an inexpensive way to learn guitar from home, downloadable guitar lessons are a convenient and obvious choice. For years, Jamorama has been a front-runner in this market, providing quality multimedia guitar training that you can download to your computer.

Jamorama was designed with beginners in mind, and places a lot of importance on making the guitar learning process fun and enjoyable. As the course is aimed at novices and casual guitarists, Jamorama starts right at the beginning. The course comes with plenty of bonus software and games to help you gain a solid understanding of musical concepts.

The course is taught by The Rock Star Recipes team including Ben Edwards, a professional musician and guitar instructor. He has previously played in the New Zealand indie rock band DegreesK, and holds a bachelor’s degree in education.

It’s worth noting that Jamorama is available in 2 versions. First, you can get the downloadable version (which this review is about), or you can get Jamorama as a tangible, physical course with workbooks and DVDs, though at a much higher price. As the course content is pretty much identical, we usually recommend the downloadable version.

Screenshots

Screenshots of Jamorama Maestro v2. Click on an image to enlarge.

Features

Within 5 minutes of purchasing Jamorama, you’ll receive access to the Jamorama online member’s area, where you can instantly download the Jamorama Maestro software, and begin your guitar lessons. Also inside the member’s area you’ll find the Jamorama forums and Jamorama’s membership support center.

The newly released version of Jamorama (Jamorama Maestro 2.03) comes with a built-in lesson download manager that allows you to download all lessons and included multimedia elements from right within the software as you need to. Another huge improvement is that you can play audio and video files right from within the lesson, instead of searching for them in various download folders. We can’t stress what a significant improvement this is over the old version of Jamorama which required you to download all the video, audio, and lesson files separately, and then piece them together as you went along.

I should mention that those who purchase Jamorama receive free lifetime updates from the member’s area. Basically, if they come out with a newer version of Jamorama later on, you’ll be able to download it for free.

The multimedia elements in this course are well-designed. The guys over at Jamorama recorded 28 excellent jam tracks that you can play along with starting on the second lesson! You can choose to either play the track with lead guitar or without, a very nice touch.

The lessons are complemented with 148 video mini-lessons that you can play right from within the lesson software. The videos are well done, and incorporate dual camera view (both hands are shown) as well as a notation. We just wish the videos were of a somewhat higher resolution.

The Jamorama software allows you to print your lessons out, which is great option when you don't feel like practicing in front of your screen.

Jamorama Extras:

• Free SongPond.com membership: (Update: This bonus only applies to Jamorama Deluxe members) One of the sweet perks of getting Jamorama is that you also get a free 30 day membership to a brand new website called SongPond. SongPond teaches people that are still learning guitar how to play some of their favorite songs via high-quality online video lessons. SongPond is run by the same folks that made Jamorama.
• Guitar Tuner Pro: Handy tool for tuning your guitar digitally.
• Guitar Ear It!: Game that teaches you how recognize chords and trains your ear.
• Ultimate Metronome: Full-featured computer metronome. Playing along with a metronome is definitely an important part of developing a sense of rhythm and is a great learning aid.
• Jayde Musica: Computer game that teaches you sight-reading, pitch recognition, and chord identification.
• Advanced Learning Techniques for Guitarists: A 16-page supplemental .pdf workbook that explains how you can get the most out of the Jamorama course. Tip: Read this before you get too far in your Jamorama lessons.

Support

Jamorama has an excellent FAQ section in their member’s area. However, if you need further assistance, you can easily open a support ticket and they will respond to you within a couple business days. They also have a member’s forum which you can go to for help. When we’ve stopped by the forums in the past, they haven’t appeared to be too terribly active however.

Jamorama has both Mac and PC users covered with separate versions of their software available to download. We tested the entire course out with a Windows Vista 32-bit PC and found everything worked as expected without a glitch.

On older computers running Windows 95 or 98 however, you might not be able to get all the software to function properly, in which case you may have to run the older version of Jamorama which is still available from the member’s area. (But on a more personal note, if you are running Windows 98, you really should get with the program…☺)

Ordering Information

When purchasing Jamorama, you have the option to pay via credit card, PayPal, or with an online check.

The folks at Jamorama back all their products up with an unconditional 120-day money-back guarantee. So if you find that playing guitar just isn’t for you, you can easily recoup your learning expenses with a full refund.

You can get Jamorama in either the download version or the books and DVD version. If you order the books and DVD version, you will also get access to the online member’s area, but will have to wait a few days to receive the physical course materials in the mail. We recommend the download version anyway since it is much less expensive.

Conclusion

Jamorama is a great way to get started learning the guitar fast. Unlike some other guitar courses, Jamorama gets you playing tunes quickly, and doesn’t put as much emphasis on some of the more difficult technical aspects of guitar-playing, which the casual guitarist might appreciate.

No, you probably won’t be playing like Eric Clapton or Jimi Hendrix in a couple weeks, but for the price of an hour’s worth of private lessons, Jamorama will give you a great start in becoming a skilled intermediate guitarist.

Good-quality instruction, good production values, and an acceptable price tag makes Jamorama our top pick for downloadable guitar lessons. Recommended.