Before beginning any new kind of course or taking in lots of info, I find it helpful to get an overview of exactly what I’ll be learning – perhaps you do too. Here’s what you get with the Jamorama Standard and Jamorama Deluxe courses:
Inside the Jamorama Member’s Area
The material is accessed through the member’s area, which looks like this:
From the Home page (shown here), you can visit the download area, and download the rhythm course (books 1 and 2), the Chord Kit, the Tuning Guide, the software and other bonuses, and the Acoustic Kit, as well as accessing your free trial membership to SongPond. Jamorama Deluxe customers can download the Lead Course and the Lead Licks Kit, in addition to the other materials. There is also a link to the member’s forum, where you ask questions and chat with others who are working through the course. Other areas include the Help section, where you can contact the Jamorama staff with any queries you may have, and links to the Jamorama blog and pages on sites such as Twitter and Facebook, where you can get further involved in the Jamorama community.
The Jamorama Course Material
The course material itself is organised in a series of zip files, which you extract after downloading, so it’s easy to keep track of which video and audio files go with the relevant text books. Within each section is a ‘Read Me’ file which tells you exactly where to start and how to use the material – there’s a lot of material in both of the Jamorama courses, so it’s nice that clear ‘where to start’ guidelines are given.
In both versions, you begin with the rhythm guitar course, which is split between two books, Beginner and Intermediate, each of which has its associated audio demo files, jam tracks and video lessons. The video and audio tracks you need to use are referenced at the appropriate places in the text.
I’ll describe each lesson in more detail as I work through it [update - see my review blog contents at the bottom of the page], but to give an overview, Jamorama Book 1 has 15 lessons, and covers:
- Parts of the guitar
- Playing position
- Chord diagrams
- Strumming
- Introduction to tablature and musical notation
- Individual notes on each string
- Common chords & chord progressions
- The chromatic scale
- Basic rhythmic patterns
- Practice with 10 jam tracks
Book 2 has 29 lessons of increasingly more advanced material, covering:
- Sight reading
- Lots of more advanced chords and progressions
- Bass note runs
- More complex rhythmic patterns
- Music theory
- Barre chords
- More complex strumming patterns
- More info about practice techniques and the psychological side of music
- Playing in a band/with others
- Scales
- Deadening and muting techniques
- Power chords
- Various musical styles
- A supplementary chord reference section with photo-diagrams of all of the chords covered in the course
As these are PDF texts, you have some control over how the text is displayed, and of course you can print it out if you prefer (which I did). The text and diagrams are laid out in a clean and attractive style, with easily readable print, and feature full colour photographs and diagrams showing things like the correct hand positions in lots of detail. As well as the technical ‘how to’ material, there are brief discussions on topics such as cultivating the right mindset and the nature of musical talent, plus little facts about guitars and guitarists.
Here is a screenshot of part of a page from Book 1, Lesson 1:
You can see the CD icon at the bottom right – this directs you to the appropriate video for this section, which shows the instructor strumming this chord, with a close-up of the correct position.
These two books constitute the main Jamorama rhythm course, and form the core material of Jamorama Standard. The Standard course also contains an additional module called Acoustic Focus, which includes two more instruction manuals and a total of 26 additional jam tracks to practice your acoustic guitar playing. Jamorama Deluxe includes all of these rhythm and acoustic guitar materials too, plus the lead guitar lessons, which are delivered in a similar format.
Both Jamorama Standard and Jamorama Deluxe also come with a variety of bonuses – you can read more about these in detail on the Jamorama Bonuses review page.
